Reel Politik: Seizing the Means of Projection With Nathan Gelgud

Cartoonist and illustrator Nathan Gelgud is probably best known for his series of auteur tote bags, illustrated filmographies on canvas for directors such as Chantal Akerman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Yasujiro Ozu and Agnès Varda. Since 2009, when he was commissioned to design a poster for a re-release of François Truffaut’s Small Change, Gelgud’s work has graced cinema ephemera for film screenings and retrospectives at major venues in New York, Paris and Los Angeles. His nonfiction comics about directors and actors have been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Paris Review and Hyperallergic. Lately, Gelgud has turned his attention to Reel Politik, a daily Instagram comic about a ragtag group of cinephile movie theater workers beset by the algorithmic indignities of the streaming age. Gripes about assigned seating and in-theater dining quickly lead to open rebellion when they “seize the means of projection,” then turn their sights on hijacking the Criterion Mobile Closet. Gathered together in a new collection, the Reel Politik strips comprise an absurdist, loving satire of all things arthouse with a Marxist-Leninist twist, an accessible primer on revolutionary thought and a wry, movie-mad antidote for troubled times.

The Archive is thrilled to turn over the Billy Wilder Theater to Gelgud for this five-night series of revolutionary films that inspired him and his rebel band of popcorn slingers.

Series programmed by Senior Film Programmer Paul Malcolm and Nathan Gelgud. Notes written by Paul Malcolm.