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Article: Film as Political Vehicle: Two Films Offer Insight into Today's Iraq.
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Film as outlet for political comment is anything but a new concept. Debatably, the two most important silent films ever made were Sergei Eisenstein's ode to the Russian Revolution Potemkin in 1916 and D.W. Griffith's less than politically correct civil war epic Birth of a Nation in 1919. Potemkin acted as a call to arms for the Russian populace while Birth of a Nation is revisionist history about a war barely 50 years old at the time. "We will be able to teach history in the future through the film medium," stated Griffith.(1)
Criticism for both these films has a tendency to concentrate on their technical achievements. The revolutionary technique of Potemkin, ...