Has the daily onslaught of revelations about Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. election got you thinking about what life might be like under a totalitarian government? You might want to check out the new documentary, Karl Marx City, which has its mid-Hudson premiere this Friday at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. Filmmakers (and Hudson Valley residents) Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker and their daughter Matilda Tucker, who narrates the film, will be on hand for a discussion following the screening at 8:15 p.m. on April 7.
Epperlein, who grew up in East Germany in the years before the Berlin Wall fell, began to suspect that her father had spied for the Stasi secret police when she found out that he had committed suicide after destroying all his papers. Movie camera in hand, she went back to her hometown of Chemnitz (a/k/a Karl Marx Stadt) to try to find out the truth. NPR called Karl Marx City “as much an inquiry into the mechanics of how autocratic regimes work as it is a search for the truth about one citizen’s tragic end in its clutches.”
For more info about the screening and discussion, call (845) 876-2515 or visit http://upstatefilms.org. Tickets cost $10 general admission, $6 for Upstate members. Upstate Films is located at 6415 Montgomery Street (Route 9) in Rhinebeck.
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