“I used to think there was one America, but there are two. There's no place for me in McPherson's and Hearst's America, but there is in Lincoln's and Roosevelts!”

This week on Cold War Cinema, where we discuss Mikhaill Romm’s 1948 drama, The Russian Question. In this Soviet production, winner of the 1948 Stalin Prize and based on a play of the same name by Konstantin Siminov, a mendacious newspaper editor sends columnist Harry Smith to the Soviet Union to write a book critical of socialism. But when the principled columnist returns to the United States, he quickly realizes that the American press intends to turn the Russian question—whether the Russians want war—into a statement with dangerous geopolitical ramifications.

Join hosts Jason Christian, Tony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein as we consider:

• The role of editing or montage in the construction of political critiques in aesthetic form

• Why the President of the Motion Picture Association called this a “sneering, lying attack on the United States” and an “open bid to stir contempt and hatred for America on the part of the Russian audiences,” and why he got it all wrong

• How a Soviet film about a sensationalist American news media helps us understand our current political moment

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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:

Paul recommends Clarence Brown’s 1949 drama Intruder in the Dust.

Tony recommends Langston Hughes 1961 collection, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.

Jason recommends Mikhail Romm’s 1961 drama Nine Days in One Year.

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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don’t forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema.

In this crossover episode with Rakeem Shabazz of Wise the Dome TV, Cold War Cinema co-host Anthony Ballas discusses the recent documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (dir. Johan Grimonprez 2024). The documentary explores the weaponization of jazz music during the Cold War, the contradictions of using Black art to mask American imperialism, and the legacy of artists like Louis Armstrong, Max Roach, and Nina Simone. Ballas breaks down how the film links Cold War coups and cultural propaganda to present-day resource extraction in the Congo, and why the documentary’s archival style is itself a radical political act. Ballas also discusses his recent piece on the film (co-authored with Gerald Horne), "Antidote to Soft Power: Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État" for Scalawag Magazine.

Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Also, make sure you check out and subscribe to Wise the Dome TV.

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Logo by Jason Christian

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

This is a crossover episode with The Socialist Shelf podcast. Our co-host Jason and his wife, Ankita, were invited on the Socialist Shelf to dicuss a radical cinema educational project they run in Atlanta called Resistance Cinema, as well as the role that radical cinema plays in social movemets. Ankita is a Bollywood expert and the co-host of the The Desi Gaze, a podcast about overlooked Hindi cinema. We hope you enjoy this show! Don't forget to subscribe to The Socialist Shelf and The Desi Gaze, and leave us a review!

Jason's article referenced in the podcast is a review of the book Revolution in 35mm, co-edited by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan. Jacob, from The Socialist Shelf, has written a novel, and you can pre-order it here. Music for The Socialist Shelf by Solo Monk (@SoloMonk256 on Twitter).

Join hosts Jason and Paul for a discussion of William A. Wellman's 1948 spy thriller The Iron Curtain, starring Dana Andrews and Jean Tierney. Regarded as an anti-communist propaganda film, The Iron Curtain was the first major Hollywood studio production to engage directly with the Cold War. The story is based on the memoirs of the Russian spy Igor Gouzenko, who stole documents from the Soviet embasy in Ottawa, where he worked, and defected to Canada. This act of espionage led to the dismantling of a Soviet "atomic spy ring," and the arrests or numerous people both in Canada and the United States.

At a time of relative peace post-WWII, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther considered The Iron Curtain "a highly inflamatory film" and a dangerous provocation. "Hollywood fired its first shot in the 'cold war' against Russia yesterday," Crowther writtes in his review, "just when a faint hope was glimmering that maybe moderation in fact might be achieved.”

