Cold War Cinema

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 from 1970 to 1998. 
Ryan Ruby is the author of Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024) and The Zero and the One: A Novel (Twelve Books, 2017). For his essays and reviews, which have recently appeared in such venues as Harper's, Bookforum, and the New Left Review, he has received the Silvers Prize in Literary Criticism. He lives in Berlin, where he is working on a book of creative nonfiction about the city's mass transit system, tentatively titled Ringbahn: On Berlin Time, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in late 2027.
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Ryan Ruby's forthcoming book on the cultural history of Berlin, with particular interest in the music scene and cinema of the 1970s
The films Germany in Autumn (1978) and The Third Generation (1979) 
The Red Army Faction and 1960s/'70s militancy
The political climate in Berlin today
V.I. Lenin's critique of "adventurism"  
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We love to give recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
      Tony recommends the two-volume book The Magic of Robert-Houdin An Artist's Life The Watchmaker, Mechanician and Conjurer by Christian Fechner
      Ryan recommends the books Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust and Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman
      Jason recommends Bruce LaBruce's 2004 satirical RAF film The Raspberry Reich. [Warning: the film contains explicit sex scenes]
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Find past guest Andrew Nette's Letterboxd list of films inspired by or about the Red Army Faction here. Check out our interview with Nette here.
Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at [email protected].
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 
For more from your hosts and guest:
Find Ryan Ruby's work at www.ryanruby.info
Follow Jason on Bluesky @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, on X @jasonachristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. Jason also writes an occasional newsletter called Notes on Radical Cinema. 
Follow Anthony on Bluesky @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed @tonyjballas.
Follow Paul on Bluesky @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 
Logo by Jason Christian 
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 
Happy listening!

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 around the world. 
Alice Lovejoy is a media and cultural historian and comparatist whose research examines governmental and institutional media, and media technologies, in transnational perspective. Her book Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (University of California Press, August 2025) is a history of film and the factories where it was made. Shifting focus between the United States, Germany, the Belgian Congo, and the Soviet Union, the book considers the military, colonial, and environmental implications of film's entanglement with the chemical industry.
Lovejoy's first book, Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military (Indiana University Press, 2015), was named co-winner of the Modern Language Association's 2018 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures. It was also awarded Honorable Mention for the 2016 University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies (ASEEES) and the 2017 Czechoslovak Studies Association Book Prize, and longlisted for the 2016 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. This book traces the emergence of an experimental film culture in the Czechoslovak Army's film studio (1929-1969), and includes a DVD of thirteen short films produced by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense. Lovejoy is also at work on a project studying the intertwined histories of postwar children's television and film institutions—among them, Yugoslavia's "Film and Child" Commission, Iran's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon), East Germany's National Center for Children's Film and Television, Czechoslovakia's Center for Films for Children and Youth, and UNESCO's International Centre for Films for Children and Young People. With Mari Pajala, she co-edited Remapping Cold War Media: Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations (Indiana University Press, 2022), and she has published widely on East European, particularly Czech and Slovak, film and literature.
Lovejoy has worked as a film critic, curator, and filmmaker, including as an editor at Film Comment magazine. 
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We love to give recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Alice recommends the Norwegian television series Occupied (2015–2020), created by Jo Nesbø
Paul recommends the 2016 documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, directed by Bill Morrison
Jason recommends Walter Rodney's 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at [email protected].
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 
For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Alice on Instagram @alice__lovejoy, or on Bluesky @alicelovejoy.bsky.social,
Follow Jason on Bluesky @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed @tonyjballas.
Follow Paul on Bluesky @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 
Logo by Jason Christian 
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 
Happy listening!

