Reel Politik

An absurdist comic strip satire of cinephilia in the attention economy

A specter is haunting the cinema. A contrarian crew of small town theatre employees trade quips about directors, film criticism, and contemporary moviegoing, but underneath their banter and clashes with customers, an ideology begins to take shape. With the help of a dissatisfied cinephile and some witchy magic, the employees radicalize, take over the theatre, and seize the means of projection.

What starts out as a workplace comedy simmers and then explodes into an absurdist Marxist-Leninist cinema-focused tract. The Reel Politik revolutionaries demand that we ditch the small screens in our pockets for the big ones in the theater as they take on streaming services, phone addiction, algorithms, phony democracy, and the conventions of moviegoing etiquette. Does that mean they hijack the Criterion Closet van? You bet it does.

Cartoonist Nathan Gelgud both champions and lampoons the aspirations and failures of cinema and not a single sacred cinematic cow goes un-punched in this manifesto for revolution through film.

Nathan Gelgud is a cartoonist living in South Pasadena. His comics have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and Hyperallergic. Gelgud’s illustration clients include Paris Review, Nike, Penguin Random House, ESPN, New York Review of Books (NYRB Classics), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Ford Foundation, and The Believer.