Political cinema
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Political cinema, in the narrow sense, refers to cinema products that portray events or social conditions, either current or historical, through a partisan perspective, with the intent of informing or agitating the spectator.[citation needed]
Political cinema exists in different forms, such as documentaries, short films, feature films, experimental films, and even animated cartoons.[citation needed]
Concept
In the narrow sense of the term, political cinema refers to films that do not hide their political stance. In this sense, they differ from other films not because they are political, but because of the way in which their politics is presented. As such, a film does not necessarily have to be pure propaganda to be considered 'political cinema'.[citation needed]
The broader meaning of 'political cinema' is argued to be that "all films are political;"[1][2][3][4] even films that are ostensibly 'apolitical' and escapist, merely promising 'entertainment' as an escape from everyday life, can be understood as fulfilling a political function. The authorities in Nazi Germany, for instance, knew this very well and organized a large production of deliberately escapist films.[citation needed] In other 'entertainment' films, such as westerns, the ideological bias is evident in the distortion of historical reality. A "classical" western would rarely portray black cowboys, although there were a great many of them in the American frontier. Hollywood cinema, which can be understood as the dominant industry of cinema, was often accused of misrepresenting black, female, gay, and working-class people.[citation needed] More fundamentally, not only are the contents of individual films political, but the institution of cinema itself can also be taken as political as well. A huge number of people congregate, not to act together or to talk to each other, but to sit silently, after having paid for it, to be spectators separated from each other. Guy Debord, a critic of the 'society of the spectacle', for whom "separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle," was therefore also violently opposed to cinema, even though he would make several films portraying his ideas.[citation needed]
In order to differentiate between the narrow and broad notions of 'political cinema', film scholar Ewa Mazierska suggested to divide all such films into the categories of conformist or oppositional and marked or unmarked:[5]
- Conformist films "accept the political status quo;" while oppositional films reject it.
- Marked political films are willing to reveal to their viewers the party/ideology "they serve"; while unmarked films prefer to hide it.
From this point of view, it is the oppositional and marked political films that the most viewers regard as 'political', as discussions about politics in film typically single out these two categories.[5]
History
Cinema, World War I and its aftermath
Before World War I French cinema had a big share of the world market. Hollywood used the collapse of the French production to establish its hegemony. Ever since it has dominated world film production not only economically but has transformed cinema into a means to disseminate American values.[citation needed]
In Germany the Universum Film AG, better known as UFA, was founded to counter the perceived dominance of American propaganda. During the Weimar Republic many films about Frederick II of Prussia had a conservative nationalistic agenda, as Siegfried Kracauer and other film critics noted.[citation needed]
Communists like Willi Münzenberg saw the Russian cinema as a model of political cinema. Soviet films by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov and others combined a partisan view of the bolshevist regime with artistic innovation which also appealed to western audiences.[citation needed]
National Socialism
![]() | This section may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. (March 2021) |
Leni Riefenstahl has never been able or willing to face her responsibility as a chief propagandist for National-Socialism, i.e., Nazism. Almost unlimited resources and her undeniable talent led to results, which, despite their hideous aims, still fascinate some aficionados of film. While there is much controversy around her work, it is generally accepted that Riefenstahl's main commitment was to filmmaking, rather than to the Nazi Party. Proof of this might be seen by the portrayal of Jesse Owens' victory in her film about the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Olympia (1938), and in her later work, mostly on her photographic expeditions to Africa.[citation needed]
The same is certainly not true of the violent anti-Semitic films of Fritz Hippler. Other Nazi political films made propaganda for so-called euthanasia.[citation needed]
Third Cinema
Recent films
Especially in the last decades of the 20th century, many filmmakers considered focusing on remembrance of and reflection upon major collective crimes such as the Holocaust, slavery and disasters such as the Chernobyl disaster to be their political and moral duty.[citation needed]
