I ♥ $ - Johan van der Keuken

Dienstag 10.07.2012

- ACHTUNG WEGEN ÜBERLÄNGE - 20.00 Uhr  

vorgestellt von Sebastian Markt & Stefan Neuberger

I ♥ $  |  Niederlande, 1986. 145 Minuten. Niederländisch, Englisch, Portugiesisch mit englischen Untertiteln |  Regie / Kamera : Johan van der Keuken  Musik: Willem Breuker / Montage: Jan Dop, Johan van der Keuken

Described by the filmmaker as an attempt "to film how people survive, and the money, how it flows, those who have it and those who don't," this provocative film moves through the financial centers of the world, exploring the attitudes of those on top and bottom of the social and economical pyramid. Interviews with bankers and investors are intercut with journeys into the lives of people on the margins: Puerto Ricans and African Americans in New York, a young family in Hong Kong, illegal immigrants in Geneva. According to Dominique Paini in Cahiers du Cinema, "the constant overlapping of the sound of different languages is as strikingly beautiful as the visual fascination offered by the cities he filmed."  - moma

In 1984–85, Johan van der Keuken took his camera across the globe, from Amsterdam to New York to Hong Kong, ending in Geneva. The object of his investigation was money, in particular the maniacal drive to accumulate it in the era of Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberalism. In the resulting film, I love $, van der Keuken shows us his view of the world of money in which the Netherlands is fully integrated, and the contrasts between excess and deprivation. In addition to a succession of bankers, traders, and executives, van der Keuken also interviews the victims of economic dispossession, such as the residents of dilapidated dwellings in New York and illegal Portuguese immigrants in Switzerland (who, ironically, have a son who dreams about the promised land of New York). Flashes of the developing world (which the financiers admit is of no interest to them) appear on flickering TV monitors, indicating its remoteness from the centers of capitalist power, as embodied in the sanitized streets of Geneva. Van der Keuken lets the camera explore its environment, with attention to aesthetic detail that sets this apart from more conventional reportage. —New Museum