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Political cinema, in the narrow sense, refers to cinema products that portray events or social conditions, either current or historical, through a partisan perspective, with the intent of informing or agitating the spectator.[ citation needed ]
Political cinema exists in different forms, such as documentaries, short films, feature films, experimental films, and even animated cartoons.[ citation needed ]
In the narrow sense of the term, political cinema refers to films that do not hide their political stance. In this sense, they differ from other films not because they are political, but because of the way in which their politics is presented. As such, a film does not necessarily have to be pure propaganda to be considered 'political cinema'.[ citation needed ]
The broader meaning of 'political cinema' is argued to be that "all films are political;" [1] [2] [3] [4] even films that are ostensibly 'apolitical' and escapist, merely promising 'entertainment' as an escape from everyday life, can be understood as fulfilling a political function. The authorities in Nazi Germany, for instance, knew this very well and organized a large production of deliberately escapist films.[ citation needed ] In other 'entertainment' films, such as westerns, the ideological bias is evident in the distortion of historical reality. A "classical" western would rarely portray black cowboys, although there were a great many of them in the American frontier. Hollywood cinema, which can be understood as the dominant industry of cinema, was often accused of misrepresenting black, female, gay, and working-class people.[ citation needed ] More fundamentally, not only are the contents of individual films political, but the institution of cinema itself can also be taken as political as well. A huge number of people congregate, not to act together or to talk to each other, but to sit silently, after having paid for it, to be spectators separated from each other. Guy Debord, a critic of the 'society of the spectacle', for whom "separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle," was therefore also violently opposed to cinema, even though he would make several films portraying his ideas.[ citation needed ]
In order to differentiate between the narrow and broad notions of 'political cinema', film scholar Ewa Mazierska suggested to divide all such films into the categories of conformist or oppositional and marked or unmarked: [5]
From this point of view, it is the oppositional and marked political films that the most viewers regard as 'political', as discussions about politics in film typically single out these two categories. [5]
Before World War I French cinema had a big share of the world market. Hollywood used the collapse of the French production to establish its hegemony. Ever since it has dominated world film production not only economically but has transformed cinema into a means to disseminate American values.[ citation needed ]
In Germany the Universum Film AG, better known as UFA, was founded to counter the perceived dominance of American propaganda. During the Weimar Republic many films about Frederick II of Prussia had a conservative nationalistic agenda, as Siegfried Kracauer and other film critics noted.[ citation needed ]
Communists like Willi Münzenberg saw the Russian cinema as a model of political cinema. Soviet films by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov and others combined a partisan view of the bolshevist regime with artistic innovation which also appealed to western audiences.[ citation needed ]
This section may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints.(March 2021) |
Leni Riefenstahl has never been able or willing to face her responsibility as a chief propagandist for National-Socialism, i.e., Nazism. Almost unlimited resources and her undeniable talent led to results, which, despite their hideous aims, still fascinate some aficionados of film. While there is much controversy around her work, it is generally accepted that Riefenstahl's main commitment was to filmmaking, rather than to the Nazi Party. Proof of this might be seen by the portrayal of Jesse Owens' victory in her film about the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Olympia (1938), and in her later work, mostly on her photographic expeditions to Africa.[ citation needed ]
The same is certainly not true of the violent anti-Semitic films of Fritz Hippler. Other Nazi political films made propaganda for so-called euthanasia.[ citation needed ]
Especially in the last decades of the 20th century, many filmmakers considered focusing on remembrance of and reflection upon major collective crimes such as the Holocaust, slavery and disasters such as the Chernobyl disaster to be their political and moral duty.[ citation needed ]
