The Still Image and the Labour Process: An Agitka rebirths a lost genre of the cinema, the Soviet agitational-propaganda short film (agitka), which at the inception of the fledgling Soviet state was considered an important method to communicate the new state ideology to the Soviet citizenry. It playfully engages in a loving pastiche of early Soviet films, arguing in a Marxist critique that the moving image is a weapon for destroying the commodifying influence of still photography, which transforms its photographic subject into a commodified object. Through Soviet-style montage it juxtaposes portrait photography to the product advertisement and the moving image to the loaded gun. It declares, like the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (the FEKS), that "WE VALUE ART AS AN INEXHAUSTIBLE BATTERING-RAM SHATTERING THE WALLS OF CUSTOM AND DOGMA!"

Official Selection Victoria Film Festival