I Love Dollars (1986)

Director:

Johan van der Keuken

Awards:

1 win

Country:

Netherlands

Surely one of the great documentaries of the 1980s

In 1984-85, the Dutch documentarist Johan van der Keuken took his camera across the globe, from Amsterdam to New York to Hong Kong, ending in Geneva. The object of his investigation in this film is money, in particular the maniacal drive to accumulate it in the era of Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberalism. As well as a succession of bankers, traders and executives (including the odiously self-congratulatory British chairman of the Hong Kong Jockey Club), van der Keuken also interviews the victims of economic dispossession, such as the residents of dilapidated dwellings in New York, or illegal Portuguese immigrants in Switzerland (who, ironically, have a son who dreams about the promised land of New York). Flashes of the Third World (which the financiers admit is of no interest to them) appear on flickering TV monitors, indicating its remoteness from the centres of capitalist power, as embodied in the sanitised streets of Geneva.

Van der Keuken's orientation is clearly that of a sceptical leftist, but his own interventions are kept to a minimum. There is almost no narration, just a few occasional remarks. In the Vertovian documentary tradition, he lets the camera explore its environment, with an attention to aesthetic detail (crowds reflected in polished corporate exteriors; digital displays on the stock market; beggars and children moving along urban pavements; Chinese New Year decorations) that sets this apart from more conventional reportage. In its epic sweep, it is vaguely reminiscent of the more acclaimed 'Sans soleil' (1982) by Chris Marker. Less 'poetic', less impressionistic than Marker's film, 'I Love $' is nevertheless, in my opinion, perhaps the greater achievement.