Some Recommended Movies
for Leftists and 'Progressives'

    Clicking on the hypertext below will take you to the external Internet Movie Database ( IMDB ) or to other external sites for more detailed info about each film. Two useful published film guides are: Tom Zaniello 's Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Organized Guide to Films about Labor (Ithaca: ILR Press-Cornel UP, 1996) and Sky Hiatt's Picture This!: A Guide to Over 300 Environmentally, Socially, and Politically Relevant Films and Videos (Chicago: The Noble Press, 1992).

  • The Atomic Cafe (1982) Review by Jay Moore -- A darkly comic documentary on life in the U.S. during the paranoid Cold War 1950s. Uses a lot of footage from actual government propaganda films made to convince the American public that nukes were OK. We emerge from the theatre into the bright light of day feeling more frightened of nukes (and the government) than ever. After you see this film, the phrase, "Duck and Cover" will always be knocking around in your head. IMDB )

  • The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Review by Ethan Berne -- Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, "Battleship Potemkin" is a classic of early Soviet cinema. It was made to commemorate the mutiny aboard the Battleship Potemkin, which occured during the first Russian Revolution of 1905-7. The sailors' mutiny was in response to the harsh treatment they received from their officers, such as the ignoring of maggots on the meat to be used as food for the sailors. The most dramatic scene in the film is the portrayal of a demonstration in Odessa. This scene is Eisenstein's contribution to the definition of a film montage, a crying baby in a carriage rolling down the steps with Cossacks firing on the unarmed demonstrators running away. The fact that it is a silent film does not hinder the overall message, it does more with images than most movies can do with words. ( IMDB ); (