Film and Politics

With its use of contemporary events, location shots, and a plot that mixes comedy, tragedy, and passion play, Roberto Rossellini's 1945 film Rome, Open City founded the movement known as " Italian Neo-Realism. " The film vividly presents the Christian teaching on the relation between religion and politics. Rossellini asserts that a Christian Europe can be reconstructed only on a foundation of charity rather than hate, vengeance, or even justified punishment for Nazi crimes. It is not on the basis of tales of resistance that Italians and Europeans can be reborn, Rossellini argues, but on the basis of the Christian command to " love your enemies. " European rebirth means the installation of a moral order that makes parenthood feasible and respectable. By reflecting on Rossellini's masterpiece, I examine the triumph and the tragedy of the Christian Democratic Europe that Rome, Open City foretold and helped to found.

In his two-volume study of the cinema, Deleuze presents a unique understanding of film as a space of thinking productive of its own cinematic thoughts and ideas, which it thinks through the compositions of images and signs it produces. This question of what new kinds of thinking the cinema might develop underwrites Deleuze's theory of the postwar transition from the sensori-motor thought of the 'movement-image' towards an intensive 'thought without image' generated by the crystalline 'time-image'. Great directors, for Deleuze, are those who invent new intense connections of preindividual singularities and ideas in thought that disrupt the habits and clichés of ordinary perception and action, forcing us to think and feel differently. It is precisely in terms of the production of a new style of cinematic thinking, I argue, that we can frame encounters with the films of Japanese director Ozu Yasujirō, and specifically his contribution to the emergence of what we might term, following Deleuze, a cinema of contemplation rather than action. Whilst a number of scholars have recognised a certain 'contemplative' aesthetic in Ozu's films (Bordwell, 1988; Schrader, 1988), this article turns to Deleuze's discussion in Difference and Repetition to understand contemplation not as a subjective form of transcendence, but rather as an immanent event of individuation. I focus in particular on Ozu's cinematic thinking of contemplation generates new and transformative ways of thinking and perceiving the city, uncoupling urban spaces and bodies from the requirements of sensori-motor action such that they become expressive sites of indeterminate signs and unexpected intensities of affect. By dramatizing these immanent transitions and thresholds of affective and spatial becomings, I argue that Ozu's films direct us toward new possible openings of thought to a politics of the virtual.

The incident of 9/11 happened; US government came up with a new set of policies which were directed against Al-Qaeda and Taliban primarily and against Muslim world secondarily. History repeated itself and Hollywood was again standing side by side with American Government producing the bulk of movies against Al-Qaeda and the Muslim world in the awe of war against terror. 9/11 attacks completely changed the attribute of Hollywood industry and the demands of the movie goers. Audience never remark contrary to their heroes, but now they are anxious and conscious of various material as conscripted of Iron Man, Thor and The Fantastic Four were made in that context. This research paper revolves around the various trends which are seen as the reversal of the comic books, the audience and the movie makers regarding a momentous influence of films after 9/11 from anti-Communism to anti-Islam. People in the United States are always flag friendly but the 9/11 never left any mistake for this regard and created different mindset, the firefighters, police and other rescue workers in the movies are more concerned towards the handling and fighting against the disasters rather to move from.

This study examines images of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in American movies. The question is whether political factors affect cinematic representation of these ethnically, politically, culturally, religiously, linguistically, and economically different post-Soviet countries. A related question is how the portrayal of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in Hollywood films affects Americans’ perceptions of these countries. This paper analyzes more than 100 movies and TV films from the Internet Movie Database and conducts a content analysis of principal motion pictures, such as Air Force One (1997), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), GoldenEye (1995), Everything is Illuminated (2004), The Peacemaker (1997), The Saint (1997), The Sum of All Fears (2002), and Lord of War (2004), to identify main Kazakh, Russian, and Ukrainian-related themes and heroes. Analysis of the movies shows that they often overlook significant political, ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences among these countries. Their comparison with academic studies shows that most of the movies, incorrectly present Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine as economically and technologically backward, extremely anti-American and anti-Semitic countries, which have pervasive “Russian mafia” and widespread female prostitution. In spite of such incorrectness, most of these movies are regarded as politically correct by American filmmakers, movie-goers, and film critics. This study attributes the politically correct incorrectness in Hollywood portrayals of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine to such factors as US internal politics, which confines political and cultural sensitivity to racial and religious minorities, relatively small and politically non-influential Kazakh, Russian, and Ukrainian communities in the United States, and the fact that these countries are not regarded as major US allies. In conclusion, the study discusses a negative effect that distorted portrayals of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in Hollywood movies, which are one of principal sources of information about these countries for Americans, have on their perceptions of the post-Soviet states.

