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P O L I T I C A L C I N E M A

Quote:

Jean-Luc Godard

It is not a matter ofmaking political films, but rather making films politically"

Thematic Chapters:

1) Definition and Origin of Political Cinema2) Important movements and filmmakers3) Objectives of Political Cinema4) Political cinema in the 00s

Definition and Origin of Political Cinema

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Political cinema that possesses attributes and objectives similar and/oridentical to what the genre is consider to hold today, emerged in Russia in theearly 20th century, with films such as The Birth of a Nation(1915) and

Battleship Potemkin(1925). Such films acted aspure propaganda, withagendas promoting hate and racism against blacks to pro-communismbrainwashing.

The next era of political motion pictures flourished in post-World War IGermany, when UFA, the nations dominant production company, fell infinancial turmoil and was subsequently purchased by future Hitler supporterAlfred Hugenberg. The body was then solely devoted to promoting Germannationalism.

One, if not the most, politically charged and also ground breaking and

influential period for the genre came to be the French New Wave or ascommonly known Nouvelle Vague. The filmmakers of the era were driven by aneed to tackle socio-political issues of their day, to experiment with themedium and to agitate the audience by posing questions that were notnecessarily answered at the end of the film; their goal was to merge objective,subjective and authorial storytelling to create an ambiguous narrative thatcalled for the viewer to make up their own mind. It can as such be consideredas the first fully-fledged movement of political cinema whos intention was notto guide but to liberate.

Political cinema can therefore be defined a form of the motion picturewhos purpose is to deliberately provoke an intellectual reaction, toeither impose or prompt the audience to form a certain way of thinking.It can subsequently simply inform, propagandize or liberate.

Important movements and filmmakers

One of the most well known and evolutionary film movements associated withpolitical cinema in the French New Wave or Nouvelle Vague. Frenchdirectors inspired by the drained resources of their country, their rejection ofthe cinema of quality and the iconoclast youthful lifestyle they were living inParis, they created innovative, vibrant and ground-breaking motion pictures

with the intention of breaching the rules of classic cinema storytelling andempower the directors to mark their own works, to make them highly personal

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and to elevate film to the status of classic forms of art, such as painting andliterature, where the artist would have the freedom to express their truethoughts, regardless of how abstract they were.

Prominent filmmakers of the movement include Jean-Luc Godard, Francois

Truffaut and Louis Malle. It is difficult for audiences today to grasp howground-breaking the movement was, as they have been conditioned toaccept a wider range of cinematic techniques, cinematography, writing anddirecting. At the time, mainstream cinema had very strict, rigid rules regardingits mechanics; linear narratives, a resolution that was usually a happy one,shots and edits that flowed effortlessly. The so called Nouvelle Vaguehowever was revolutionary in the sense that it pushed cinema to the oppositedirection, confusing and stimulating the audience to think and see in differentways. The directors managed that with long shots, shooting on location andusing available light, socio-political commentary, breaking of the 4th wall withactors speaking directly to the camera (something anarchistic at the time) and

ambiguous endings.