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Truth, Lies, and Cinema: A Brief History of Cinematic Propaganda. Film is uniquely suited to act as a vehicle of propaganda; its combination of visual and audio storytelling makes it effective for audiences of different ages and literacy levels. Propaganda is about creating an illusion and manipulating the truth, and in this regard film is ...
- 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).
The film as a vehicle of information is as susceptible as any other medium to the enthusiasm and bias of a director who aims at pro-ducing a certain effect on his audience. The compilation of a docu-mentary film is not unlike the writing of history. Each process en-tails the selection and presentation of facts. It is of course quite
Film as Propaganda. Visual media have been exploited to serve genocide and crimes against humanity. They have perpetuated racial and ethnic hatreds, targeted political opponents, aggrandized the national image of regimes, and portrayed the nation as a victim of evil, outside forces. The Nazis were the penultimate masters in this regard ...
Apr 10, 2016 · In the early days of film-making, film-makers saw the camera as an objective instrument, independent and uninfluenced by the user (Jean Epstein, cited Casetti, pg. 8). As we now know too well it can actually be a powerful tool of deception, propaganda and has been regularly used for these purposes.
Sep 15, 2006 · Published in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1993)
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May 13, 2016 · As a result, some of the greatest films in cinematic history emerged. Below is a list of ten influential films that were either made or used for propaganda. While some of these films were intentionally created to serve a specific agenda, others were assigned political meanings by certain groups at a later stage. 1.
