Film International - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2003

Between November 1931 and January 1934 the readers of the French communist daily L'Humanit were invited to become their own film critics. Over the years more than 100 films were critically examined in print by ordinary cinemagoers. Bert Hogenkamp tells the story of this rare experiment, which briefly gave a voice to those many who may make history but seldom get a chance to write it.

World War II provided many working and lower middle class women with the possibility of a more independent lifestyle as the war effort demanded their labour. Hired by the Office of War Information, photographer Esther Bubley documented the lives of these uprooted women flocking to big cities in search of jobs. But her pictures didn't just document the realities of work and leisure. As Paula Rabinowitz suggests, she also came to invent the icons of female pulp modernism.

As radical resistance to global capital is once more on the agenda new movements and generations are experiencing the need to establish non-corporate media channels in order to effectively challenge hegemonic ideology. Learning from the recent history of the New Left and the generation of 1968 is a vital part of this process. In this essay David E James tells the story of the rise and fall of the Los Angeles Newsreel. Though technologies may have evolved many basic issues remain the same.

In recent television series such as Vanishing Son and Martial Law Chinese protagonists have come to function as loci for the apparent resolution of some of the deepest contradictions of contemporary society. In this essay Gina Marchetti demonstrates how these Asian characters bridge the gap between the working poor and the bourgeoisie, yet always remain outsiders themselves.

As the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, movies rarely provide visions of genuine political alternatives. Given the realities of film production within global capitalism this may come as no surprise. However, as Steven J Ross suggests in this essay, the situation was once very different. Filmmakers of the early silent era were in fact much more likely to offer their audiences images of how they could radically change their world through collective action.

About Scmidt USA 2002

2 Godard

The Man With the Movie Camera

2 Watkins

The Berlinale 2003, take 1

The Berlinale 2003, take 2