There are
hundreds, if not thousands, of films that address the themes of
anarchism—some favorably (like most the films listed here) and some
unfavorably. There are, as well, dozens of respected lists of “anarchist
films.”
While almost every recent list of films and anarch thought lists V for Vendetta, one version or another of the story of Sacco and Vanzetti, and (disappointingly) either The Matrix or Avatar,
this list eschews such titles. Rather, these are twenty films that in
their anarchic form and/or content engage in “the conscious creation of
situations,” to appropriate Guy Debord.
The films
raise more questions than they answer regarding leadership and decision
making, hierarchies and egalitarianism, autonomy and heteronomy, equity
and coercion, genre and storytelling, and intersections among race,
class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Such complexity, provocation,
and affect make these films especially noteworthy.
20. The Anarchist Cookbook (USA, 2002)
“We might not
know what we’re for, but we know what we’re against.” Not so much an
anarchist film as a hyper-individualist, chaos-driven narrative about a
group of drop outs whose motto might be summed up as “Life is just a
game,” The Anarchist Cookbook raises the issue of how to make films
about anarchism without becoming cartoonish renderings of coercive
cinema.
On the
surface, this drama / romantic comedy is not about anarchist as much as
it is about ill-conceived images of anarchists as counter cultural
bufoons without focus.
More
seriously, though, for our purposes here, a counter reading of the film
calls into question mainstream images of anarchism and asks us to
reconsider how the social tensions tweaked by such characters as Beavis
and Butthead, Bill and Ted, and The Sweathogs might present more than
meets the eye in terms of radical critiques of race, class, and social
hierarchies.
19. What to Do in Case of Fire? (Germany, 2001)
Comedy about
anarchism is difficult, in part, because comedy has to take its subject
seriously. While What to do in Case of Fire takes on the interesting
issue of what happens to young radicals years after they have settled
into the system, it only half-manages to take its subject seriously
enough to be comedic.
This film
about former would-be revolutionaries accidentally pulled back into the
fray is worth a look for the situation it describes and the few jokes it
delivers. However, its reliance on sentiment and stereotype impede it
developing authentic targets, such as are found in the best work of
Chaplin and the Marx Brothers.
18. The Assassination of Trotsky (Italy/France/UK, 1972)
The
Assassination of Trotsky was once voted one of the worst fifty films
ever made, and in a 1972 New York Times review, Roger Greenspun referred
to it as, “a very odd project indeed,” but one of director Joseph
Losey’s which he preferred.
The film is a
reenactment of the final months of Trotsky’s life beginning on May Day,
1940, in Mexico and is based on books, diaries, and journals about and
by the Bolshevik-Leninist agitator and founder of the Red Army. Thus, it
bears the weight of a certain history that is both heavily staged and
cinematographically compelling.
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