La Clef Revival launched its “Films à crédit” series on Friday, November 20, 2026, with a dual analysis of montage and finance through the figures of “kings of debt.”
The series’ first episode examined filmmaker David Wark Griffith and artist Eva Barto, using their works to explore the relationship between cinema and financial systems.
The series presents two distinct interpretations of the “king of debt.” In A Corner in Wheat (1909), directed by David W. Griffith, the figure is portrayed as an excessively immoral and conservative speculator.
The film, adapted from Frank Norris’s novel The Pit and inspired by the 1909 “corner” on the wheat market, uses Griffith’s discursive editing techniques to depict the social consequences of financial speculation. The “King of Wheat,” a wealthy landowner, speculates on wheat prices for personal enrichment, causing prices to rise and making it impossible for farmers to afford their grain.
In contrast, Eva Barto’s The Making of the Lure (2026) presents a carnivalesque “king of debt” in the form of a debt-ridden Pinocchio. The film, described as a “Broadway mode” political satire, follows the production of this mock film. Barto and her team, with a “Lehman Brothers cap” on her head, prank micro-credit organizations and pawn lenders, exposing undisclosed practices through hidden camera footage.
The Making of the Lure exposes the great fiction on which our economic system rests – that of an emancipatory loan system – or how money can disappear and reappear from the hands of the owners, before the astonished eyes of those who do not own it, as in the numbers of a magician, paid to entertain us,
the source states.
The event introduces a form of “guerilla cinema” that attacks the cynicism of capital through irony. The screening took place at La Clef Revival, located at 34, rue Daubenton in Paris. All screenings are free, with an optional annual membership of 5 to 15€ based on personal means. The café/bar opens an hour before the screening, and the box office opens one hour prior without reservation.
