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THE NOTION OF POLITICAL CINEMA There is, it was argued, no apolitical cinema. Even ostentatively 'apolitical' escapist films which promise 'mere entertainment', an escape from every day life fulfil a political function. The authorities in Nazi Germany knew this very well and organized a large production of deliberately escapist movies. In other entertainment movies, e.g. Western s the ideological bias is evident in the distortion of historical reality. A 'classical' western e.g. would never portray any black cowboys although there where a great many of them. Mario Van Peebles corrected this false account in 1993 with ''Posse''. Hollywood Cinema or more generally speaking so called Dominant Cinema was often accused of seriously misrepresenting black, women, gays and working class people. For a very long time very few women, blacks, openly gay or lesbian people etc. where hardly given any chance to counter these Representation s. Political Cinema in the narrow sense of the term refers to political films which do not hide their political stance. This does not mean that they are necessarily pure Propaganda . The difference to other films is not that they are political but how they show it. More fundamentally not only the content of individual films is political but also the Institution of cinema itself. A huge number of people congregate not to act together or to talk to each other but, after having paid for it, to sit silently, to be spectators separated from each other. (Of course the behaviour of the public is not always the same in all countries.) 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. CINEMA, WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH 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. In Germany the Universum Film AG , better known as UFA, was founded to counter the perceived dominance of western 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. 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. FILM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM Leni Riefenstahl has never been able or willing to face her responsibility as a chief propagandist for National Socialism. Almost unlimited resources and her undeniable talent led to results which despite their hideous aims still fascinate some film aficionados. The same is certainly not true of the violently antisemite films of Fritz Hippler. Other Nazi political films made propaganda for socalled Euthanasia . THE POLITICAL FUNCTION OF DOMINANT CINEMA The most important political function of the cinema in virtually all countries has not been to question dominant ideolgies but to reinforce them. A classical example is Griffith's The Birth Of A Nation which was made at at time when Racism was extremly strong in the United States. FORMS OF POLITICAL CINEMA Form has always been an important concern for political film makers. While some 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 Gravas , Ken Loach , Oliver Stone , Spike Lee or Lina Wertmüller preferred to work within mainstream cinema to reach a wider audience. 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 spririt of outright Revolt of L’age 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 . AGAINST HOLLYWOOD Classical documentary started by supporting the bolshevist regime or promoting a statist agenda in a rather paternalistic way ( John Grierson ). Both were opposed to 'bourgeois' feature film making. Direct Cinema was a form of documentary film with a more liberal agenda. Using new techniques of sound recording, talking ''with'' ordinary people (as oppposed to talking about them) became a central concern. Techniques of direct cinema were also used in early Feminist cinema. In the 1960s emerged Third World Cinema or Third Cinema and other forms of radical cinema which were not only concerned with immediate obervation ( like direct cinema) but rather with political and historical analysis and calls to action. As Amos Vogel and other have pointed out, the Subversion of dominant ideologies can even happen by formal means without an explicit political content. REMEMBERING Especially in the last decades of the twentieth century many film makers saw remembrance and reflection upon major collective crimes (like the Holocaust ) and disasters (like the Chernobyl Disaster ) as their political and moral duty. CURRENT TOPICS Since a few years a renewed interest in openly adressing current problems is apparent, especially in the context of the controversial discussions about Globalization . FILMS (SELECTION)
D. W. Griffith's extremly racist Film, which glorifies the Ku Klux Clan is still considered to be a master piece by some. The basic structure consists of a desciption of an imaginary lost Idyll ("the old south"), the disruption of this order during Reconstruction after the civil war and the restoration of White Supremacy which is shown a legitimate goal which unites the former enemies. In the end the leader of the Ku Klux Clan can secures his private happiness too. The alleged idyll is restored. Detailed Informations: http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Director: Dziga Vertov
Militant film abour the misery of belgian coal miners See also:''Les Enfants du borinage - Lettre à Henri Storck'', Director : Patric Jean, 2000
"He creates the image of an America that is complacent in its victory, prosperity and racism; the narrator warns: 'Nigger, kike, wop, take my advice and accept the facts – the world is already arranged for you'." Richard M. Barsam
Regie: Herbert J. Biberman Legendary documentary feature film about a Strike in Mexico . Not only have the workers to fight aginst the company, but also their women against their macho attitude in order to be 'allowed' to support them fully.
Director: Kurt Maetzig, socialist realism - German Democratic Republic style
Director: Lionel Rogosin An important film about Alcoholism , here homeless people in New York City.
Director: Frederick Wiseman - In his first film Wiseman shows the inhumane conditions im Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts . For more then 20 years the film could not been shown in the USA.
Four men try to sell the bible, one of the most important films of Direct Cinema
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder - The humiliating madness of ordinary life
Director: Rosa von Praunheim - This film started the second gay movement in Germany
„FILMMAKER Barbara Orton's emotional documentary follows Scottish activist Cathy McCormack's journey into the impoverished townships of post-apartheid South Africa. Along the way she draws interesting parallels between the conditions in the devastated regions of South Africa and her own experiences with poverty in the centralised ghetto of Easterhouse, one of Scotland's most deprived estates.” Freya
Israel, Director : Eli Hamo, Sami Halom Chetrit
Originally conceived as a documentary about the history of Death Squadron s in Brazil , the film of anthropologist Kiko Goifman concentrates on a recent massacre, police officers committed in 2005. Goifman interviews also a killer, who sees himself on a mission to keep order.
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