Comunismo Futuro + Intro + Q&A

Marking the centennial anniversary of the Soviet Revolution, media theorist Franco 'Bifo' Berardi introduces via video call the international premiere of the new documentary Comunismo Futuro. The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Andrea Gropplero and journalist Ash Sarkar.

A hundred years after the Soviet Revolution, our present appears as a panicking acceleration that is disabling critical reflection, political decision and rational government. The global mind is in a state of chaos. In this film, storyteller Franco 'Bifo' Berardi guides us on a journey through the 20th century, beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and ending in the contemporary day.

Drawing from the Italian archives of the Workers movement, Istituto Luce Cinecittà and from sources of contemporary media activism, director Andrea Gropplero, in collaboration with Paolo Marzoni, has composed a film in which marks of the 1920s Russian Vanguard, Futurist animation and Cubist imagination intersect with the proto-punk visual poetry of the 1970s. Gropplero, a producer and director who recently took part in the occupation of Teatro Valle in Rome, opens a surprising window of possibility with this work: after the failure of the first century, communism is coming back as a possible trajectory for potential social solidarity and global peace.

Comunismo Futuro, dir. Andrea Gropplero, Italy 2017, 72 mins

Ash Sarkar is Senior Editor of Novara Media and presents her own video series OMFG, covering topics from race to gender and global politics. She is a Politics Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin and teaches a Masters on Film, Graphic Design and Propaganda at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Her political activities range from anti-austerity activism and a range of anti-racist campaigns. She also writes on arts and culture and is a published poet.