Globalization and related world issues
Political cinema of the 21st century seems to focus on controversial topics such as globalization, AIDS, and other health-care concerns, issues pertaining to the environment, such as world energy resources and consumption and climate change, and other complex matters pertaining to discrimination, capitalism, terrorism, war, peace, religious and related forms of intolerance, and civil and political rights, as well as other human rights.[citation needed]
Forms
The form has always been an important concern for political filmmakers. While some, like pioneering Lionel Rogosin, argued that radical films, in order to liberate the imagination of the spectator, have to break not only with the content but also with the form of Dominant cinema, the falsely reassuring clichés and stereotypes of conventional narrative film making, other directors such as Francesco Rosi, Costa Gavras, Ken Loach, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee or Lina Wertmüller preferred to work within mainstream cinema to reach a wider audience.[citation needed]
The subversive tradition dates back at least to the French avant-garde of the 1920s. Even in his more conventional films Luis Buñuel stuck to the spirit of outright revolt of L'Âge d'or. The bourgeoisie had to be expropriated and all its values destroyed, the surrealists believed. This spirit of revolt is also present in all films of Jean Vigo.[citation needed]
Selected filmography
- The following is a listing of notable political films or political films made by notable directors:
Title | Year | Director(s) | Country | Type of film | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | D. W. Griffith | United States | Feature | [6][7] |
Stachka (Strike) | 1925 | Sergei Eisenstein | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin) | 1925 | Sergei Eisenstein | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Padenie dinastii Romanovykh (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty) | 1927 | Esfir Shub | Soviet Union | Feature | |
Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) | 1929 | Dziga Vertov | Soviet Union | Documentary | |
Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform) | 1931 | Leontine Sagan | Weimar Republic | Feature | |
Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (To Whom Does the World Belong?) | 1932 | Slatan Dudow | Weimar Republic | Feature | |
Misère au Borinage (Penury in the Borinage) | 1934 | Joris Ivens and Henri Storck | Belgium | Short documentary | [8] |
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) | 1935 | Leni Reifenstahl | Nazi Germany | Propaganda | [9] |
Der ewige Jude. Ein Filmbeitrag zum Weltjudentum (The Eternal Jew) | 1940 | Fritz Hippler | Nazi Germany | Propaganda | [10] |
Strange Victory | 1948 | Leo Hurwitz | East Germany | Documentary | [11] |
Salt of the Earth | 1954 | Herbert Biberman | United States | Feature | [12] |
Ernst Thälmann – Sohn seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Son of his Class) | 1954 | East Germany | Kurt Maetzig | Feature | [13] |
Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann – Leader of his Class) | 1955 | East Germany | Kurt Maetzig | Feature | [14] |
On the Bowery | 1956 | Lionel Rogosin | United States | Docufiction | [15] |
The Cool World | 1964 | Shirley Clarke | United States | Feature | [16] |
Obyknovennyy fashizm (Ordinary Fascism) | 1965 | Mikhail Romm | Soviet Union | Documentary | |
La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo | Italy Algeria |
Feature | |
Terra em Transe (Entranced Earth) | 1967 | Glauber Rocha | Brazil | Feature | [17] |
La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se fair (The Chinese, or, rather, in the Chinese manner: a film in the making) | 1967 | Jean-Luc Godard | France | Feature | |
Titicut Follies | 1967 | Frederick Wiseman | United States | Documentary | [18] |
La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces) | 1968 | Fernando Solanas | Argentina | Feature | |
In the Year of the Pig | 1968 | Emile de Antonio | United States | Documentary | [19] |
Teorema (Theorem) | 1968 | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Italy | Feature | [20] |
if.... | 1968 | Lindsay Anderson | United Kingdom | Feature | |
Z | 1969 | Costa-Gavras | Algeria/France | Feature | |
Yawar Mallku (Blood of the Condor) | 1969 | Jorge Sanjinés | Bolivia | Feature | |
Burn! (Queimada) | 1969 | Gillo Pontecorvo | Italy/France | Feature | |
Salesman | 1969 | Albert and David Maysles Charlotte Zwerin |
United States | Documentary | [21] |
Le Chagrin et la Pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity) | 1970 | Marcel Ophüls | France West Germany Switzerland |
Documentary | [22] |
Ghoroub wa Shorouq (Sunset and Sunrise) | 1970 | Kamal El Sheikh | Egypt | Feature | [23] |
Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? (Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?) | 1970 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | Feature | [24] |
Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives) | 1971 | Rosa von Praunheim | Germany | Documentary | [25] |
Wanda | 1971 | Barbara Loden | United States | Feature | |
La classe operaia va in paradiso (The Working Class Goes to Heaven) | 1971 | Elio Petri | Italy | Feature | |
Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair) | 1972 | Francesco Rosi | Italy | Feature | |
Sambizanga | 1972 | Sarah Maldoror | Democratic Republic of the Congo | Feature | [26] |
La Société du Spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) | 1974 | Guy Debord | France | Documentary | |
Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) | 1974 | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | Feature | |
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels) | 1975 | Chantal Akerman | Belgium France |
Feature | [27][28] |
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom) | 1975 | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Italy France |
Feature | |
All the President's Men | 1976 | Alan J. Pakula | United States | Feature | |
Harlan County, USA | 1976 | Barbara Kopple | United States | Documentary | |
Yarınsız Adam (The Man Without Tomorrow) | 1977 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Satılmış Adam (The Sold Man) | 1977 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Yıkılmayan Adam (The Indestructible Man) | 1978 | Remzi Aydın Jöntürk | Turkey | Feature | |
Baara (Work) | 1978 | Souleymane Cissé | Mali | Feature | |
Reds | 1981 | Warren Beatty | United States | Feature | |
The Wave | 1981 | Alex Grasshoff | United States | Feature | [29] |
Yol (The Road) | 1982 | Şerif Gören Yılmaz Güney |
Turkey | Feature | |
Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community | 1984 | Greta Schiller | United States | Documentary | |
Nineteen Eighty-Four[30] | 1984 | Michael Radford | United Kingdom | Feature | |
Shoah | 1985 | Claude Lanzmann | France | Documentary | |
Camp de Thiaroye (The Camp of Thiaroye) | 1988 | Ousmane Sembene Thierno Faty Sow |
Senegal | Feature | |
American Dream | 1990 | Barbara Kopple | United States United Kingdom |
Documentary | |
JFK | 1991 | Oliver Stone | United States | Feature | |
In the Name of the Father | 1993 | Jim Sheridan | United States | Feature | [31] |
Land and Freedom | 1995 | Ken Loach | United Kingdom Spain Germany Italy France |
Feature | |
Lumumba | 2000 | Raoul Peck | France Germany Belgium Haiti |
Feature | [32] |
Intimacy | 2001 | Patrice Chéreau | France United Kingdom Germany Italy |
Feature | [33] |
Jang Aur Aman (War and Peace) | 2002 | Anand Patwardhan | India | Documentary | [34] |
Gujarat: A Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra, Fascism[undue weight? – discuss] | 2003 | Suma Josson | India | Documentary | |
Fahrenheit 9/11 | 2004 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
Memoria del saqueo (Social Genocide) | 2004 | Fernando Solanas | Argentina | Documentary | [35] |
Darwin's Nightmare | 2004 | Hubert Sauper | Austria France Belgium |
Documentary | [36] |
500 Years Later | 2005 | Owen Alik Shahadah | United Kingdom United States |
Documentary | [37] |
Syriana | 2005 | Stephen Gaghan | United States | Feature | |
The Road to Guantánamo | 2006 | Michael Winterbottom Mat Whitecross |
United Kingdom | Docudrama | |
The Last Communist | 2006 | Amir Muhammad | Malaysia | Documentary | [38] |
The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez | 2006 | Heidi Specogna | Switzerland | Documentary | |
An Inconvenient Truth | 2006 | Davis Guggenheim | United States | Documentary | |
Persepolis | 2007 | Marjane Satrapi Vincent Paronnaud |
France Iran |
Feature | [39] |
Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide[undue weight? – discuss] | 2006 | Louie Lawless | Canada | Documentary | [40] |
Sicko | 2007 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
What Would Jesus Buy | 2007 | Morgan Spurlock | United States | Documentary | |
The World Without US | 2008 | Mitch Anderson and Jason J. Tomaric | United States | Documentary | [41][42][43] |
Religulous | 2008 | Larry Charles | United States | Documentary | |
Milk | 2008 | Gus Van Sant | United States | Feature | |
Capitalism: A Love Story | 2009 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein[undue weight? – discuss] | 2009 | Nicolas Rossier David Ridgen |
United States | Documentary | |
The Yes Men Fix the World[undue weight? – discuss] | 2009 | Andy Bichlbaum Mike Bonanno Kurt Engfehr |
United States | Documentary | |
Motherland | 2010 | Owen Alik Shahadah | United States | Documentary | [44] |
The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 | 2011 | Göran Olsson | Sweden | Documentary | |
The Ides of March | 2011 | George Clooney | United States | Feature | |
ToryBoy The Movie[undue weight? – discuss] | 2011 | John Walsh | United Kingdom | Documentary | |
2016: Obama's America[undue weight? – discuss] | 2012 | Dinesh D'Souza | United States | Documentary | |
No | 2012 | Pablo Larraín | Chile France United States |
Feature | [45] |
