In Defense of Artistic Freedom
A conversation with organizers of the Toronto film festival protest
The issues around the spotlight on Tel Aviv
By David Walsh, November 21, 2009
At the recent Toronto film festival, a number of film and video artists protested the event’s spotlight on Tel Aviv, accusing the festival of colluding with Israel’s “re-branding” effort. Davi...
An evaluation of Roman Polanski as an artist—Part 1
By David Walsh, November 18, 2009
Filmmaker Roman Polanski remains in a Zurich jail cell, while his lawyers fight the efforts by US authorities to extradite him. The director has a half-century-long artistic career that needs to be as...
The sordid coalition pursuing filmmaker Roman Polanski
By David Walsh, October 8, 2009
The effort to vilify film director Roman Polanski and have him extradited to the United States has become the rallying point for a broader campaign against “Hollywood liberals,” intellectuals, art...
Writer Budd Schulberg, unrepentant informer, dead at 95
By David Walsh, August 7, 2009
Schulberg was a member of the Communist Party in the late 1930s and subsequently “named names” before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in May 1951. To the end of his life he de...
Letter: BBC program looks at the life of blacklisted actor Sam Wanamaker
March 16, 2009
A recent BBC program explored the family history of blacklisted actor Sam Wanamaker
Australian artists face new censorship measures
By Gabriela Zabala-Notaras, February 9, 2009
The Australia Council for the Arts, the federal government’s principal arts funding body, has released a code of behaviour for artists, exhibitors and publishers depicting children in their work. Th...
Art and freedom
André Breton and problems of twentieth-century culture
Part 1
By Frank Brenner and David Walsh, June 16, 1997
In June and July 1938 Leon Trotsky, exiled Russian revolutionary, and André Breton, French Surrealist poet and thinker, collaborated in Mexico on the writing of an extraordinary
Art and freedom
André Breton and problems of twentieth-century culture
Part 2
By Frank Brenner and David Walsh, June 16, 1997
Breton was among the first intellectuals in France to appreciate and draw attention to the significance of Freud's work.