It is self-evident that popular culture, specifically visual news and entertainment media,
greatly influence our perception of ourselves and others. If we are of a certain age, Hillary Clinton’s age for example, the images of racist “Deplorables” that probably occurs to us comes from newsreels seen in our youth: angry mobs of white people shouting at surrounded AfricanAmerican young people being escorted into a local high school or college building by armed troops, white police officers attacking young black people with clubs, dogs, and fire hoses, a parade of white robe and hooded men and women marching through the streets of a State capital shouting “Segregation today…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever!” And I would  suggest the history of race relations in this country has conditioned Americans to associate, not without reason, racism and xenophobia with the South, particularly in its small towns surrounded by fetid swamps, dense forests or endless fields.

In the history of Italian cinema, the Fifties should be considered the longest decade of the so-called short century. Indeed, in a way it is a decade which begins already in 1948, and goes on straight up to the beginning of the Sixties.
Nella storia del cinema italiano, gli anni Cinquanta si impongono come il decennio più lungo del secolo breve. Cominciano, infatti, già nel 1948 e si prolungano compatti fino alle soglie del 1960.
Dans l'histoire du cinéma italien, les années Cinquante s'imposent comme la décennie la plus longue du siècle bref. Elles commencent, en effet, dès 1948, et se prolongent jusqu'au seuil des années Soixante.

Towards the end of the decade long Iran–Iraq war, Saddam Hussein launched a deadly attack against the Kurds, known as the Anfal Campaign, killing more than a hundred thousand. One of the largest acts of genocide occurred on 18 March 1988 in the Kurdish city of Halabja. On that day, sweet-smelling poison gas was poured over the city, killing at least five thousand. Since 2001 Kurdish moviemakers have memorialized the tragedy of the Halabja massacre by producing cinematic dramas and narrative documentaries. These films are part of a discourse of authenticity and a politics of culture that permeate the Kurdish independence movement. This essay proposes that Halabja films can be divided into three stages: the era of consolidation, 2000 to 2009; the golden era, 2009 to early 2014; and the fall which followed the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Each era reveals new attitudes towards politics, society, and the massacre.

In the heat of political conflict and screech of a guitar solo, the Sixties echo down the years. The ‘Age of Aquarius’ may be no more, but its legacy still resonates across US politics and popular culture. This book provides a detailed and engaging account of how Hollywood cinema has represented and ‘remembered’ the Sixties. From late 1970s hippie musicals such as Hair and The Rose through to recent civil rights portrayals The Help and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Oliver Gruner explores the ways in which films have engaged with broader debates on America’s recent past. Drawing on extensive archival research, he traces production history and script development, showing how a group of politically engaged filmmakers sought to offer resonant contributions to public memory. Situating Hollywood within a wider series of debates taking place in the US public sphere, Screening the Sixties offers a rigorous and innovative study of cinema’s engagement with this most contested of epochs.

As a category which seeks to represent the totality of global film productions, World Cinema is here discussed by focusing on its use both in the theoretical and in the practical fields, so as to offer a critical understanding of this concept. For this purpose, firstly I focus on some of the most meaningful definitions of World Cinema within film studies; secondly, I attempt an understanding of this category through its commercial usage in order to underline its touristic vocation and how it is meant to attract a geographically situated audience. In conclusion, I suggest how this peculiar approach might inflect the approach to otherness and to diversity and where this should be investigated.

"The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society . . . America must be born again!"
— Martin Luther King Jr. 1967
"Dear (American) liberals,
You're Idiots!
Love, Lars."
In a nutshell, that is the message of Manderlay, controversial Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's latest effort. Yet Manderlay is a complicated film that will produce multiple interpretations. Some will walk away calling it racist and anti-American. Others will find it a condemnation of Bush's war in Iraq. Yet, as I say, it is mostly a critique of American liberal politics. A condemnation of conservative racial politics is its point of departure. The film's complicated style and extreme plot produce intentional uneasiness.

Derzeit formiert sich ein neuer Zyklus von Genrefilmen über den Zweiten Weltkrieg. Diese Hollywood- und britischen Produktionen lösen den Zyklus humanitär und minoritär orientierter World War II-Kriegsfilme der Jahrtausendwende rund um "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) ab. Das gilt es hier zu erläutern; ebenso die Geschichtspolitik der neuen Filme, also ihre Erschließung der Vergangenheit aus einer politisch konturierten Gegenwartsperspektive. Letztere ist immer auch eine Perspektive auf diese Gegenwart, vom Spielfilmbild des Zweiten Weltkriegs aus gesehen. Die neuen Filme (aus den Jahren 2014-2017) prägt ein politischer Nihilismus, der teilweise von Rechts überwunden (verschärft?) wird, mit kaum mehr als einer Ausnahme. – Konkret geht es um die Geschichtspolitik der Filme "The Imitation Game", "Monuments Men", "Fury", "The Exception", "Hacksaw Ridge", "Allied" und "Dunkirk".