Surplus Value: Relations of Production in World Cinema
Studio Roma 2016 is facing the theme of surplus value, exploring the field of excess and disproportion, extractive practices and tensions in processes of economic value assignment. The notion of surplus value has famously been used by Marx to describe the difference between the value created by the worker and his labour-cost, appropriated by the capitalist as income. By striving to gain a more of profit out of this relation of expropriation, capitalist economy has constantly produced a more of human, social and environmental costs. The films of this geographically and historically diverse program, that comprises documentary, fiction and experimental formats, focus on this negative surplus. Starting from scenes of manual work in the 21st century, the program goes back to images of slavery, the Great Depression of the 1930s and colonialism in Africa to end with the production of violence in contemporary China.
Films: Workingman’s Death by Michael Glawogger; Capitalism: Slavery by Ken Jacobs; Nieuwe Gronden by Joris Ivens; Afrique 50 by René Vautier; Tian Zhu Ding – A Touch of Sin di Jia Zhangke.
Clemens Klopfenstein: Geschichte der Nacht
The research of Studio Roma 2016 crosses the metropolitan territories where economic valorisation unfolds in a multiplicity of forms between production and society. Starting from this research on the urban spaces, we will screen La Luce Romana Vista da Ferraniacolor, an experimental color film shot by Clemens Klopfenstein, resident of Istituto Svizzero in 1974, on the rooftop of Villa Maraini in Rome. Then, the screening of Geschichte der Nacht (Story of Night), a film where the spectator can observe how night time structures the spaces of 15 cities from Basel to Belfast, from Helsinki to Rome. After the movie, a conversation between the filmaker and film scholar Simon Koenig.
Films: La luce romana vista da Ferraniacolor; Geschichte der Nacht by Clemens Klopfenstein.
Program
15.00 Introduction by Cyrill Miksch
15.10 Workingman’s Death (A/D 2005), Michael Glawogger, 122′
17.40 Capitalism: Slavery (USA 2007), Ken Jacobs, 3′
Nieuwe Gronden (NL 1933), Joris Ivens, 36′
Afrique 50 (F 1950), René Vautier, 17′
20.00 Introduction by Simon Koenig
20.10 La luce romana vista da Ferraniacolor (CH 1974), Clemens Klopfenstein, 17′
Geschichte der Nacht (CH / D / F / I 1978), Clemens Klopfenstein, 63′
21.30 Conversation with Clemens Klopfenstein and Simon Koenig
22.30 Tian Zhu Ding – A Touch of Sin (PRC 2013), Jia Zhangke, 133′
All films will be screened in original language with subtitles. Free admission
Cinema Azzurro Scipioni
via degli Scipioni 82, Rome – map