There are those ideas for projects that would be great to make, they keep nagging in the background, but there’s always something else happening and you never really get around to tackling them head on.
The idea to make short films about political key concepts is one of them. It first popped up during the Anarchist Bookfair in 2010. (Check out the Virtual Anarchist Bookfair over at Imc London.) We were chatting about how difficult it can be to communicate political ideas, especially more abstract concepts to a wider ‘audience’ (for lack of a better expression). Since the crisis, we keep reading about the market, the free market, debt, and the economy in general. But very few people (me included) actually have a firm grasp on what those terms mean. Even though they are affecting our daily lives very directly, they seem very distant concepts. Of course we are constantly told that we could not expect to understand things, and we should leave them to specialists. To make matters worse, these are the very same “specialists” who triggered the whole crisis. Being specialists and all.
Now there are several levels of ideology here. We aren’t to stupid. On the one hand, we are smarter than we are made out to be. And on the other hand things aren’t as complicated as they are made out to be. Nevertheless, I get a fuzzy feeling in my head when talk starts revolving around economy, the market and all that.
One reason I’d like to make the key concept series, is to gain a better understanding of what’s actually going on. I’m comfortable with computers and cameras, with shooting footage and editing and all that. I am not comfortable thinking about economics. So from a very egoistic standpoint, I could use this to basically get private lessons in how the world works.
I recently wrote a first email to try and get this project off the ground. Being responsible for the filmmaking aspect, I added some links to videos that I thought did something succesful in terms of explaining concepts. I’ll post them on here with short reviews. If you know any other videos (or sequences in longer movies) that very successfully explain a rather abstract concept, let me know in the comments.
Social tagging: anarchist bookfair > crists > debt > economy > free market > key concepts > market > value > video > visual pamphlets