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Marxism makes monumental Manchester mark
JOHN GREEN recommends a unique documentary on the timely return of Friedrich Engels to the city
BEFORE AND AFTER: Engels statue in Ukraine (inset) and its arrival in Manchester

IN 2017, Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Phil Collins displayed a statue of Friedrich Engels he’d brought from Ukraine to Manchester in a ceremony at the close of the city’s international festival.

Manchester is the city where Engels spent 20 years of his life and wrote his classic work The Condition of the Working Class in England, but which had no monument in the city centre to commemorate that fact.  

Collins shot the whole project and his hour-long film Ceremony: the Return of Friedrich Engels not only documents the transportation of the statue but intercuts it with scenes from working-class life in present-day Manchester.

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