Log in
Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

2009 · 27 min · Documentary

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory started as an investigation of the link between politics and chocolate, at the Karl Marx Confectionary Factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Since access to the factory was denied, the project had to be re-considered, re-invented or re-enacted. Mostly made of archival footage and re-enacted performances based on the company's website, the film merges what was left of the initial idea with what has been collected and realized instead. It borrows from the genres of video art, 'Man on the street' interview, direct address, corporate film, essay, and music video, without legitimately belonging to any of them. The film unravels as a reflection on its own failure, and yet keeps on investigating what has always been at stake: the shift from public to private property (and from analog to digital technology), dialectics of permanence and change, language as a mirror of ideology, and post-Soviet oligarchy culture.

Directed by Michael Blum

Your Rating

Make it a double feature

28m together

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

A close match in mood and era.

More from Michael BlumSee all →

20 minutes with Melik Tutuncu20 minutes with Melik Tutuncu · 2004
20 minutes with Melik Tutuncu
★ 10.02004
MovieDocumentary
Melik Tutuncu, Chicago-based architect of Turkish origin, talks about his grand-mother, Safiye Behar, a Jewish marxist feminist who had a 30 year-long affair with Mustapha Kemal Atatürk and influenced many of the reforms he was implementing in the 1920's, which founded modern Turkey.
BrothersBrothers · 1977
Brothers
★ 4.01977
MovieDrama
Thinly disguised account of the relationship between radical black activist Angela Davis and Black Panther and prison inmate George Jackson, who was one of those killed in a failed 1971 prison breakout.
Wandering MarxwardsWandering Marxwards · 1999
Wandering Marxwards
1999
MovieDocumentary
A political and poetic wondering/wandering about the relevance and context of re-reading Marx 150 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto
Oriental DreamOriental Dream · 2010
Oriental Dream
2010
MovieComedy
Orientalism breathlessly revisited, or a post-Ottoman tribute to silent slapstick comedy.
The SwapThe Swap · 2016
The Swap
2016
MovieDocumentary
The Swap is the third chapter of the PolEc Trilogy, comprising Wandering Marxwards (1998) and The Three Failures (2006). It features the same character as in the previous episodes, but now reduced to a lost, exhausted soul roaming Shanghai's cityscape from the remotest periphery to the financial district. Another narrative, spoken this one, takes us to September 2008, as gigantic bailouts put the financial system on life support instead of letting it collapse, thus seizing our reality and replacing it with a fiction tailored for the situation. These two streams end up meeting on a Shanghai dancefloor, where unresolved contradictions can finally be performed.
The Three FailuresThe Three Failures · 2006
The Three Failures
2006
MovieDocumentary
A fairy tale about communism, social-democracy, and capitalism. (The sequel to Wandering Marxwards)
17 Aandbloem Street17 Aandbloem Street · 2004
17 Aandbloem Street
2004
MovieDocumentary
A neighbourhood investigation centered around a house in Cape Town. Current and former tenants, neighbours, a homeless man in a wheelchair, an architect, a former top-model and a flower seller are among these who provide stories about the house, its surroundings and the hyper-local power dynamics - 10 years after the fall of the apartheid regime.
Psychics I : Melanie Perfect / 17 Aandbloem Street, Cape TownPsychics I : Melanie Perfect / 17 Aandbloem Street, Cape Town · 2009
Psychics I : Melanie Perfect / 17 Aandbloem Street, Cape Town
2009
MovieDocumentary
A series of psychic readings of spaces, commissioned by the artist in an attempt at connecting with the past of domestic or exhibition spaces, despite the limitations of rational discourse. The video is not edited, respecting the actual duration of the performance.
Capri in Tangerang (Her Sneakers)Capri in Tangerang (Her Sneakers) · 2011
Capri in Tangerang (Her Sneakers)
2011
MovieDocumentary
A sequel to My Sneakers - the 2001 video where Blum traveled his Nike sneakers back to Indonesia to figure out where they really came from. This time, it's the artist's daughter's shoes that prompt him to return to Jakarta. While echoing My Sneakers and its investigative drive, Capri unravels as a reflection on time passing and the dialectics of permanence and change. Factories are still producing sneakers, but the world around has completely changed…
Psychics III : Frans Dupont / Rooseum, Gasverksgatan 22, MalmoePsychics III : Frans Dupont / Rooseum, Gasverksgatan 22, Malmoe · 2012
Psychics III : Frans Dupont / Rooseum, Gasverksgatan 22, Malmoe
2012
MovieDocumentary
A series of psychic readings of spaces, commissioned by the artist in an attempt at connecting with the past of domestic or exhibition spaces, despite the limitations of rational discourse. The video is not edited, respecting the actual duration of the performance. In this particular case, Frans Dupont is looking at the past but also at the future of Rooseum - Center for contemporary art in Malmoe, which was on the verge of being shut down while Blum was artist-in-residence.
Dear TomDear Tom · 2003
Dear Tom
2003
MovieDocumentary
A video-letter to Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and author of the unforgivable "Art for Dummies".
Old Boys and ToysOld Boys and Toys · 2005
Old Boys and Toys
2005
MovieDocumentary
An ethnographic trip to American suburbia, recorded in a single shot. Every year, in the days prior to the opening of the World Toy Show in a Chicago suburb, toy collectors and dealers rent rooms at the local Holiday Inn and leave their doors open...
Psychics II : Janet Jelet / 1371 North Milwaukee Ave, ChicagoPsychics II : Janet Jelet / 1371 North Milwaukee Ave, Chicago · 2012
Psychics II : Janet Jelet / 1371 North Milwaukee Ave, Chicago
2012
MovieDocumentary
A series of psychic readings of spaces, commissioned by the artist in an attempt at connecting with the past of domestic or exhibition spaces, despite the limitations of rational discourse. The video is not edited, respecting the actual duration of the performance.
Faktories und FelderFaktories und Felder · 2012
Faktories und Felder
2012
MovieDocumentary
A speculative biography of Joseph Otmar Hefter, a Jewish territorialist active in the 1930's and who disappeared from public attention soon after. What begins as an investigation of Hefter's elusive life between the eastern marches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, New York, and Mexico, soons turns into questioning the biography genre - the stuff a life is made of, and the ways to make sense of it.
Ciao GhatoulCiao Ghatoul · 2008
Ciao Ghatoul
2008
MovieDrama
Tel Aviv, 2007. A man is so annoyed by a cat's on-going meows, that he decides to abduct the cat and deport it to the West Bank. He thus embarks on a long and complicated journey with the sole purpose of ridding himself of this unpleasant neighbour.
Cavale au CanadaCavale au Canada · 2014
Cavale au Canada
2014
MovieDocumentary
Montreal, 2013. Dina Mendes, artist and the daughter French criminal superstar Jacques Mesrine had from an affair in 1970, returns to Montreal and looks for her father's traces. She embarks on this search with both personal quest and artistic project in mind. The film shifts from fiction conventions to cinema-vérité, particularly in Percé, where the project reaches its momentum. In the end, Dina Mendes ends up achieving neither the personal quest nor a meaningful artistic project, caught between over-exposed facts and an impossible identification. Nonetheless, what this odd film - in which you will never see or hear Mesrine once - does achieve is to provide a Québec perspective onto a history that is so central to French popular culture.

More Like This

Workers Leaving the Lumière FactoryWorkers Leaving the Lumière Factory · 1895
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
★ 6.71895
MovieHistoryDocumentary
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter