Politics of Cinema

Aaron & Isaac
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Films are cultural artifacts. There is a political and artistic message in every one and we're here to document. On each episode we pick a film; sometimes current and sometimes from the riches of world cinema's 100+ year history, and take a deep dive into what the film is really saying about the world. Both overtly and covertly.

  1. Hanging Out With The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)

    JAN 23

    Hanging Out With The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980)

    Need a warm cinematic hug from a group of close friends? Want to spend some time with people who get all your jokes? In this episode, we discuss The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), a foundational work of American leftist cinema. We also look closely at John Sayles' early career as a novelist and screenwriter in the buildup to his debut as a director. Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    1 hr
  2. How to Mock a Tyrant in The Great Dictator (1940)

    11/28/2025

    How to Mock a Tyrant in The Great Dictator (1940)

    In this episode, we wrap up our look at depictions of fascism and authoritarianism on film with Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). Chaplin had the nerve to go fully anti-fascist and anti-racist at a moment when much of Hollywood was still pretending Hitler was just a distant "European problem". Chaplin mercilessly skewers Riefenstahl-style fascist pageantry and spectacle while also refusing the era's usual antisemitic caricatures. He centers half of the narrative on a working-class Jewish barber whose daily life is shattered by storm trooper raids that feel uncomfortably close to those carried out by modern ICE agents and militarized police. Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    1h 15m
  3. Imagination as a Form of Resistance in Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

    10/24/2025

    Imagination as a Form of Resistance in Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

    This week, we descend into the dark fantasy fairytale of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Amid the rich craftsmanship of the fantasy world that Ofelia imagines, the film lays bare the horrors of Francoist Spain—all captured through Del Toro's anti-fascist cinema. The calculating evil of Captain Vidal, a devotee of Falangism and a violent patriarch, stands among the most iconic of Del Toro's villains.  With fascist rhetoric disturbingly mainstream in contemporary US politics, Pan's Labyrinth feels less like a historical fantasy and more like a warning. It is a portrait of how fascism seeps into the everyday and how resistance can be imagined and realized, even when hope is in short supply. The film's lush fantasy is always shadowed by real life violence, teaching us that fascism flourishes not in isolation but within the systems of power that capitalism creates and legitimizes. We wrap things up with a brief discussion of Pinocchio (2022), where Del Toro, ever the mythmaker, recasts a children's tale set during the rise to power of Italian fascism. Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    1h 3m

  4. 09/26/2025

    Silencing Opposition in The Act of Killing (2012) & The Look of Silence (2014)

    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. Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    1h 6m
  5. The Third Generation (1979) & Other Instruments of State Sponsored Terror

    08/29/2025

    The Third Generation (1979) & Other Instruments of State Sponsored Terror

    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.  Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    48 min
  6. Urban Guerrillas vs The State in Ice (1970)

    07/31/2025

    Urban Guerrillas vs The State in Ice (1970)

    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.   Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    49 min
  7. Bearing Witness in Gwangju with A Taxi Driver (2017)

    05/30/2025

    Bearing Witness in Gwangju with A Taxi Driver (2017)

    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) Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    57 min
  8. Army of Shadows (1969) & the Weight of Impossible Choices

    03/28/2025

    Army of Shadows (1969) & the Weight of Impossible Choices

    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. Follow us at: Patreon / Instagram / Letterboxd / Facebook

    54 min
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About

Films are cultural artifacts. There is a political and artistic message in every one and we're here to document. On each episode we pick a film; sometimes current and sometimes from the riches of world cinema's 100+ year history, and take a deep dive into what the film is really saying about the world. Both overtly and covertly.

Information

  • Creator
    Aaron & Isaac
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2020
  • Show Website
    Politics of Cinema

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