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology | 2012 | Sophie Fiennes | United Kingdom | Documentary | [46] |
America: Imagine the World Without Her[undue weight? – discuss] | 2014 | Dinesh D'Souza John Sullivan |
United States | Documentary | |
Spotlight[47] | 2015 | Tom McCarthy | United States | Feature | |
Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party[undue weight? – discuss] | 2017 | Dinesh D'Souza Bruce Schooley |
United States | Documentary | |
The Death of Stalin | 2017 | Armando Iannucci | United Kingdom France Belgium |
Feature | |
Death of a Nation[undue weight? – discuss] | 2018 | Dinesh D'Souza Bruce Schooley |
United States | Documentary | |
Fahrenheit 11/9 | 2018 | Michael Moore | United States | Documentary | |
Vice | 2018 | Adam McKay | United States | Feature | |
Friend of the World | 2020 | Brian Patrick Butler | United States | Feature | [48] |
The Hunt | 2020 | Craig Zobel | United States | Feature | |
Infidel | 2020 | Cyrus Nowrasteh | United States | Feature | |
Trump Card[undue weight? – discuss] | 2020 | Dinesh D'Souza Debbie D'Souza Bruce Schooley |
United States | Documentary | |
Absolute Proof | 2021 | Brannon Howse Mike Lindell |
United States | Documentary | |
Don't Look Up | 2021 | Adam McKay | United States | Feature | |
2000 Mules[undue weight? – discuss] | 2022 | Dinesh D'Souza | United States | Documentary | |
Hemet, or the Landlady Don't Drink Tea | 2023 | Tony Olmos | United States | Feature | [49] |
See also
- Political films category
- Cultural industry
- African cinema
- Documentary film
- List of racism-related films
- List of films dealing with Anarchism
- Social criticism
- Women's cinema
References
- ^ Zimmer, Christian, and Lee Leggett. 1974. "All Films Are Political." SubStance 3(9):123–36. doi:10.2307/3684517. JSTOR 3684517.
- ^ Schoenbrun, Jane (9 November 2016). "All Movies are Political Movies. We Need to Do Better". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
- ^ Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche. "Cinema is Always Political, Says Star Director Costa-Gavras | DW | 03.02.2008". DW.COM. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
- ^ Wayne, Mike. 2001. Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema. London: Pluto Press. p. 1.
- ^ a b Mazierska, Ewa. 2014. "Introduction: Marking Political Cinema." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 55(1):35–44. doi:10.13110/framework.55.1.0033.
- ^ "Birth of a Nation." filmsite.org.
- ^
Griffith's highly controversial film, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, is widely considered to be a masterpiece due to its impact on the development of cinema. The basic structure consists of a description of an idealized lost idyll ("the Old South"), the disruption of this order during reconstruction post-Civil War, and the restoration of white supremacy, which is shown a legitimate goal that unites the former enemies. In the end, the leader of the KKK secures his private happiness too and the alleged idyll is restored.[citation needed]
- ^ Militant film about the misery of Belgian coal miners. Cf. Les Enfants du borinage: Lettre à Henri Storck, Director: Patric Jean, 2000.[citation needed]
- ^ Technically brilliant propaganda film about the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg 1934.[citation needed]
- ^ Virulently antisemitic.[citation needed]
- ^ "He creates the image of an America that is complacent in its victory, prosperity and racism; the narrator warns: 'Nigger, kike, wop, take my advice and accept the facts – the world is already arranged for you' " (Barsam).
- ^ Legendary documentary feature film about a strike in New Mexico. Not only do the workers have to fight against the company, but also their women against their macho attitude in order to be "allowed" to support them fully.[citation needed]
- ^ Socialist realism – German Democratic Republic style.[citation needed]
- ^ Socialist realism – German Democratic Republic style.[citation needed]
- ^ An important film about alcoholism and the homeless in New York City.[citation needed]
- ^ Focuses on the cruel reality of street life in the U.S.[citation needed]
- ^ Peter Rist (8 May 2014). Historical Dictionary of South American Cinema. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 550. ISBN 9780810880368.
Terra em Transe (Land in Anguish, aka Entranced Earth) is also one of the most sophisticated political films ever made.
- ^ Wiseman shows the inhumane conditions at the Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts. The film was banned in the United States for over two decades.[citation needed]
- ^ A compilation film about the Vietnam War.[citation needed]
- ^ The power of desire disrupts a rich family.[citation needed]
- ^ Four men try to sell the Bible; one of the most important films of direct cinema.[citation needed]
- ^ Politically a pathbreaking documentary about collaboration in France during the German occupation.[citation needed]
- ^ "Remembering Kamal El-Sheikh: Egypt's pioneer of suspense - Screens - Arts & Culture". Ahram Online. Retrieved 19 January 2023.
