Left-Wing Films

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it will give you lots of ideas for films to show at cell meetings, for public events, or as a means to brainwash conservative youth that you kidnapped from Boy Scout outings. Of course, any film can be watched and deconstructed for its lessons about race, class, gender and power, but these films make those discussions a little easier. Showing films can be a great way to have political discussions at the same time you are having fun. You can even use them as fund-raising events, since most only cost $10 to $20 a piece. (You aren't suppose to charge people to see movies you rent from a store.)

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SOCIALIST REALISM

American Pictures - Undoubtedly one of the top ten social realist cultural products of the 20th century. For five years Jacob Holdt, a young Dane, hitchhiked 100,000 miles throughout the U.S., living with some 350 families. American Pictures is not only a stunning visual essay on the vast disparities between American affluence and poverty, but also a fascinating personal meditation on one man's experience. This is a very powerful movie and if shown should allow for an hour after the presentation for discussion. It is often times appalling and is continuously disturbing. (105m min.) Bring it to your town if you get the chance: www.american-pictures.com

Grapes of Wrath, The (1940) - Henry Fonda in the classic tale of exploited Okie laborers in the 30's.

Let Him Have It - that is the english title to a UK film, a naturalist style production in which a young man, with a mental age of 12, is sentenced to hang for "inciting" a fellow youth to murder. A little over-long perhaps, but the "Bentley case" certainly aroused some heated debate at the time, so it seems worth-while in an era in which young people around the world are hung as part of some bizarre social ritual designed perhaps to prove "justice always works"

The Saint of Fort Washington - About the drugs trade and criminality thriving in the homeless shelters of your country, as the pollies pretend that the have "solved" homelessness. Very sad ending involving the death of a young schitzoprenic {as many homeless are}, and the prolonged lonliness of a black, Vietnam war vet who was his only friend. Very bleak and disillusioning, a real tear-jerker.

Sammie and Rosie Get Laid - An interracial couple deal with life in Thatcher's England.

The Skin Game - 1931 - One of Hitchcock's first films, he brilliantly depicts the struggle between the rising industrial bourgoisie and the old British aristocracy, full of noblesse oblige for their peasant dependents.