Communism and the Net or The End of Representative Democracy

June 1659. Richard Cromwell flees to France to save his life. July 1793. Jean-Paul Marat's hand lifelessly hangs from his bathtub. August 1940. Ramón Mercades stands at the front door of a house. In his hand an ice-axe which he later uses to smash Trotsky's skull. August 1968. Tanks in the streets of Prague..."Revolutions come to keep the old order" as the old count in Lampedusa's Leopard says. That is one of the reasons he sends his nephew to become a revolutionary. After the revolution comes a restoration of the old order. And power, same as wealth, remains in the hands of a few chosen ones. Communism is a new film essay by the documentary filmmaker Karel Vachek, who, constantly swapping Bertold Brecht and Samuel Beckett masks and thus in disguise, accompanies the audiences through a collage composed of staged passages of utopian and contemporary literature, his own memories as well as a tableaux of world events. Vachek recalls his experiences and points of view from when he was a hotelkeeper's child, through his first-hand experience with the Prague Spring, persecution and the return of capitalism to Czechoslovakia. His essay has Bradbury's characters meet with Soviet revolutionaries, kings and queens with puppets, and religious people with celebrity athletes. And to boot, music plays and jollity is the order of the day. Apart from Vachek, actors also present texts and become (for the central trio) opponents, partners, an ancient chorus and a modern voice-band reciting amongst hundreds of books in libraries. Majority of wise people are dead now and the books are a way to communicate with them. According to Vachek, our democracy is entirely controlled by advertising. The only one who can rule is someone who has got enough money for a campaign. The next revolution will take place on the internet and bureaucrats will only carry out tasks which have been approved by citizens in referendums. And it will be no idyllic stroll. Even the French Revolution was horrific. (Ostrava Kamera Oko)