Filming Capital

This special issue of SAQ examines how Marxism can be used to illuminate the problem of the visual representation of contemporary global capitalism. Capitalism structurally conceals itself: it projects a harmonious image in the spheres of circulation and the market, while masking the antagonisms embedded in production. This contradiction poses challenges for visualizing capitalism and for grasping its increasing reliance on this very discrepancy. Visual and film studies provide a distinctive lens through which to unravel and confront the complexities of capitalism’s elusive appearance. Topics covered include Marxism and contemporary global capitalism through the lens of visual and film studies; racial capitalism in American professor Cedric Robinson’s film writings; Chinese migrant workers and the edgy “Shamate” subculture in the documentary We Were Smart (2019); the "phantasmagorias"—dreamlike imagery of urban space—of German philosopher Walter Benjamin; heist cinema and the collective work of art; and cinema, communism, and global peasantry in the 1970s.

Contributors: Pietro Bianchi, William Callison, Benjamin Crais, Verónica Gago, Cassandra Xin Guan, Anna Kornbluh, Davide Gallo Lassere, Emanuele Leonardi, Alberto Manconi, Patrick Marshall, Ernest Pujol-León, Alberto Toscano, Joshua Harold Wiebe, Ling Zhang