Political cinema of the 21st century seems to focus on controversial topics such as globalization, AIDS, and other health-care concerns, issues pertaining to the environment, such as world energy resources and consumption and climate change, and other complex matters pertaining to discrimination, capitalism, terrorism, war, peace, religious and related forms of intolerance, and civil and political rights, as well as other human rights.[ citation needed ]
The form has always been an important concern for political filmmakers. While some, like pioneering Lionel Rogosin, argued that radical films, in order to liberate the imagination of the spectator, have to break not only with the content but also with the form of Dominant cinema, the falsely reassuring clichés and stereotypes of conventional narrative film making, other directors such as Francesco Rosi, Costa Gavras, Ken Loach, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee or Lina Wertmüller preferred to work within mainstream cinema to reach a wider audience.[ citation needed ]
The subversive tradition dates back at least to the French avant-garde of the 1920s. Even in his more conventional films Luis Buñuel stuck to the spirit of outright revolt of L'Âge d'or. The bourgeoisie had to be expropriated and all its values destroyed, the surrealists believed. This spirit of revolt is also present in all films of Jean Vigo.[ citation needed ]
Title | Year | Director(s) | Country | Type of film | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | D. W. Griffith | United States | Feature | [6] [7] |
Stachka (Strike) | 1925 | Sergei Eisenstein | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin) | 1925 | Sergei Eisenstein | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Padenie dinastii Romanovykh (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty) | 1927 | Esfir Shub | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) | 1929 | Dziga Vertov | Soviet Union | Documentary | |
Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform) | 1931 | Leontine Sagan | Weimar Republic | Feature | |
Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (To Whom Does the World Belong?) | 1932 | Slatan Dudow | Weimar Republic | Feature | |
Misère au Borinage (Penury in the Borinage) | 1934 | Joris Ivens and Henri Storck | Belgium | Short documentary | [8] |
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) | 1935 | Leni Reifenstahl | Nazi Germany | Propaganda | [9] |
Der ewige Jude. Ein Filmbeitrag zum Weltjudentum (The Eternal Jew) | 1940 | Fritz Hippler | Nazi Germany | Propaganda | [10] |
Strange Victory | 1948 | Leo Hurwitz | East Germany | Documentary | [11] |
Salt of the Earth | 1954 | Herbert Biberman | United States | Feature | [12] |
Ernst Thälmann – Sohn seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Son of his Class) | 1954 | East Germany | Kurt Maetzig | Feature | [13] |
Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Leader of his Class) | 1955 | East Germany | Kurt Maetzig | Feature | [14] |
On the Bowery | 1956 | Lionel Rogosin | United States | Docufiction | [15] |
The Cool World | 1964 | Shirley Clarke | United States | Feature | [16] |
Obyknovennyy fashizm (Ordinary Fascism) | 1965 | Mikhail Romm | Soviet Union | Documentary | |
La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo | Italy Algeria | Feature | |
Terra em Transe (Entranced Earth) | 1967 | Glauber Rocha | Brazil | Feature | [17] |
La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se fair (The Chinese, or, rather, in the Chinese manner: a film in the making) | 1967 | Jean-Luc Godard | France | Feature | |
Titicut Follies | 1967 | Frederick Wiseman | United States | Documentary | [18] |
La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) | 1968 | Fernando Solanas | Argentina | Feature | |
In the Year of the Pig | 1968 | Emile de Antonio | United States | Documentary | [19] |
Teorema (Theorem) | 1968 | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Italy | Feature | [20] |
if.... | 1968 | Lindsay Anderson | United Kingdom | Feature | |
Z | 1969 | Costa-Gavras | Algeria/France | Feature | |
Yawar Mallku (Blood of the Condor) | 1969 | Jorge Sanjinés | Bolivia | Feature | |
Burn! (Queimada) | 1969 | Gillo Pontecorvo | Italy/France | Feature | |
Salesman | 1969 | Albert and David Maysles Charlotte Zwerin | United States | Documentary | [21] |
Le Chagrin et la Pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity) | 1970 | Marcel Ophüls | France West Germany Switzerland | Documentary | [22] |
Ghoroub wa Shorouq (Sunset and Sunrise) | 1970 | Kamal El Sheikh | Egypt | Feature | [23] |
Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? (Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?) | 1970 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | Feature | [24] |
Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives) | 1971 | Rosa von Praunheim | Germany | Documentary | [25] |
