[EFF17S5] Session 5: Two Marxists in Hollywood: Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff
Cite as:
Temple, Michael and Barrington, Matthew
(2023):
[EFF17S5] Session 5: Two Marxists in Hollywood: Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff.
Birkbeck College, University of London.
Description
27 March 2017, 13:30, Birkbeck Cinema
Films: Two Marxists in Hollywood, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 26 minutes, English
A Model Family in a Model Home, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 22 minutes, English
A Glass House, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 21 minutes, English
In these three recent films, A Model Family in a Model Home, Two Marxists in Hollywood, and A Glass House, Zoe Beloff returns to and resurrects the greatest exponents of dialogue between radical politics and radical aesthetics: Bertolt Brecht and Sergei Eisenstein.
The pair come together in Two Marxists in Hollywood, which tells the very different stories of their paradoxical, and ultimately unsuccessful, aspirations to collaborate with the Hollywood film industry. But, as Beloff, points out, if their utopian projects ended in failure, “what if they did not [fail], what if their ideas were merely lying in wait for us?” As she interweaves the two men’s histories, anecdotes of their Hollywood experiences, with their theoretical principles, Beloff also interweaves visually and cinematically different levels of time. The film is shot in its Hollywood “now” of 2015, emphasised by the presence of DJ Rapture in the soundtrack, but the “interviews” with the two characters are played out against Beloff’s exquisitely painted backdrops of Hollywood “then”, also juxtaposing theatricality with the actuality of the locations. These distanciation-effects are accentuated by the casting of Brecht and Eisenstein as twelve-year-old boys.
In Two Marxists in Hollywood, both Eisenstein and Brecht mention projects that were inspired by their time in the USA: Brecht describes “A Model Family in a Model Home”; Eisenstein describes “A Glass House”. Beloff’s film reconstructions of these “failed” projects will also be screened as part of this special event. Both projects revolved around very different mediations of the politics of architecture, but, through Beloff’s films, they have found a dialectical relation to each other.
As part of this event, Zoe Beloff was in conversation with Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck, and Esther Leslie, Birkbeck.
Films: Two Marxists in Hollywood, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 26 minutes, English
A Model Family in a Model Home, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 22 minutes, English
A Glass House, Zoe Beloff, USA, 2015, digital, 21 minutes, English
In these three recent films, A Model Family in a Model Home, Two Marxists in Hollywood, and A Glass House, Zoe Beloff returns to and resurrects the greatest exponents of dialogue between radical politics and radical aesthetics: Bertolt Brecht and Sergei Eisenstein.
The pair come together in Two Marxists in Hollywood, which tells the very different stories of their paradoxical, and ultimately unsuccessful, aspirations to collaborate with the Hollywood film industry. But, as Beloff, points out, if their utopian projects ended in failure, “what if they did not [fail], what if their ideas were merely lying in wait for us?” As she interweaves the two men’s histories, anecdotes of their Hollywood experiences, with their theoretical principles, Beloff also interweaves visually and cinematically different levels of time. The film is shot in its Hollywood “now” of 2015, emphasised by the presence of DJ Rapture in the soundtrack, but the “interviews” with the two characters are played out against Beloff’s exquisitely painted backdrops of Hollywood “then”, also juxtaposing theatricality with the actuality of the locations. These distanciation-effects are accentuated by the casting of Brecht and Eisenstein as twelve-year-old boys.
In Two Marxists in Hollywood, both Eisenstein and Brecht mention projects that were inspired by their time in the USA: Brecht describes “A Model Family in a Model Home”; Eisenstein describes “A Glass House”. Beloff’s film reconstructions of these “failed” projects will also be screened as part of this special event. Both projects revolved around very different mediations of the politics of architecture, but, through Beloff’s films, they have found a dialectical relation to each other.
As part of this event, Zoe Beloff was in conversation with Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck, and Esther Leslie, Birkbeck.
Previews
1 - EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 1 (EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 1.MP3)
2 - EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 2 (EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 2.MP3)
3 - EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 3 (EFF17S5 Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff Part 3.MP3)
Collection Method
The Essay Film Festival ran between 2015 and 2023, and presented a global range of contemporary and restored essayistic works. The events are now archived here for research purposes.
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Metadata
| Dataset Title: | [EFF17S5] Session 5: Two Marxists in Hollywood: Illustrated talk by Zoe Beloff |
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| Creators: | Temple, Michael and Barrington, Matthew |
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| Dataset Contributors: |
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| Subjects: | |||||||||||||
| Data collection method: | The Essay Film Festival ran between 2015 and 2023, and presented a global range of contemporary and restored essayistic works. The events are now archived here for research purposes. |
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| Collection period: |
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| Statement on legal, ethical, and access issues: | All film stills were provided by participating artists. |
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| Depositing User: | Emma Yapp | ||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 11 Aug 2026 14:33 | ||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 11 Aug 2026 14:33 | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | Birkbeck College, University of London |
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