UCLA Library
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 published by Drawn & Quarterly, 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. Nathan Gelgud will appear in person for book signings at the Billy Wilder Theater before screenings throughout this series. The series kicks off on November 21st with Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film La Chinoise: A major influence on Nathan Gelgud’s book Reel Politik, Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise follows a group of students who form a Maoist revolutionary group over their summer vacation. No lazy bunch, they start each day with calisthenics and slogans before a crowded schedule of Maoist lectures and discussions they lead themselves. Like the theater workers in Reel Politik, they learn revolution as they go. Boldly designed and obliquely stated, the film itself doubles as a catalog of its own political and aesthetic influences, with a regular stream of propaganda posters, comic books, news photos, book covers and slogans filling the frame like a cinematic syllabus for radical home schooling.—Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 96 min. Director/Screenwriter: Jean-Luc Godard. With: Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto.

For questions, contact May Haduong at mhaduong@cinema.ucla.edu.

Sponsor(s): UCLA Powell Library