What Do We Do Now? Nominating Thread for a Political-Film Poll...

To Live (Zhang Yimou, 1994)

A president, unless also Gerard Butler

I'm not sure what that means...

Oh I'm just joking - that the three "Gerard Butler saves the President" films shouldn't count as they're really not very interested in politics (and, I understand, terrible)

A Touch of Sin (2013)

was thinking of nomming that but thought it was .. hmm fuck knows.. erm cinema verite/social realism with genre touches.. but would happily vote for it nevertheless cos it's class.

on that note..

Platform (2000)

Could nom and vote for almost all of Jia's, same applies to Peter Watkins tbh. Am mulling over Buñuel at the moment.

Argo
Charlie Wilson's War

Amazing Grace
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
Lincoln
Munich
The Rise of Michael Rimmer
Scandal

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Hitler: A film from Germany
Germany in Autumn
The Third Generation
The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum
The Second Awakening of Crista Klages
Battleship Potemkin
Postwar History of Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess
Too Early, too Late
Being Gypsy
The Fall
Xala
A Soft note on a Sharp Scale
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Vietnam in War
The Patriot
One Man's War
Come and See
Here and Elsewhere
Rome, Open City
Narita: Peasants of the Second Fortress
Black Panthers
Far from Vietnam
Hour of the Furnaces
Death by Hanging

Germany, Year Zero
Day of Wrath
Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.

I think Sobibór is the greatest of Lanzmann's docs. The bit where Lerner describes standing nervously behind a hulking SS officer with an axe in his hand, describing that moment just before delivering the savage coup de grace to his fucking fat head is just amazing. I think it was a Shoah offcut but it is so powerful.

The Human Condition trilogy
The Leopard

I'll periodically repost the nominations document:

http://docs.google.com/document/d/12Ts0EtUkx1eDgstQGLQePHbwFtBGL5rbyDtIyRtziek/edit

xyzzzz: by Black Panthers, do you mean The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution from a few years ago, or is it something earlier?

Should The Human Condition be treated as one film or three (haven't seen it)?

There’s a Varda doc called black panthers

Thanks--I'll include both (I've seen the more recent).

xxp erm it's a trilogy based on one novel iirc and splitting it up takes up more room ..

well one six-volume novel.. but different times!

Chinatown

army of shadows

Sansho The Bailiff

feudal politics is politics

A City of Sadness

Le Gai savoir

Citizen Kane
A Lion Is in the Streets

All the King's Men (1949 version)

Clemenza - sorry yeah meant the Varda

Which Suddenly, sic--the old Sinatra film or the quasi-remake?

Having just gotten to the 1954 this month after a year on my Kanopy queue, I am mad at you for revealing a Uwe Boll remake

Point of Order, Millhouse: A White Comedy. There are other de Antonio films that would fit too--those are two I've seen.

...So Goes the Nation, Horns and Halos.

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment
Meet John Doe
October: Ten Days That Shook the World

good work clemenza. This is turning into a really good thread already and giving me new things to watch.

Thanks. I was thinking about Meet John Doe too--the perils of populism (depending upon your tolerance for Capra...like It's a Wonderful Life, actually quite a grim film).

Completely forgot what could conceivably be my #1 (and will have a hard time getting any other votes): The Champions, Donald Brittain's three-part documentary on Trudeau and Levesque that I've plugged on other threads.

Harlan County, USA
features a union politician and election, not government. I think it counts.

oh and here's a bad one that could only exist during the clinton years. republicans and democrats, they bicker! two gay panic jokes in the trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_57GKDXmXKk
(my fellow americans, in case it's ever removed)

Harlan County for sure.

I should never have brought that bit up about politicians and elections. I was just trying to keep a potentially mammoth nomination list under control. But things like Harlan Country, Carlos, Welfare, and countless other films obviously belong. If the nomination list ends up being huge, not a big deal.

In that spirit, I'll add Malcolm X (on just about every online list I see), The Weather Underground, and Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst.

That My Fellow Americans trailer looks like a parody (and not a particularly good one) of 90s high concept comedy. Also, I count three gay panic jokes--the Dykes on Bikes, the Pride parade, the sleeping guy fondling Lemmon.

I've never seen this but it sounds awesome, Old Mother Riley, MP .

https://d1t80wr11ktjcz.cloudfront.net/movieposters/h12/AllPhotos/71771/p71771_i_h12_ab.jpg

“Duck, You Sucker!” / A Fistful Of Dynamite

not a fan of Anthony Eden, but his excellent command of the French language in The Sorrow and The Pity is noteworthy.

Looks like this could be a series of by-decade polls instead, clemenza

Completely forgot what could conceivably be my #1 (and will have a hard time getting any other votes): The Champions, Donald Brittain's three-part documentary on Trudeau and Levesque that I've plugged on other threads.

― clemenza, Sunday, June 30, 2019 9:10 PM (yesterday)

clemenza -- i remember you mentioning this doc before and have thought about checking it out. would you say it's accessible even if you don't know much about canadian politics?

I think so, yes. They're basically a Canadian version of Kennedy-Nixon; they come to prominence at almost the same time, start as friends, end up as (sometimes bitter) rivals, and they even match stylistically: Trudeau's the glamour guy, Levesque the rumpled plodder (except in Quebec, where he's god). The one major difference is that Levesque, whatever you thought of his goal of breaking apart the country, comes across as someone with boundless integrity.

You can watch the whole thing online if you're interested:

https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_1/
https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_2/
https://www.nfb.ca/film/champions_part_3/

thanks! i suspect i'll be using this poll as an excuse to catch up on a lot of things i've been meaning to watch.

Vietnam films: I'll nominate Hearts and Minds, The Deer Hunter, and Coming Home, which all have a clear political stance on that particular war. I'm less sure on Casualties of War and Apocalypse Now--beyond their default anti-war position--so I'll leave them for anyone else who thinks they belong. They seem more about the battlefield and in-the-moment sensation.

Has this been mentioned yet?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/No_%282012_film%29.jpg

No.

Face in the crowd!

Aka, From the Hills of Wasilla--definitely.

I added a few more films to the nominations list without posting here. (Yes, this is one of those pointless no-news-is-no-news bumps.) The list is just a guide anyway--write-ins, when voting starts, are fine.

http://docs.google.com/document/d/12Ts0EtUkx1eDgstQGLQePHbwFtBGL5rbyDtIyRtziek/edit

Ice
Report
Breaking With Old Ideas
Deserter
23rd Psalm Branch
Memories of Underdevelopment
BPM (Beats per Minute)
Westler
The Normal heart
The Making of Monsters
Zero Patience
It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives
A Virus Knows no Morals
We Want Roses Too
Numéro deux
Le FHAR (Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire)
Chorus
My Son John
The Country and the City: A Film With Raymond Williams
Le temps des bouffons
Winter Wind
Red Psalm
Moi, un noir
Petit à petit
Soleil O
West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty
Too Early, Too Late
Black Girl
From the Cloud to the Resistance
From the Pole to the Equator
Class Relations
Pays barbare
Piece Mandala/End War
Louisiana AKA The Other Side
From the Other Side
Race d'Ep: un siècle d'images de l'homosexualité

State of Siege, Costa-Gavras
Operación Ogro. Gillo Pontecorvo
The Champions, Donald Brittain (originally a mini-series, it was given a cinematic release and so i think qualifies)