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Propaganda
see all genres ›Nothing dates quite so fascinatingly (or tellingly) as cinema that prescribes for the audience how to live, wage war or view the political power in charge, be they calls to action or inaction. Documentaries, in particular, have long been used to manipulate popular opinion, often inadvertently revealing a great deal about the manipulators.
Discover Propaganda Films
Genres / Documentary / Propaganda
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Attention! Wolves!
With shades of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER, this unusual Soviet animation blends symbolic allegory and documentary photographs to warn against the persistent threat of fascism. A feral boy is found in the woods the same day that the Nuremberg Trials’ death sentences are carried out....Start your free trial to watch
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Ave Maria
Ivan Ivanov-Vano’s condemnation of the American war in Vietnam trades in some of the crude images one associates with Soviet propaganda: a soldier gunning down a child; clamoring capitalists superimposed over the killing fields. And yet its animation style is surprisingly subtle and its tone more elegiac than one might...Start your free trial to watch
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The Battle of Britain
Originally released in 1943, THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN represents the fourth movie in Frank Capra's epic WHY WE FIGHT documentary series. This film traces the fate of the British during the dark days of the Blitz. It is a portrait of the desperate, but ultimately successful struggle to prevent a Nazi invasion...Start your free trial to watch
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The Battle of Midway
The stars and director of THE GRAPES OF WRATH re-united under very different circumstances two years later for this undeniably hyperbolic yet stirring portrait of U.S. Naval forces rallying to defeat Axis conquerors. "Tom Joad" (Henry Fonda) and "Ma Joad" (Jane Darwell) were among the voice actors...Start your free trial to watch
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The Battle of San Pietro
Starting with an unusually romantic depiction of the region that became key to the Allies' capture of Italian territory from German forces, this was director/narrator John Huston's government-produced chronicle of the late 1943 battle. His film crew shot right alongside U.S. Army troops and (partly as a...Start your free trial to watch
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Beat the Fascist Pirates
This animated "political poster" grants "no mercy for Hitler's bloodthirsty sharks," which are depicted prowling international waters to sneakily "bite" Allied ships from beneath. Calling for patriots to “"Smash the fascist rats relentlessly! In the air, on land and at sea," it's a striking piece of...Start your free trial to watch
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China in Flames
CHINA IN FLAMES rallies popular support for the Soviet Union’s alliance with China using an eclectic array of animation techniques and rhetorical strategies. Bold cut-out caricatures of greedy imperialists give way to an allegorical story about rice farmers done in the style of Chinese watercolors. A heroic depiction of a...Start your free trial to watch
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The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
The campaign for a montage style that preserved the intelligibility of film as a historical record was bolstered by the 1927 release of Esfir Shub's compilation film THE FALL OF THE ROMANOV DYNASTY. Universally acclaimed, the film established Shub as a new type of documentarian, an editor-director. Made...Start your free trial to watch
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Fascist Boots on Our Homeland
FASCIST BOOTS ON OUR HOMELAND, made in the midst of the Second World War, is a stark animated short that portrays the Soviet Union as the last bulwark against the Nazi advance. In spite of the film’s grave historical ironies (“Fascism brings massive destruction, starvation and death to hundreds of...Start your free trial to watch
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Hell-Bent for Election
Chuck Jones took a break from directing Looney Tunes cartoons to make this labor-sponsored film for Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1944 Presidential campaign. It was produced by Industrial Film and Poster Service which, later rechristened United Productions of America (UPA), earned animation immortality with...Start your free trial to watch
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Interplanetary Revolution
“Warriors of the Revolution: Save Martian Workers Enslaved by Capitalism!” With that we’re launched into an exotic blend of Bolshevik ideology and H.G. Wells science fiction, made in the forward-looking year of Lenin’s death. The film’s futurist collage generates a riot of geometric forms and political...Start your free trial to watch
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Know Your Enemy: Japan
This U.S. War Department propaganda film was little seen for decades, its production so dogged by conflict that by the time of its completion World War II had ended. Famed Hollywood director Frank Capra (IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) assigned Dutch-born documentarian Joris Ivens in early 1943 to assemble a...Start your free trial to watch
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A Lesson Not Learned
Once a Nazi, always a Nazi: that’s the lesson not learned in this animated Soviet propaganda short. A former SS captain gets a free pass from the Allies after the war. Military prison affords many comforts: he listens to his favorite Nazi anthems, hides "Mein Kampf" in a Bible and composes anti-Soviet...Start your free trial to watch
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A Mighty Handshake
This animated Soviet "political poster" offers a surprisingly broad satirical depiction of Adolf Hitler running amuck over the map of Europe and his own broken treaties. You'll perhaps be surprised that Bugs Bunny doesn't turn up, though the climactic pile of skulls is perhaps more disturbing than Warner...Start your free trial to watch