- ^ Concerns the humiliating madness of ordinary life.[citation needed]
- ^ This film started the second gay movement in Germany.[citation needed]
- ^ Follows the liberation movement in Angola.[citation needed]
- ^ Mathijs, Ernest; Sexton, Jamie (30 March 2012). Cult Cinema - Ernest Mathijs, Jamie Sexton - Google Boeken. p. 140. ISBN 9781444396430. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ^ "Chantal Akerman : Retour sur la carrière d'une cinéaste influente - Elle". 7 October 2015.
- ^ "The Wave (1981) - Alex Grasshoff | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
- ^ "1984 (1984) - Michael Radford | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie". Retrieved 11 February 2024 – via www.allmovie.com.
- ^ "In the Name of the Father (1993) - Jim Sheridan | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
- ^ A moving and very intelligent poetical reflection on the presence of apparently bygone hopes and disasters. [citation needed]
- ^ Intense erotic film on solitude, alienated sexuality and an impossible love.[citation needed]
- ^ On nuclear madness in India and Pakistan and their efforts to imitate Big Brother, USA.[citation needed]
- ^ A passionately partisan survey of the history of neoliberalism in Argentina.[citation needed]
- ^ Using the effect of fishing the Nile perch in Tanzania's Lake Victoria as an example, Sauper shows how Africa functions today, how famine, wars and aids, European "aid" and the ruthless plundering of African resources are connected.[citation needed]
- ^ An African American documentary on race and the social impact of slavery.
- ^ Documentary film based on the autobiography of Chin Peng, born in 1924, the last chairman of the forbidden Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) but this is not a conventional biographical film. Key elements in the film are the songs Hardesh Singh composed for the occasion. This is an often funny film about a difficult chapter in Malaysian history which is still taboo "back home".[citation needed]
- ^ Animated biographical film based on the graphic novel of the same name.[citation needed]
- ^ Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust: The Untold Story of the Aboriginal Genocide Archived 2005-05-10 at the Wayback Machine. Hidden from History.org. Accessed 4 March 2009.
- ^ "The World Without US: Editorial Review" (Web). Amazon. 13 January 2009. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
[This 2008 documentary film is described as] 'a quick overview of the state of the world today, and a quick history lesson in how things have been going for the last 20 years or so, followed by a few things that seem very likely to occur if America decided to pull all of its military bases out of foreign countries and stop mucking about in foreign parts.'
- ^ Mitch Anderson. "Mitch Anderson's Biography". Mitch Anderson. Archived from the original (Web) on 15 June 2008. Retrieved 4 March 2009. Released in 2008, the documentary explores what might happen if the United States were to leave the international arena, rescind its global reach and become an isolationist nation for the first time since the early 20th century.
- ^ Trailer and "About the film" at "The World Without US (Home Page)" (Web). Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ^ An African documentary on the history and contemporary state of Africa and African people.
- ^ "No (2012) - Pablo Larraín | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
- ^ with Slavoj Žižek
- ^ "Spotlight (2015) - Tom McCarthy | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie". Retrieved 11 February 2024 – via www.allmovie.com.
- ^ Parker, Sean (10 May 2022). "Friend of the World: The Divine Comedy of Body Horror". Horror Obsessive. Archived from the original on 11 May 2022. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
- ^ Mackin-Solomon, Ashley (14 January 2024). "'Good type of cringey': La Jolla filmmaker to screen latest creation at Oceanside International Film Festival". La Jolla Light. Archived from the original on 24 January 2024. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
Bibliography
- Baldwin, James. [1976] 2000. The Devil Finds Work. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks (Dell Publishing). ISBN 0-385-33460-5.
- Barnouw, Erik. 1993. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-507898-5, 978-0-19-507898-5. (A useful introduction.)
- Barsam, Richard M. 2003. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-97436-7, 978-0-393-97436-2. (Book and CD-ROM eds.)
- Daressa, Larry. 2008 May 10. "The Political Film and Its Audience in the Digital Age: Newsreel at Forty And Zero." California Newsreel.
- Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 1997. Movies as Politics. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20615-0.
- Unterburger, Amy L., ed. 1999. The St. James Women Filmmakers Encyclopedia: Women on the Other Side of the Camera. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. ISBN 1-57859-092-2, 978-1-57859-092-6.
- Vogel, Amos. 2006. Film as a Subversive Art. London: CT Editions. ISBN 1-933045-27-2.
- Zaniello, Tom. 2003. Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Expanded Guide to Films about Labor. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-4009-2