SYNOPSIS

Hannah Arendt caused a great uproar in the 1960s by coining the subversive concept of \"banality of evil\" when referring to the Nazi evil. Her private life was no less controversial thanks to her love affair with a renowned German philosopher and Nazi supporter Martin Heidegger. She was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century who both lived through and wrote about the open wounds of modern times.

PROGRAM NOTE

Vita Activa: The Spirit fo Hannah Arendt is an
 intellectual documentary that revolves around
 Hannah ARENDT\'s interpretation of the former Nazi
 EICHMANN\'s criminal acts as \'the banality of evil\' and
 amalgamates ARENDT\'s life events, the interviews
 she has had during her life, and her political theories
 into a 123-minute long film. The film largely consists
 of three main \'voices\' – the letter correspondences
 she had with individuals like Karl JASPERS and Martin
 HEIDEGGER, the interviews with Judith BUTLER and
 others, and ARENDT\'s philosophy engrained in her
 books, from Eichmann in Jerusalem to The Origins of
 Totalitarianism as well as the quotations cited from her
 writing.
 Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt places the
 spirit of ARENDT onto a conceptual triangle. 1) Banality
 of evil: According to ARENDT, EICHMANN had a mind
 that was full of clichés and superficiality despite that
 he is a so called intellectual, lacks depth of thought,
 and therefore was a person who simply obeyed
 and followed the orders of the system without any
 critical thinking. Perhaps evils such as war crimes are
 committed by people who are the most ordinary and
 therefore all the more obedient to the law, which they
 uphold above anything else. Therefore, evil is banal. 2)
 Critical thinking: A human must think, and to think is to
 assume that one has a critical attitude. A human without
 such critical thinking is no longer a human and has
 the potential to become a machine of the totalitarian
 system. 3) An individual\'s pluralism: A concept that
 arose from her firsthand experiences of two world wars
 as a Jewish refugee. A community where individuals
 can all come together in harmony without having to
 associate themselves in Jewish nationalism, socialism,
 anti-Semitism–that is what Arendt defines as a worldloving
 community. [KIM Sunah]