After spending a number of episodes in the past, today we're jumping to the 2010's. We're looking at two documentaries from Joshua Oppenheimer; The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). These docs reveal two different aspects of the chilling aftermath of Indonesia’s 1965-66 anticommunist massacres, one looking at the perpetrators and one looking at the legacy of the victims.

We also draw on Vincent Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World for our discussion on how the Washington-backed violence helped install a regime where the perpetrators not only won but shaped the official history ever since. Through state-sponsored propaganda, like Treachery of G30S/PKI (1984), and the active erasure of victims’ stories from cultural memory, the truth went largely unaddressed within broader Indonesian society for decades.

What makes these films deeply unsettling isn’t just the brutality (although that is unsettling), but also the lessons they carry for the present. The rhetoric of the need to annihilate political opposition, once used to justify state terror in Indonesia, echoes in today’s right-wing American discourse, where the constant invocation of civil war and the erasure of history are frighteningly familiar.

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After examining Robert Kramer’s Ice (1970) fictionalize America in our last episode, we shift to West Germany to explore another cinematic portrayal of resistance to fascism in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Third Generation (1979). Set against West Germany’s postwar society, Fassbinder sharply exposes how insincere revolutionary acts can become hollow gestures, exploited to justify expanded state control and surveillance.

Though rooted in 1979, the film eerily anticipates our contemporary world: a society numbed by constant surveillance, manipulated by capitalist tech moguls profiting from manufactured crises, and how citizens are caught in a struggle against the technocratic elites. Additionally, Fassbinder’s overwhelming audio landscape mimics the relentless noise of the modern internet, capturing the exhaustion and confusion of today’s digital age.

Drawing connections to our episodes that covered Uptight (1968), Children of Men (2006), and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), we ask: what does resistance look like when liberal democracy itself seems to pave the road to authoritarianism? Fassbinder’s vision resonates with our current dark historical moment, where our capacity to imagine alternatives is shrinking, and the internet serves as both a battlefield and a drain on the soul. 

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On this episode we wanted to see a depiciton of people resisting fascim, so we're looking at an Robert Kramer's Ice (1970). It's our first American film in this series and the resistance we're seeing comes from a cell of New York Urban guerillas. They are fighting a dystopian version of the Nixon administration and its illegal war of imperialism in Mexico.

Kramer's film is less a straightforward dystopia thriller than a raw document of the fractured leftist movements trying to organize within the belly of U.S. empire in the late 1960's. Kramer's handheld, on-location shooting style and use of non-actors offers a time capsule not just of American radicalism in 1970, but of filmmaking that rejects Hollywood polish for a Cassavetes style immediacy.

Ice is uniquely embedded in the struggles it portrays; Kramer and his peers were activists themselves, not just chroniclers. The result is a film that forgoes easy allegory or procedural clarity and instead immerses viewers in the skepticism, paranoia, and possibility of revolutionary change at a time when history felt radically contingent.

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On this episode, we're leaving the 1960's behind and jumping to South Korea in 1980. In Jang Hoon's A Taxi Driver (2017) we get a wild sampling of genres in a remarkably well balanced film. It's an action film. A single father supporting his daughter story. It’s dramatic and also quite goofy. It’s based on a actual events, but it’s also highly fictionalized. It documents political history while being oddly apolitical at times. And it's a journalism film too. 

International treasure Song Kang-ho stars as a Seoul cabbie who's transporting a German journalist to cover what is rumored to be a student protest. They both become unlikely witnesses and participants in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and the massacre at the hands of governemnt forces. 

If you're up for a marathon of South Korean films, here is the five film lineup Aaron mentions that covers the politics and events from 1979-1981:

• The Man Standing Next (2020)
• The President’s Last Bang (2005)
• 12.12: The Day (2023)
• A Taxi Driver (2017)
• The Attorney (2013)

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On this episode, we're staying in the late sixties for one more film as we watch Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969). A haunting portrayal of the French Resistance during the early days of World War II that serves as an existential reflection on what it really takes to fight an occupying force.

Melville's muted color palette and precise framing underscore the suffocating atmosphere of occupied France, while also highlighting the moral complexity faced by those fighting fascism. The film presents a sobering look at the personal costs of opposing tyranny and forces the viewer to confront the often futile nature of resistance in the face of overwhelming oppression. 

The film was dismissed as Gaullist propaganda (which is fair) when it was first released in 1969, but received a much warmer welcome when it was restored and rereleased in 2006. It hits even harder in 2025 America.

