[Marxism] (fwd) re: Left Wing Films

[Les Schaffer]

[fwd from Ethan Young. Ethan, this came as html-only]



I can't resist... here are my posts to this thread on Mike Ely's list:

I’d like to call attention to some features that are often overlooked:

El Otro Francisco: a double dramatization, it begins as a film version 
of Cuba’s classic anti-slavery romantic novel Francisco [their 'Uncle 
Tom's Cabin'] in which an educated, cultured house slave is thrown in 
with the ‘brutal,’ illiterate field slaves. In the film, the narrative 
shifts in the middle to proclaim that the real story was in the fields, 
the real protagonists the field slaves, and the real drama in the slave 
revolt that ends the movie. Not socialist realism, but both socialist 
and realist.

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC30folder/OtherFrancisco.html


The Killing Floor: The first feature by Bill Duke, an actor who has 
gotten much work over the years–you’d recognize his face if not his 
name. His historical dramas have explicit progressive-to-revolutionary 
themes: A Rage in Harlem, Hoodlum, and especially Deacons for Defense 
with Forrest Whittaker, the antidote to Mississippi Burning [which was 
the most racist film since Birth of a Nation]. But The Killing Floor 
[made for PBS] holds a special place: the story of an African American 
meatcutter in Chicago who becomes a union organizer in 1919- the year of 
a tidal wave of industrial organizing and, simultaneously, the racial 
bloodbath that left the imprint of white supremacism on the city’s 
working class to this day.

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Floor-Alfre-Woodard/dp/B000ED12D2


American Revolution 2

An amazing documentary about Chicago in 1968: from the Democratic 
Convention cop riot, to the reaction of residents of a south side 
ghetto, to amazing footage of Black Panther Bobby Lee organizing poor 
Appalachian whites on the north side against police brutality. Actually 
a greater testimony to the leadership of Fred Hampton than the fine doc 
The Murder of Fred Hampton, made a year later.

http://mike-gray.org/multimedia/american.htm


Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt?: A short film about Weimar Germany 
in crisis. One Marxist scene, directed by Brecht, can be seen on 
youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGz8hu9QKnM&feature=related. 
Passengers on a train argue about the price of coffee, and red youth 
intervene.


a few film masters who identified with the communist movement:

Jean Renoir
Bernardo Bertolucci
Luis Bunuel
Jules Dassin
Joris Ivens
Claude Chabrol
Gillo Pontecorvo
Eloy de la Iglesia
Francesco Rosi
Joseph Losey
Pier Paulo Pasolini


***



Robert Henlein’s Starship Troopers, another goose-stepping sci-fi 
agitprop novel, was turned into the most bitter [and hilarious] satire 
of US militarism [and, less overtly, imperialism] since Strangelove, in 
Paul Verhoeven’s popular feature.

Verhoeven’s films are usually brutal satires of American culture 
disguised as exploitation flicks [which allows them to reach broader 
audiences who may or may not get the irony, but it brings in the bucks...]

Total Recall and Showgirls. See them sometime when you feel like 
shooting your tv.