Wanda | 1971 | Barbara Loden | United States | Feature | |
La classe operaia va in paradiso (The Working Class Goes to Heaven) | 1971 | Elio Petri | Italy | Feature | |
Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair) | 1972 | Francesco Rosi | Italy | Feature | |
Sambizanga | 1972 | Sarah Maldoror | Democratic Republic of the Congo | Feature | [26] |
La Société du Spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) | 1974 | Guy Debord | France | Documentary | |
Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) | 1974 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | Feature | |
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels) | 1975 | Chantal Akerman | Belgium France | Feature | [27] [28] |
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom) | 1975 | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Italy France | Feature | |
All the President's Men | 1976 | Alan J. Pakula | United States | Feature | |
Harlan County, USA | 1976 | Barbara Kopple | United States | Documentary | |
Yarınsız Adam (The Man Without Tomorrow) | 1977 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Satılmış Adam (The Sold Man) | 1977 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Yıkılmayan Adam (The Indestructible Man) | 1978 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Baara (Work) | 1978 | Souleymane Cissé | Mali | Feature | |
Reds | 1981 | Warren Beatty | United States | Feature | |
The Wave | 1981 | Alex Grasshoff | United States | Feature | [29] |
Yol (The Road) | 1982 | Şerif Gören Yılmaz Güney | Turkey | Feature | |
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community | 1984 | Greta Schiller | United States | Documentary | |
Nineteen Eighty-Four [30] | 1984 | Michael Radford | United Kingdom | Feature | |
Shoah | 1985 | Claude Lanzmann | France | Documentary | |
Camp de Thiaroye (The Camp of Thiaroye) | 1988 | Ousmane Sembene Thierno Faty Sow | Senegal | Feature | |
American Dream | 1990 | Barbara Kopple | United States United Kingdom | Documentary | |
JFK | 1991 | Oliver Stone | United States | Feature | |
In the Name of the Father | 1993 | Jim Sheridan | United States | Feature | [31] |
Land and Freedom | 1995 | Ken Loach | United Kingdom Spain Germany Italy France | Feature | |
Lumumba | 2000 | Raoul Peck | France Germany Belgium Haiti | Feature | [32] |
Intimacy | 2001 | Patrice Chéreau | France United Kingdom Germany Italy | Feature | [33] |
Jang Aur Aman (War and Peace) | 2002 | Anand Patwardhan | India | Documentary | [34] |
Gujarat: A Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra, Fascism[ undue weight? ] | 2003 | Suma Josson | India | Documentary | |
Fahrenheit 9/11 | 2004 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
Memoria del saqueo (Social Genocide) | 2004 | Fernando Solanas | Argentina | Documentary | [35] |
Darwin's Nightmare | 2004 | Hubert Sauper | Austria France Belgium | Documentary | [36] |
500 Years Later | 2005 | Owen Alik Shahadah | United Kingdom United States | Documentary | [37] |
Syriana | 2005 | Stephen Gaghan | United States | Feature | |
The Road to Guantánamo | 2006 | Michael Winterbottom Mat Whitecross | United Kingdom | Docudrama | |
The Last Communist | 2006 | Amir Muhammad | Malaysia | Documentary | [38] |
The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez | 2006 | Heidi Specogna | Switzerland | Documentary | |
An Inconvenient Truth | 2006 | Davis Guggenheim | United States | Documentary | |
Persepolis | 2007 | Marjane Satrapi Vincent Paronnaud | France Iran | Feature | [39] |
Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide[ undue weight? ] | 2006 | Louie Lawless | Canada | Documentary | [40] |
Sicko | 2007 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
What Would Jesus Buy | 2007 | Morgan Spurlock | United States | Documentary | |
The World Without US | 2008 | Mitch Anderson and Jason J. Tomaric | United States | Documentary | [41] [42] [43] |
Religulous | 2008 | Larry Charles | United States | Documentary | |
Milk | 2008 | Gus Van Sant | United States | Feature | |
Capitalism: A Love Story | 2009 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein [ undue weight? ] | 2009 | Nicolas Rossier David Ridgen | United States | Documentary | |
The Yes Men Fix the World [ undue weight? ] | 2009 | Andy Bichlbaum Mike Bonanno Kurt Engfehr | United States | Documentary | |
Motherland | 2010 | Owen Alik Shahadah | United States | Documentary | [44] |
The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 | 2011 | Göran Olsson | Sweden | Documentary | |
The Ides of March | 2011 | George Clooney | United States | Feature | |
ToryBoy The Movie [ undue weight? ] | 2011 | John Walsh | United Kingdom | Documentary | |
2016: Obama's America [ undue weight? ] | 2012 | Dinesh D'Souza | United States | Documentary | |
No | 2012 | Pablo Larraín | Chile France United States | Feature | [45] |
