Reel Politik Paperback by Nathan Gelgud

Product Details

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (2025-11-04)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 172 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781770468153
• Item Weight: 232.47 grams
• Dimensions: 17.75 x 12.24 x 1.22 cm

An absurdist comic strip satire of cinephilia in the attention economy


A specter is haunting the cinema. A contrarian crew of small town theatre employees trade quips about directors, film criticism, and contemporary moviegoing, but underneath their banter and clashes with customers, an ideology begins to take shape. With the help of a dissatisfied cinephile and some witchy magic, the employees radicalize, take over the theatre, and seize the means of projection.

What starts out as a workplace comedy simmers and then explodes into an absurdist Marxist-Leninist cinema-focused tract. The Reel Politik revolutionaries demand that we ditch the small screens in our pockets for the big ones in the theater as they take on streaming services, phone addiction, algorithms, phony democracy, and the conventions of moviegoing etiquette. Does that mean they hijack the Criterion Closet van? You bet it does.

Cartoonist Nathan Gelgud both champions and lampoons the aspirations and failures of cinema and not a single sacred cinematic cow goes un-punched in this manifesto for revolution through film.

About the Author

Nathan Gelgud has been a projectionist, a video store clerk, and a movie critic. In 2012, he came in second place for the AltWeekly Award in Arts Criticism. He pretty much quit film criticism right after that. He makes comics about the arts for the New York Times and Hyperallergic when they let him. He used to live in New York, now he lives in Los Angeles. He is also the author of Reel Politik.