Karl Marx Imagined, and The Young Karl Marx screening

Karl Marx has had huge influence on world history, but who was the man behind the famous bearded image? Where did his inspiration and his relentless intellectual energy come from? Clive Coleman and Richard Bean, writers of West End hit Young Marx, film maker and writer Jason Barker and the team behind Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx get to grips with this enigmatic figure.

Jason Barker is author of the new bicentennial novel Marx Returns. He is writer-director of the 2011 German documentary Marx Reloaded, and editor of the Karl Marx bicentennial forum at the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches Marxism and literature at Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea.  

Richard Bean, co-writer of Young Marx is among our most acclaimed playwrights. In 2011 Richard became the first writer to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for two plays, The Heretic and One Man, Two Guvnors. For the latter he also received the Critics' Circle Award for Best Play and Whatsonstage.com Award for Best New Comedy and the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play.

Clive Coleman is a writer, broadcaster and also the BBC’s Legal Correspondent, a role he arrived at via a career as a barrister and Principal Lecturer in Law. As well as co-writing Young Marx his writing credits include Spitting Image, and legal sitcom Chambers.

Followed at 16.00 by a rare UK screening of The Young Karl Marx (2016, 1 hr 58 mins)

The Young Karl Marx is released in UK Cinemas on 4 May. An ICA CINEMA distribution project.

Image: Raoul Peck and Karl Marx