Marx for Beginners
Very Short Films (under 10 minutes!)
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6m 25s
Directed by Bob Godfrey • Animation • 1978 • 6 minutes
How many people have actually read the work of Karl Marx? Based on the book by the Mexican cartoonist Rius, MARX FOR BEGINNERS is a hilarious animated film that highlights Marx's most influential ideas, and places them into the context of western civilization by introducing Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, and Descartes. All in seven minutes!
High school and college audiences will find the film an amusing introduction and discussion starter on Marx's work, while non-academic audiences of all ages will be entertained by the lively and irreverent treatment of one of the world's most important thinkers.
'This stylistically animated condensation of rambunctious and irreverent quotation and paraphrasing of important historical thinkers [is] stimulating and amusing... An engaging treat!' —Booklist
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