Event

What is Democracy?

Thu Mar 21: 7.00pm
Sat Mar 23: 4.00pm, 7.00pm
Sun Mar 24: 4.00pm, 7.00pm

Astra Taylor
Canada
2018
1h 47m

About
** Director Astra Taylor in person for Q&As at the Mar. 23 & 24 7pm screenings! Co-presented with Town Hall Seattle; Town Hall members receive the NWFF member discount on tickets to this program. The Q&As will be moderated by Edward Wolcher, Curator of Lectures at Town Hall **

Coming at a moment of profound political and social crisis, What Is Democracy? reflects on a word we too often take for granted. Director Astra Taylors idiosyncratic, philosophical journey spans millennia and continents: from ancient Athens groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalisms roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its racist past and the growing gap between rich and poor.

Featuring a diverse cast including celebrated theorists, trauma surgeons, activists, factory workers, asylum seekers, and former prime ministersthis urgent film connects the past and the present, the emotional and the intellectual, the personal and the political, in order to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in democracy, we must first ask what the word even means. From the director of Zizek! and Examined Life.

Astra Taylors What Is Democracy? offers the art of thoughtful conversation as an antidote to the fraught political hysteria of the public sphere. Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Hammer to Nail