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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:

Paul recommends the pro-Soviet Hollywood propaganda film Mission to Moscow (1943; dir. Michael Curtiz)

Jason recommends the 2000 book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders

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Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas (same handles on BlueSky). Follow Paul on BlueSky at @ptklein.com. Paul writes about movies at www.howtoreadmovies.com. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

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Logo by Jason Christian

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

Join hosts Jason, Tony, and our new co-host, Paul, on Episode One of Season Two! On this episode we discuss Sergei Eisenstein's epic two-part Soviet masterpiece Ivan the Terrible, released in 1945 and 1958 respectively. The films were commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 as a means to rehabilitate Ivan the Terrible's image for a contemporary Soviet audience. Stalin celebrated Part 1, but the state banned Part 2. A third part had been in the works, but was abandoned by Eisenstein after the suppression of the second part. Our discussion touches on this history and many other topics, including Soviet montage, dialectical art construction, Eisenstein's queerness, his fraught relationship with Stalin, and more.

This is the first episode of a new format in which we take book or movie recommendations from each of us, which are found below:

Tony's book recommendations:

1. Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict by Ronald Bergan (2016)
2. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Philip Rosen (1986)
3. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eisenstein (1949)

Paul's book and film recommendations:

1. This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalinist Russia by Joan Neuberger (2019)
2. Ivan the Terrible by Joan Neuberger
3. Battleship Potemkin (1925; dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

Jason's movie recommendations:

1. Come and See (1985; dir. Elem Klimov)
2. The Ascent (1977; dir. Larisa Shepitko)
3. Wings (1966; dir. Larisa Shepitko)

Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas; follow Paul on BlueSky at @ptklein.com. Paul writes about movies at www.howtoreadmovies.com. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

Our logo is by Jason Christian

The theme music for this episode and all forthcoming episodes is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

Join hosts Jason and Tony, as well as a new guest, Felicia Maroni, for the finale of Season One. On this episode we discuss Zoltán Korda's 1951 drama Cry, the Beloved Country, a film shot on location in South Africa, starring Canada Lee and Sidney Poitier, which aimed to critique the brutal apartheid system just three years after it was codified into law. The film was based on a novel of the same name by Alan Paton, a white South African, and adapted to the screen by Paton and the blacklisted writer John Howard Lawson, who went uncredited.

Felicia is the host of the wondeful film podcast Seeing Faces in the Movies, which focuses on either a director or cinemtagrapher and how their aesthetic approach changes (or doesn't) across their ouevre. You can follow Felicia on social media at these sites:

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review! And follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas (same handles at Bluesky). Jason's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

Our logo is by Jason Christian

Theme music is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt)

Please drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

Grab your sandals and sword and get philosophical with Jason, Tony, and our guest Paul Klein, as we unpack the wonders of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). The film was adapted from Howard Fast's novel of the same title by Dalton Trumbo, and it is considered a major step in the end of the notorious Hollywood blacklist. The film is also read as an allegory for civil rights stuggles, the HUAC hearings, and "Third World" struggles. All of this and more is discussed in the episode.

Books and articles mentioned:

• Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders
• The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten by Gerald Horne
• Aesthetic Theory by Theodor Adorno
• “Fascinating Fascism” by Susan Sontag

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review! And follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian, Anthony at @tonyjballas, and Paul at @ptklein, and the same handles at BlueSky. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

Our logo is by Jason Christian

The theme music for this episode and all forthcoming episodes is by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

Join hosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas, as well as a new guest, Paul Klein, as they discuss the iconic actor and director Charlie Chaplin and his late talkie masterpiece Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Paul is a film scholar who writes at the intersection of film and history. His research focuses on the cultural, political, and technological aspects of Hollywood and American filmgoing practices. He also write about how and why movies matter at Reading Movies (howtoreadmovies.com)

As for Chaplin, he hardly needs an introduction, but many people don't realize that he was a victim of Red Scare harrassment from the media and feds and was eventually exiled from the United States. Monsieur Verdoux is a bold film in that it asks a viewer, just two years after the end of WWII, to consider state-sponsored mass murder (e.g. war) and what Engels calls "social murder" (murder by deprivation), as opposed to individual crimes, which are easier to identify and denounce. It's also a Chaplin film full of his signiture gags. The combination of these two registers, deadly serious and comical, makes for a fascinating but jarring cinematic experience.

As always, please suscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave us a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter (X) at @JasonAChristian, Anthony at @tonyjballas, and Paul at @ptklein, the latter two are also on BlueSky.

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!