Cold War Cinema

In this bonus episode, Jason interviews the historian Whitney Strub about his scholarship and his new book  Films That Explode Like Grenades: Robert Kramer and the Search for a Radical Cinema , just published by University of Chicago Press. The book examines the New Left and its underground cinema through the life and films of one its most important participants, Robert Kramer (1939-1999).  Whitne...

The Cold War Cinema team returns to discuss Sidney Lumet's 1964 film  Fail Safe, a powerful (and bold) independent Hollywood production that paints a horrific picture of a potential nuclear war. The film was released the same year as Stanley Kubrick's  Dr. Strangelove and has remained in its shadow, unfairly, ever since.  In this episode we discuss:  Sidney Lumut's fascinating and underrated cinem...

"I want to underline my own belief that art must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition to it—otherwise life would become impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence." ―...

In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas speak with the literary critic  Ryan Ruby about New German Cinema, particularly the directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander Kluge, and the film movement's fascination with the Red Army Faction ( Rote Armee Fraktion ) A.K.A. the Baader–Meinhof Gang, an ultra-left militant group in West Germany that existed in various forms f...

In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Paul T. Klein interview the film historian Dr. Alice Lovejoy about her scholarship and her new book,  Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War . The book examines the long and storied histories of the film manufacturing giants Kodak and Agfa and provides a materailst analysis of their involved in US and Germany imperialism...

On this episode, the Cold War Cinema crew is joined by director, writer, and producer Adam McKay to discuss John Frankenheimer's paranoid, psychological thriller Seconds (1966). McKay has written and directed many celebrated feature films such as Anchorman (2004), Talladega Nights (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018), Don't Look Up (2021), and numerous others. Prior to t...

The Cold War Cinema team, Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein, return to discuss Mikhail Kalatozov's 1959 drama  Letter Never Sent .  Synopsis of the film: Four geologists descend on the Siberian Taiga. Over the course of a backbreaking summer sifting minerals in the icy, rushing waters of boreal rivers, the group–the experienced guide, Konstantin, a young couple, Andrei and Tanya,...

The Cold War Cinema team returns with special guest Aspen Ballas to discuss John Ford's 1956 western The S ear chers . Aspen is a PhD student of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research primarily focuses on aesthetics of race and class, and the relation between genre, medium, and politics. Synopsis of the film: Texas, 1868. A lone figure approaches a windswept homes...

The Cold War Cinema team returns to discuss Grigory Chukhray's 1959 war drama  Ballad of a Soldier.   Alyhosha is 19-years-old private on the Eastern Front during the Great Patriotic War (A.K.A. World War II). After destroying two German tanks, Alyosha, played by Vladimir Ivashov, is rewarded with a short leave to return home to see his mother and repair her roof. Over the next six days, the young...

In this bonus episode of Cold War Cinema, Jason Christian is joined by the independent filmmakers Eric Marsh and Christopher Jason Bell, to discuss the films and legacy of the British filmmaker and media theorist Peter Watkins, who died on October 30, 2025, one day after his nintieth birthday. Watkins stands apart in film history for his bold cinematic vision, his innovations of the pseudo-documen...

"They're here already! You're next! You're next! You're next!" The Cold War Cinema team returns to discuss the 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Something is off in the sleepy little town of Santa Mira, California. As residents begin worrying that their family and friends no longer seem to be who they say they are, Dr. Miles Bennell and his former flame Becky Driscoll slowly unc...

This week on Cold War Cinema, we look at Boris Barnet's  Poet (sometimes refered to as The Poet ) , a 1956 feature about the role of art and literature in war and revolution.  Join hosts Jason Christian, Tony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein for a broad-ranging conversation about the film and the politics of form and style. Throughout, we consider: The challenges of context-dependent domestic filmmaking...

"Are you waving the flag at me?" The Cold War Cinema team returns to look at Samuel Fuller's 1954 noir masterpiece, Pickup on South Street , with special guest Stephen Gillespie, film critic and cohost of The STACKS and I'm Thinking of Spoiling Things. When small-time thief Skip McCoy picks the wrong pocket on a busy subway car, he quickly becomes the most popular lowlife in town, trailed by crook...

In this bonus episode, cohost Jason Christian interviews the independent filmmaker Christopher Jason Bell. Besides being a filmmaker, Bell is a board of director of the streaming co-op MeansTV . Bell's archival doc series about George W. Bush's presidency, Miss Me Yet , can be watched on MeansTV and received praise from numerous outlets such as The Baffler , AV Club , and Filmmaker magazine. His t...

This week on Cold War Cinema, we discuss the 1953 Soviet science-fiction drama, Silvery Dust, directed by Abram Room and Pavel Armand, a film once again set in the United States. The film concerns an American scientist who has developed a powerful new weapon of mass destruction designed to wipe out populations within a large area while leaving no harmful radioactive residues or traces. In the film...

"Normal people want the basic human rights that accompany citizenship in any sovereign nation. I don't… I don't live anywhere; I'm not a citizen at all. I don't need my human rights." The Cold War Cinema team is back with special guest Matthew Ellis, a researcher, artist, and cohost of the Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation Movie Film Podcast , for a special bonus episode covering Wes Anderso...

This week on Cold War Cinema, we discuss Robert Stevenson's 1949 drama, I Married a Communist, also known as Woman on Pier 13. This Hollywood production is one of the most storied—and notorious—anti-communist films of the early Cold War era. The movie revolves around a San Francisco shipping executive who worked his way up from the docks, as a stevedore, only to find himself embroiled in a Communi...

"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, 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 ed...

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 Roac...

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...

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 em...

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 sta...

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...

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 hear...

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....