Whether you like him or loathe him, no one can deny that Donald Trump has been a cause of major controversy among United States citizens. When he first stepped into office, there was a huge boost in sales of George Orwell’s novel 1984 which saw the book jump to the No. 1 spot on Amazon’s bestseller chart.
As The Independent reports, The film adaptation of the book, starring John Hurt, will be shown in over 200 cinemas across the US, the UK, Canada, Croatia and Sweden as part of an anti-Trump protest. The mass screenings will be shown today, April 4, and was organised by Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre in New York, and Adam Birnbaum, director of film programming at the Avon Theatre Film Centre in Connecticut.
Skolnick told Al Jazeera: “In particular, this undermining of the concept of facts and the demonisation of foreign enemies [by the Trump administration] really resonate in 1984. No one is suggesting that we’re living in Orwell’s world. But the road to that world is people just becoming disengaged and allowing their government to do whatever it wants.”
Critics of Trump’s administration have compared the rise of buzz words such as ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ to ideas like Double Speak found in Orwell’s iconic book. Trump’s fight against the media is also seen by some as comparable to the way Big Brother censors the media in 1984.
Many of the cinemas participating in the protest will be donating a portion of the proceeds to civil rights and community organisations.
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