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology | 2012 | Sophie Fiennes | United Kingdom | Documentary | [46] |
America: Imagine the World Without Her [ undue weight? ] | 2014 | Dinesh D'Souza John Sullivan | United States | Documentary | |
Spotlight [47] | 2015 | Tom McCarthy | United States | Feature | |
Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party [ undue weight? ] | 2017 | Dinesh D'Souza Bruce Schooley | United States | Documentary | |
The Death of Stalin | 2017 | Armando Iannucci | United Kingdom France Belgium | Feature | |
Death of a Nation [ undue weight? ] | 2018 | Dinesh D'Souza Bruce Schooley | United States | Documentary | |
Fahrenheit 11/9 | 2018 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
Vice | 2018 | Adam McKay | United States | Feature | |
Friend of the World | 2020 | Brian Patrick Butler | United States | Feature | [48] |
The Hunt | 2020 | Craig Zobel | United States | Feature | |
Infidel | 2020 | Cyrus Nowrasteh | United States | Feature | |
Trump Card [ undue weight? ] | 2020 | Dinesh D'Souza Debbie D'Souza Bruce Schooley | United States | Documentary | |
Absolute Proof | 2021 | Brannon Howse Mike Lindell | United States | Documentary | |
Don't Look Up | 2021 | Adam McKay | United States | Feature | |
2000 Mules [ undue weight? ] | 2022 | Dinesh D'Souza | United States | Documentary | |
Hemet, or the Landlady Don't Drink Tea | 2023 | Tony Olmos | United States | Feature | [49] |
A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage in repeated viewings, dialogue-quoting, and audience participation. Inclusive definitions allow for major studio productions, especially box-office bombs, while exclusive definitions focus more on obscure, transgressive films shunned by the mainstream. The difficulty in defining the term and subjectivity of what qualifies as a cult film mirror classificatory disputes about art. The term cult film itself was first used in the 1970s to describe the culture that surrounded underground films and midnight movies, though cult was in common use in film analysis for decades prior to that.
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".
Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was a German director, producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer and actress known for producing Nazi propaganda.
Triumph of the Will is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts of speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Its overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power with Hitler as its leader. The film was produced after the Night of the Long Knives, and many formerly prominent SA members are absent.
Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films produced by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. It was originally written for American soldiers to help them understand why the United States was involved in the war, but US President Franklin Roosevelt ordered distribution for public viewing.
The Great Dictator is a 1940 American anti-war political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the only Hollywood filmmaker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, Chaplin made this his first true sound film.
Z is a 1969 political thriller film directed by Costa-Gavras, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jorge Semprún, adapted from the 1967 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of the democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. With its dark view of Greek politics and its downbeat ending, the film captures the director's outrage about the junta that then ruled Greece. The title refers to a popular Greek protest slogan meaning "he lives," in reference to Lambrakis.
The Nuremberg rallies were a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party in Germany. The first Nazi Nuremberg rally took place in 1923. This rally was not particularly large and did not have much impact; however, as the party grew in size, the rallies became more elaborate and featured larger crowds. They played a seminal role in Nazi propaganda events, conveying a unified and strong Germany under Nazi control. The rallies became a national event once Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, when they became annual occurrences. Once the Nazi dictatorship was firmly established, the party's propagandists began filming them for a national and international audience. Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl produced some of her best known work including Triumph of the Will (1934) and The Victory of Faith (1933), both filmed at the Nazi party rally grounds near Nuremberg. The party's 1938 Nuremberg rally celebrated the Anschluss that occurred earlier that year. The 1939 scheduled rally never came to pass and the Nazi regime never held another one as both the government and Nazi Party prioritized Germany's effort in the Second World War over everything else.
