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A propaganda film is a film that involves some form of propaganda. Propaganda films spread and promote certain ideas that are usually religious, political, or cultural in nature. A propaganda film is made with the intent that the viewer will adopt the position promoted by the propagator and eventually take action towards making those ideas ...
- Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) One of history’s most iconic propaganda films, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will effectively illustrates the characteristics of both the Third Reich and National Socialism.
- Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915) D. W. Griffith will always be remembered in history as the father of modern filmmaking. The director’s work during the silent film era paved the way for some of the industry’s most groundbreaking techniques, including: the close-up, cross cutting, panoramic long shots, and staged battle sequences.
- Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) Many historians have argued that the ‘Golden Age’ of Russian cinema occurred between the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Second World War.
- In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942) When people think of propaganda and censorship, most automatically assume that they are characteristics of totalitarian regimes.
- The Atlas Shrugged Trilogy.
- Battleship Potemkin.
- A Carol for Another Christmas.
- The Day After Tomorrow.
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- Overview
- The experimental and animated film
In presenting a background, an environment, and characters who behave in a certain way, every motion picture may be said to be propaganda. The term is usually restricted, however, to pictures made deliberately to influence opinion or to argue a point. During the 20th century, the most powerful and most consistent use of the cinema for propaganda was seen in the Soviet Union. After the 1917 revolution, Soviet films exploded on the screen with fervent conviction. Gradually, however, the pictures became lifeless, and in the 1930s and ’40s, during the Stalin regime, great directors such as Eisenstein and Aleksandr Dovzhenko worked under severe restraints. Nazi Germany produced its own brand of propaganda in the 1930s, the most striking being Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens (1936; Triumph of the Will), a terrifying spectacle of a huge Nazi rally that had in effect been staged for the film made about it.
Few filmmakers would admit to making propaganda, although, in effect, many so-called educational films and all advertising or promotional shorts, whether featuring consumer products, vacation sites, or religious groups, may be seen as examples of propaganda. This form of film bears a stigma because of its undisguised aim: to influence ideas and change behaviour. Cinematic artistry serves merely as a tool in propaganda. Dudley Andrew Robert Sklar
While the motion picture developed rapidly as a medium predominantly based on recording actual events and creating narrative fictional stories, from its early decades there were artists and filmmakers interested in exploring the new technology’s potential outside or beyond the mainstream modes. Although extremely varied in form and subject matter, their endeavours have been grouped together under the terms experimental film or avant-garde film, as well as under the broader rubrics of alternative cinema or art cinema.
Experimental filmmaking took form in the 1920s primarily in France, with significant contributions from elsewhere in Europe and also in the United States, where the photographer Paul Strand and the photographer-painter Charles Sheeler made one of the first such works, Manhatta (1921), a meditation on images of New York skyscrapers.
In France, artists associated with the post-World War I avant-garde movements Dada and Surrealism, among them Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, René Clair, and Man Ray, also made abstract, nonnarrative, and animated films. It was also possible in French film culture of that era for experimental works to be made and exhibited commercially, by such filmmakers as Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Marcel L’Herbier, Germaine Dulac, and Abel Gance, who went on to make the three-screen epic Napoléon (1927). The most famous avant-garde film of the era was Un Chien andalou (1929; An Andalusian Dog), a Surrealist work made in Paris by the Spaniards Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.
A number of experimental films were made in the United States during the 1920s and ’30s, but the movement gained important new impetus with the emergence of Maya Deren, a former dancer who made her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), with Alexander Hammid. Deren’s films and writings influenced the development of post-World War II American avant-garde filmmaking with an emphasis on inner psychology, dream states, and exploration of the self. Stan Brakhage was another key figure of this movement, often called New American Cinema, the films of which could be made inexpensively through the wider availability of 16-mm and 8-mm cameras and film stock. The New American Cinema expanded during the 1960s to reflect the cultural transformations of the era, more explicitly taking on such themes as feminism, gay and Lesbian sexuality, and multicultural ethnicity. It reached its peak in the decade 1965–75, when the Pop artist Andy Warhol, among others, made experimental films that were exhibited commercially in theatres. In the 1970s one wing of the movement focused on the formal and structural aspects of film, while political concerns led others to shift more toward a hybrid style combining narrative fiction and documentary elements.
Animation has always played a significant role in experimental filmmaking. In the past, the process involved filming a series of still drawings or objects so that, when projected, an illusion of movement was created. With the development of computer technology, many animated films have been made from computer-generated images (CGI, also known simply as computer animation). Through the popularity of animated cartoons, the techniques of animation have typically played a larger part in commercial cinema than other aspects of avant-garde filmmaking.
Animation in fact developed in early cinema in a commercial context through the works of such animators as Émile Cohl in France, Winsor McCay in the United States, and Wladyslaw Aleksandrowicz Starewicz in Russia, the latter animating insect figures in narrative fiction tales. In Germany after World War I the artists Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling utilized the animation tables at the big UFA studio to make several of the first abstract animation films. While animation continued to interest experimental filmmakers over the following decades, the animated cartoon short became a fixture of exhibition programming, and cartoon characters Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Popeye the Sailor, Woody Woodpecker, and many more became legendary figures in popular culture. In the 1930s the Hollywood animation studios began to produce feature-length films, with Walt Disney leading the way with such classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films produced by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945, during World War II.It was originally written for American soldiers to help them understand why the United States was involved in the war, but US President Franklin Roosevelt ordered distribution for public viewing.
- Frank Capra
Jun 7, 2011 · These notes accompany the screenings of Frank Capra’s </i>Why We Fight</a> WWII propaganda films on June 8, 9, and 10 in Theater 3.</p> . Because everyone went to the movies during World War II, the American government found the film industry to be more helpful in propagandizing the populace than at any time before or since.
Aug 2, 2016 · Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) Triumph of the Will is a Nazi propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl. During World War I, the British discovered the power of films to shape public opinion (see reading, Western Front at the Cinema in Chapter 3). The Soviets made a similar discovery in the 1920s. Joseph Goebbels learned from both.
