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.
Political cinema exists in different forms, such as documentaries, short films, feature films, experimental films, and even animated cartoons.
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'.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
See main article: Third Cinema.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The following is a listing of notable political films or political films made by notable directors:
| 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] | --Still needs a specific page reference.--> |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | ||
| 2009 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |||
| 2009 | Nicolas Rossier David Ridgen | United States | Documentary | |||
| The Yes Men Fix the World | 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 | 2011 | John Walsh | United Kingdom | Documentary | ||
| 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] | |
| 2014 | Dinesh D'Souza John Sullivan | United States | Documentary | |||
| Spotlight[47] | 2015 | Tom McCarthy | United States | Feature | ||
| 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 | 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 | 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 | 2022 | Dinesh D'Souza | United States | Documentary | ||
| Hemet, or the Landlady Don't Drink Tea | 2023 | Tony Olmos | United States | Feature | [49] |
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.