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On this episode, we're staying in the late sixties as we watch Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969). Following our exploration rising authoritarianism in Costa-Gavras' Z (1969) and reactionary Brazilian politics in Glauber Rocha's Entranced Earth (1967), we're heading right into the Nazi den that is the von Essenbeck family in late 1930's Germany.

A scathing critique of the German industrial elite's seduction by (and complicity in) the rise of Nazism, Visconti shows how a wealthy family's greed and moral corruption lead them to embrace fascism in order to maintain their social and economic status. 

Watching the family's willful, strategic cruelty, we see how the wealthy can easily transition from aristocratic privilege to supporting authoritarian rule. It's quite an illustration of how capitalism and fascism intertwine. If it's been a while since you've seen it, The Damned will resonate deeply with a revisit.  

On a lighter note, by watching some Visconti, Aaron finally understands how Isaac feels about Godard.

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On this episode, we're heading to Brazil and discussing Glauber Rocha's Entranced Earth (1967), a pivotal work of the Cinema Novo movement. Following our exploration of Costa-Gavras' Z (1969), we're delving into the turbulent world of Brazilian filmmaking in the wake of the 1964 military coup.

Entranced Earth isn't just a film; it's a cinematic rebellion against political corruption and authoritarianism. Rocha's work, along with the broader Cinema Novo movement, redefined Brazilian cinema with its raw, politically charged narratives and innovative film techniques.

We discuss how Rocha and the other Cinema Novo filmmakers, inspired by Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, crafted a uniquely Brazilian cinematic language to confront social inequalities and spark critical discourse. Join us as we examine Rocha's "Aesthetic of Hunger" manifesto and discuss how Entranced Earth continues to resonate in our ongoing struggle against rising fascism and authoritarianism in the US and worldwide.

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Given the results of the US elections, we thought it would be a good idea to look at a great work of art to help with context and see how filmmakers can play a role in confronting state repression. It's a film we should have discussed at some point over the last four years: Costa-Gavras's political thriller Z (1969). 

To state the obvious, this depiction of government conspiracies, assassination attempts, rising authoritarianism, the deep state, and a sprawling cover-up feels quite prescient. However, unlike your favorite YouTube channel, we discuss what the deep state actually is and how the true definition of corporatism is used in this film (and in real life).

Our discussion wouldn't be complete without Yves Montand's magnetic performance in this film and in the recording booth. Montand's illustrious career was at its peak as both actor and singer when he starred in this certified masterpiece of leftist cinema. Bella Ciao!

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For the last three years we've observed the month long celebration know as Noirvember, and this year is no exception. In 2021 we recorded an episode called Film Noir & Capitalism. For 2022 we went over to Japan and did two episodes looking at Yakuza Noir via Tokyo Drifter (1966) and A Colt is My Passport (1967). Last year we focused in on Neo-Noir with and episode on Killing them Softly (2012) and the roll of the 2008 economic crisis on modern American crime. 

This year, we're returning to the well of Film Noir & Capitalism by discussing Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil (1948). Written and directed by an eventual victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, this film perfectly encapulate Polonky's own statement that "all films about crime are about capitalism, because capitalism is about crime". 

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October has arrived and as we are wont to do here at The Politics of Cinema, we are diving into an approiate theme within the horror genre to celebrate. In the past we've looked at; Fascism in Green Room (2015), Humans Hunting Humans, Art House Horror, and the career of George Romero. This year we are heading into the thick of the woods to explore Folk Horror. 

We discuss a few classics of the genre, such as Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), and Ganja & Hess (1973). We also connect the themes in those early films to those explored in modern folk horror like The Witch (2015), It Follows (2014), Hereditary (2018), and Midsommar (2019)—before Isaac reins us in so we don't include every single horror film in this genre.

Our main focus is also on one classic and one modern example: Penda's Fen (1974) and La Llorona (2019). These two striking examples of folk horror delve into the complexities of identity, history, and the landscapes that shape us. In Penda's Fen, we find a pagan anarchist manifesto within a coming-of-age story set in rural 1970s England. With La Llorona, we see how the ghosts of the past exact revenge on the Guatemalan General who orchestrated an Indigenous genocide. Both films yield surprisingly upbeat results within their narratives—at least to us.

If folk horror piques your interest, we would also highly recommend watching Keir-La Janisse's documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021).

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