{"id":2452903,"date":"2020-01-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=318621"},"modified":"2020-01-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T07:00:00","slug":"aspen-film-academy-screenings-alex-gibneys-citizen-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-film-academy-screenings-alex-gibneys-citizen-k\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Film Academy Screenings: Alex Gibney\u2019s \u2018Citizen K\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The documentary “Citizen K” will screen Tuesday at Aspen Film’s Academy Screenings.<\/strong>
AP Photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an indisputably immoral man on an undeniably moral mission.<\/p>\n

The former Russian oligarch\u2019s many contradictions, from his days bilking millions of citizens in the days after the Berlin Wall fell to his run as the richest man in Russia to his 10 years in a Siberian prison and his current status as an exiled Putin foe and champion of democracy, are the subject of Alex Gibney\u2019s new documentary \u201cCitizen K.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In it, Khodorkovsky serves as a viewer\u2019s guide to post-Soviet gangster capitalism and its inner workings.<\/p>\n

The film screens Tuesday at Aspen Film\u2019s Academy Screenings series at the Wheeler Opera House.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo hear Vladmir Putin tell it, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a villain in a real-life gangster movie,\u201d Gibney narrates early in the film. \u201cBut to Putin\u2019s opponents, Khodorkovsky\u2019s 10 years in a Siberian prison made him a hero for the cause of human rights and democracy. Now out of prison, Khodorkovsky is looking for a third act.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Oscar-winning Gibney, since his 2005 breakout doc \u201cEnron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,\u201d has become a great American profiler of larger-than-life characters. He has tackled Hunter S. Thompson (\u201cGonzo\u201d) and Lance Armstrong (\u201cThe Armstrong Lie\u201d) and James Brown (\u201cMr. Dynamite\u201d) and Scientology (\u201cGoing Clear\u201d).<\/p>\n

Khodorkovsky is an ideal match for Gibney as a storyteller, whose films also often seek to challenge entrenched power and expose economic exploitation.<\/p>\n

Moving at a breakneck clip and infusing unexpected humor, \u201cCitizen K\u201d explains how the early 1990s Russia of economic freedom and Boris Yeltsin evolved into today\u2019s faux-democracy of Vladmir Putin.<\/p>\n

Khodorkovsky\u2019s status as the exploitative oil tycoon turned activist was irresistible for Gibney.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat drew my interest at a time when we all seem haunted by Russia\u2019s role in the world,\u201d Gibney says in the movie. \u201cSo I started a film about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the chaos after the end of the USSR, the young Khodorkovsky studied capitalism by reading a simple book about banks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Hey, I like this!\u2019\u201d he recalls in the film. \u201c\u2019OK, how can I create a bank?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He did so through a scheme that bought banking vouchers from unwitting Russians who didn\u2019t understand what these pieces of paper were, and using that capital to buy the nation\u2019s media and oil assets in the 1990s. He would become one of seven oligarchs controlling 50% of Russia\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

With few enforceable laws reining in oligarchs and with Russia quickly becoming the murder capital of Europe in the \u201990s, Khodorkovsky notes that Russia squeezed America\u2019s decades-long Wild West period into a furious seven years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Russia, laws are an iffy question,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But when Putin came to power, and Khodorkovsky criticized him, he found himself accused of murder, arrested and imprisoned with his assets seized and a decade in prison. The experience changed him, he says in the film.<\/p>\n

He emerges from prison to found Open Russia, using some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that has leftover to fund anti-Putin activism and to sow seeds for a freer post-Putin Russa.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizen K\u201d was one of two major documentaries the ever-prolific Gibney made in 2019. \u201cThe Inventor,\u201d his news-making expos\u00e9 on Silicon Valley fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, debuted on HBO in March. Neither is among the 15 films short-listed for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though both are helping inform the national conversation.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The documentary “Citizen K” will screen Tuesday at Aspen Film’s Academy Screenings.AP Photo Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an indisputably immoral man on an undeniably moral mission. The former Russian oligarch\u2019s many contradictions, from his days bilking millions of citizens in the days after the Berlin Wall fell to his run as the richest man in Russia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 22:23:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}