‘The Sympathizer’ Fractures Identity into a Knockout Kaleidoscopic Tale
The mini-series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s kaleidoscopic tale The Sympathizer is a knockout account of colonialism, war, and (the loss of) identity.
communism
States of (Gay) Liberation in East Germany and West Germany
Samuel Clowes-Huneke’s decades-spanning, groundbreaking history of gay liberation in East Germany and West Germany challenges conventional assumptions about dictatorships and democracies.
Lecklider’s Historical Work Love’s Next Meeting Examines Homosexuals and Communism in the US
In the virulently anti-Communist and homophobic climate of the postwar era many feared any association between the emerging lesbian and gay cause and Communism.
The Mystery of History in Jia Zhangke’s ‘I Wish I Knew’
In Jia Zhangke’s documentary I Wish I Knew, many discuss the pivotal year of 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party officially took over China, reaching Shanghai. It was also the year my mother, putting a finger in the wind, left China with my sister.
Horrors in the Queer Film Closet: Horrifying Heteronormative Scapegoating
The artificial connection between homosexuality and communism created the popular myth of evil and undetectable gay subversives living inside 1950s American society. Queer film both reflected and refracted the homophobia.
Pudovkin Makes the Revolution Human: The Bolshevik Trilogy
Inspired by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Vsevolod Pudovkin would leave his chemistry studies for film to the betterment of Soviet cinema.
The Fog of the Interstitial: Existential Disaffection in Alea’s ‘Memories of Underdevelopment’
In Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment the protagonist is too estranged from his country to belong, doomed to existential disaffection
‘Red Winter’ Weathers the Heartbreaks of Communism
Swedish graphic novelist Anneli Furmar paints a bright window into a gray corner of political history.
Certainty Interrupted: ‘Exact Thinking In Demented Times’
As a history of ideas, this work is especially good at mapping the Vienna Circle's fascinating afterlife in the English-speaking countries where many prominent thinkers landed and flourished in the 20th century.
Sebestyen’s ‘Lenin’ Is All Too Human
Vladimir Lenin's life, his short tenure in power, and the subsequent path taken by the Soviet Union will always be a rich if sombre source of speculation in the history of possibility. Sebestyen's humane biography brings additional clarity to the matter.
Double-agents, Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and ‘Hitler in Los Angeles’
While America was riveted by the "Red Scare" on the one hand, it failed to see what the other hand, the Nazi threat, was doing.