The Anarchist Banker

Based on Fernando Pessoa’s 1922 novel, Jan Peter Hammer’s video reinterprets the story in a contemporary key, revisiting the characters and readapting the dialogs. After the financial crash of 2008, journalist Dave Hill interviews a noted financier, the director of a bank which was forced to ask for a government bailout to avoid bankruptcy. “Visionary or Shark?” Hall asks, upon introducing his guest, whose name is the translation of Artur Alves dos Reis (the financier who inspired Pessoa), perpetrator of a scam that bankrupted the Portuguese government, which contributed to the fall of the First Republic and ushered the dictatorship into office. Against the fictitious backdrop of the TV talk show “Interview Hour”, the interview’s apparently colloquial tone shiftts into a subtle, complex contest of logic and psychology, which, through the attempt to define the banker’s identity and character, sees different world-views incarnated by the protagonists (played by the actors John Quincy Long and Tomas Spencer). Through personal anecdotes and accounts of his private life, Ashenking confronts the contradiction of his chosen profession and his avowed anarchist ideals, clearly arguing his own personal vision.