50 years since the socially critical films of 1974: an introduction
The films that emerged in the early- to mid-1970s represented the highest point reached by American filmmaking since the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
The films that emerged in the early- to mid-1970s represented the highest point reached by American filmmaking since the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
Director Roman Polanski’s gripping film pays tribute to the hardboiled novel while offering a searing indictment of an irredeemably corrupt ruling class.
Agent of Happiness is a documentary about the “Gross National Happiness” survey conducted in the small kingdom of Bhutan, situated between India and China.
The ongoing Israeli mass murder in Gaza and stepped up brutality and repression on the West Bank provide immediate, living context, if such be needed, for Farah Nabulsi’s film.
The series is a slap in the face of contemporary cultural backwardness and degradation, and for that alone, writer/director Steven Zaillian deserves credit.
Trevor Griffiths, who died last week aged 88, was one of the outstanding radical dramatists of the last 50 years.
Their overriding message is that the critical experience of class struggle in post-war Britain was essentially a tragic misunderstanding. However heroic and self-sacrificing the miners’ actions over their year-long strike, the escalation was regrettable, and moderation could have ensured the industry’s managed decline.
Creator/director Christopher Storer based the film’s setting on a childhood friend’s restaurant, Mr. Beef, in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.
Director Roman Polanski’s gripping film pays tribute to the hardboiled novel while offering a searing indictment of an irredeemably corrupt ruling class.
The films that emerged in the early- to mid-1970s represented the highest point reached by American filmmaking since the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
Agent of Happiness is a documentary about the “Gross National Happiness” survey conducted in the small kingdom of Bhutan, situated between India and China.
Alex Garland’s film provides violent images of a civil war in America, divorced from any examination of the social forces that would produce such a conflict.
In the banning of Russian dancer Maria Khoreva and Korean Kimin Kim, a right-wing mob has effectively been allowed to hijack proceedings of one of New York City’s premier cultural institutions on the basis of anti-Russian hysteria.
Exposing the alleged racism of the opera and its creators—George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward—has become a preoccupation of the postmodernist proponents of “critical race theory” and related obsessions with gender, sexual preference and other aspects of personal identity.
The star’s new album, which alternates between the forgettable and the ludicrous, is a ready-made vehicle for the promotion of racialist and gender politics, along with the generation of corporate profits.
West is unrepentant about his previous provocative statements sympathizing with Hitler and antisemitism.
Zeineddine’s stories concern immigrants who escaped the civil war in Lebanon (1975-90) and their children, who are negotiating their own escapes.
Perhaps half the pieces are coming-of-age stories, that lyrical standby now usually written in a gritty but still rhapsodic voice.
David Marr’s Killing for Country documents many mass killings of indigenous people but falsely blames the entire population, not the ruling class and Australian capitalism.
The documentary follows the writer from his boyhood in the 1930s through his service during World War II and throughout his tumultuous literary, journalistic and personal life.
One of his most accomplished works is Omar, a 2013 film about a young Palestinian baker (Adam Bakri) who becomes involved in complex political and moral matters.
“I strongly denounce state-sponsored witch-hunt and prosecution against artists and activists who have come forward against Israel’s genocide.”
Department of Defense interventions into American entertainment media is to “get people acclimated to the presence of military personnel, military bases, military operations, and weapons… normalizing the presence of the military in almost every aspect of life.”
The WSWS recently spoke to filmmaker Nadav Lapid, director of Ahed’s Knee, on a video call.