Political cinema

Political cinema in the narrow sense of the term is a cinema which portrays current or historical events or social conditions in a partisan way in order to inform or to agitate the spectator. Political cinema exists in different forms such as documentaries, feature films, or even animated and experimental films.

The notion of political cinema

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.

Even ostensibly "apolitical" escapist films, which promise "mere entertainment" as an escape from everyday life, however, fulfill 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, for example 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. Hollywood Cinema or more generally speaking so called Dominant Cinema, was often accused of misrepresenting black, women, gays and working-class people.

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, even though he would make several movies portraying his ideas.

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. There is much controversy around her work, but it is generally accepted that Riefenstahl's main commitment was to moviemaking, rather than to the Nazi party. Proof of that might be seen by the portrayal of Jesse Owens' victory on the movie Olympia (about the Olympic games in Germany) and in her later work, mostly on her photographic expeditions to Africa.

The same is certainly not true of the violently antisemite films of Fritz Hippler. Other Nazi political films made propaganda for so-called euthanasia.

Forms of political cinema

Form has always been an important concern for political film makers. 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.

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.

Remembrance and reflection

Especially in the last decades of the twentieth century, many film makers 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.

Globalization and related world issues

Political cinema of the twenty-first 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 terrorism, war, peace, religious and related forms of intolerance, and civil and political rights and other human rights.

Selected filmography

The following is a listing of notable political films or political films made by notable directors:

See also

• Political films category
• Political Film Society
• African cinema
• Documentary film
• List of racism-related films
• Anti-globalization Filmography
• List of films dealing with Anarchism
• Social criticism
• Women's cinema

Notes

References

• Baldwin, James. The Devil Finds Work. 1976. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks (A Division of Dell Publishing), 2000. ISBN 0-385-33460-5.
• Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. ISBN 0-19-507898-5 (10). ISBN 978-0-19-507898-5 (13). (A useful introduction.)
• Barsam, Richard M. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. ISBN 0-393-97436-7 (10). ISBN 978-0-393-97436-2 (13). (Book and CD-ROM eds.)
• Unterburger, Amy L., ed. The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the Other Side of the Camera. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57859-092-2 (10). ISBN 978-1-57859-092-6 (13).
• Rosenbaum, Jonathan: Movies as Politics, University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 0-520-20615-0
• Vogel, Amos. Film as a Subversive Art. London: CT Editions; [New York]: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2006. ISBN 1-933045-27-2.
• Tom Zaniello: Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Expanded Guide to Films about Labor (ILR Press books), Cornell University Press, revised and expanded edition 2003, ISBN 0-8014-4009-2

External links

• Documentary Is Never Neutral
• Cinema Politica