Man of Aran is a 1934 Irish fictional documentary (ethnofiction) film shot, written and directed by Robert J. Flaherty about life on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. It portrays characters living in premodern conditions, documenting their daily routines such as fishing off high cliffs, farming potatoes where there is little soil, and hunting for huge basking sharks to get liver oil for lamps. Some situations are fabricated, such as one scene in which the shark fishermen are almost lost at sea in a sudden gale. Additionally, the family members shown are not actually related, having been chosen from among the islanders for their photogenic qualities.
Arnold Fanck was a German film director and pioneer of the mountain film genre. He is best known for the extraordinary alpine footage he captured in such films as The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931), and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933). Fanck was also instrumental in launching the careers of several filmmakers during the Weimar years in Germany, including Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, and cinematographers Sepp Allgeier, Richard Angst, Hans Schneeberger, and Walter Riml.
The Eternal Jew is a 1940 antisemitic Nazi propaganda film, presented as a documentary. The film's initial German title was Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. The film was directed by Fritz Hippler at the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.
Cinema of Africa covers both the history and present of the making or screening of films on the African continent, and also refers to the persons involved in this form of audiovisual culture. It dates back to the early 20th century, when film reels were the primary cinematic technology in use. During the colonial era, African life was shown only by the work of white, colonial, Western filmmakers, who depicted Africans in a negative fashion, as exotic "others". As there are more than 50 countries with audiovisual traditions, there is no one single 'African cinema'. Both historically and culturally, there are major regional differences between North African and sub-Saharan cinemas, and between the cinemas of different countries.
Der Sieg des Glaubens is the first Nazi propaganda film directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Her film recounts the Fifth Party Rally of the Nazi Party, which occurred in Nuremberg, Germany, from 30 August to 3 September 1933. The film is of great historic interest because it shows Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm on close and intimate terms, before Hitler had Röhm killed during the Night of the Long Knives on 1 July 1934. As he then sought to remove Röhm from German history, Hitler ordered all known copies of the film be destroyed, and it was considered lost until a surviving copy was found in the 1980s in East Germany.
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a 1993 German documentary film about the life of German film director Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller.
Impressionen unter Wasser is a documentary film released in 2002. It was directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
Tiefland ("Lowlands") is a 1954 West German opera drama film directed, produced, co-written, edited by and starring Leni Riefenstahl, and based on the 1903 eponymous opera composed by Eugen d'Albert to a libretto by Rudolph Lothar based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà. The film co-stars Bernhard Minetti, and is Riefenstahl's last feature film as both director and lead actress.
Cinema of Algeria refers to the film industry based in the north African country of Algeria.
Cinema of the Democratic Republic of the Congo originated with educational and propaganda films during the colonial era of the Belgian Congo. Development of a local film industry after the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence from Belgium in 1960, and was handicapped by constant civil war.
The War for Men's Minds is a 21-minute 1943 Canadian documentary film, made by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as part of the wartime The World in Action series. The film was produced by Stuart Legg. The film describes the impact of propaganda from the Axis powers in 1943, during the Second World War. The French version title is À la conquête de l'esprit humain.
Griffith's highly controversial film, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, is widely considered to be a masterpiece due to its impact on the development of cinema. The basic structure consists of a description of an idealized lost idyll ("the Old South"), the disruption of this order during reconstruction post-Civil War, and the restoration of white supremacy, which is shown a legitimate goal that unites the former enemies. In the end, the leader of the KKK secures his private happiness too and the alleged idyll is restored.[ citation needed ]
Terra em Transe (Land in Anguish, aka Entranced Earth) is also one of the most sophisticated political films ever made.
[This 2008 documentary film is described as] 'a quick overview of the state of the world today, and a quick history lesson in how things have been going for the last 20 years or so, followed by a few things that seem very likely to occur if America decided to pull all of its military bases out of foreign countries and stop mucking about in foreign parts.'