As team Trump gears up to welcome the Chinese president at the end of the week — and as it’s forced to deal with a profound piece of anti-government vandalism burned into a Donald Trump property — nearly 200 theaters around the world simultaneously screened the film version of Orwell’s 1984 on Tuesday.
“This is really designed to get people to be talking and discussing and active in the political conversation that is happening in America right now – and throughout the world, it turns out,” Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre on Long Island, told Al Jazeera.
Looking for a creative way to express opposition to the Trump administration, he, along with Adam Birnbaum of the Avon Theatre Film Centre in Connecticut, came up with the idea after the election.
Dubbed “National Screening Day,” over 190 theaters participated. Most were in the U.S., but movie houses in Canada, the U.K., Sweden, and Croatia are also took part.
Skolnick says he could think of no better film than the cinematic version of the classic dystopian masterpiece for the project. Bringing to mind Trump’s “fake news” obsession and his penchant for blustery diplomatic commentary, Skolnick told Al Jazeera:
“In particular, this undermining of the concept of facts and the demonization of foreign enemies really resonate in 1984.”
Echoing a warning found throughout much of alternative media, Skolnick suggests that when it comes to potential dystopian scenarios, the time to sit up and take notice of what’s happening around us is now.
“No one is suggesting that we’re living in Orwell’s world,” he said. “But the road to that world is people just becoming disengaged and allowing their government to do whatever it wants.”
This post originally appeared at Anti-Media.