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 this, McKay was a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade in the early 1990s, and head writer for Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2001. In 2019, McKay founded Hyperobject Industries, and has served as the executive producer of HBO's Succession (2019–2023), Game Theory with Bomani Jones (2022–2023), and, most recently, The Chair Company (2025) starring Tim Robinson. 
Synopsis of the film: Middle-aged banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) feels trapped in a life that has calcified into routine and regret. When he receives a phone call from an old friend who he thought was long dead, and a shadowy organization known simply as "the Company" offers him the ultimate second chance, he fakes his death, and undergoes radical surgery to assume a new identity. Reborn as artist Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson), he's given youth, wealth, and access to a new bohemian lifestyle on a seaside in Malibu. While his transformation at first feels intoxicating, the promise of freedom begins to fray and ultimately fracture. As Tony struggles to inhabit his new self, paranoia creeps in and the illusion of choice gives way to something far more unsettling.
Shot in stark black-and-white with disorienting lenses and claustrophobic compositions, Seconds is less a sci-fi fantasy than an existential nightmare—an unsettling meditation on identity, conformity, and the seductive lie that starting over can save us from who we are.
On this episode we discuss: McKay's work as a comedian, comedy writer, and filmmaker, his political and cinematic influences, the paranoid style of filmmaking in the 1960s, satire, the looming specter of climate apocalypse, why the world needs a Ho Chi Minh biopic, and much more.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Adam: Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident (2025) and Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014) 
Paul: A Little Solitaire: John Frankenheimer and American Film by Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer
Anthony Ballas: The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh by Dai Trang Nguyen and "Ho Chi Minh and Black Liberation" by Gerald Horne and Anthony Ballas.
Jason: John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964). 
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at [email protected].
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 
For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Adam on Instagram @mr.ghostpanther, or on Bluesky @ghostpanther.bsky.social,
Follow Jason on Bluesky @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed @tonyjballas.
Follow Paul on Bluesky @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 
Logo by Jason Christian 
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 
Happy listening!

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, and the brooding Sergei–search for diamond deposits to enrich themselves and their country. Throughout, Konstanin writes an extended letter home to his wife Vera. Sergei, too, writes a letter, though never meant to be read, expressing his jealousy and Andrei and love for Tanya. When a massive forest fire breaks out, however, the group must work together to survive, not only the blaze, but the ravages of the elements and the fast-approaching and deadly Siberian winter…
On this episode we discuss:
The unbelievable production of a film shot on location in the USSR taiga. 
How the film reflects the tenents of socialist realism in complex and creative ways. 
How the film shares many of the sensibilites of the western genre and pairs nicely with John Ford's The Searchers in this regard. 
The basic theoretical aspects of scientific socialism and how the filmmaker uses them to shape the film's narrative and themes. 
The allegorical use of a diamond in the Soviet context versus the same in the capitalist West. 
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Paul: Two "Northwesterns": Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952) and River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954)
Tony: Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War by Vincent Brown
Jason: Nail in the Boot (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1931) and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels
Also, check out this fascinating interview on the Actually Existing Socialism podcast with the scholar Sardana Nikolaeva, who studies the Indigenous peoples of the northern regions of the Soviet Union (and present-day Russia) and their connection to the diamond mines that are imagined in the film. 
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at [email protected].
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 
 For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Aspen on Letterboxed at @aspenballas.
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X at @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed at @tonyjballas.
Follow Paul on Bluesky at @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed at @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 
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Logo by Jason Christian 
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 
Happy listening!

The Cold War Cinema team returns with special guest Aspen Ballas to discuss John Ford's 1956 western The Searchers. 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 homestead, against a dusty blue sky and flaming red buttes and cathedral-like mesas. Returning from the fight for the Confederacy, Ethan Edwards arrives home to his brother Aaron, Aaron's wife Martha, and to their children Ben, Lucy, little Debbie, and their adopted son Martin Pawley. But this is rough country, and a Comanche raid leaves the Edwards family torn asunder–Aaron, Martha, and Ben dead, and Lucy and Debbie taken captive. For seven years, Ethan and Martin search the vast wilderness, motivated not only by family bonds, but in Ethan's case, bloodlust and wild, racist hatred–a search not only to find Lucy and Debbie, but to enforce racial and sexual purity and to define Americanness itself…
On this episode we discuss:
The American mythmaking in The Searchers and in westerns generally. 
John Ford's attempt to critique anti-Indigenous racism, and the limitations of such a critique in the context of Hollywood filmmaking of this era. 
Militant Liberty, a top-secret psychological warfare program created by the Pentagon to promote anti-communist themes in Hollywood movies during the Cold War. John Ford was an eager participant in the program.
The broader US imperialist context of the film's release and the historical background of the setting. 
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Aspen: The Face on Film by Noa Steimatsky; Raoul Peck's docuseries Exterminate all the Brutes (2021)
Paul: The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel 
 
Tony: Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous Land by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
 
Jason: Versions of  Hollywood Crime Cinema: Studies in Ford, Wilder, Coppola, Scorsese, and Others by Carl Freedman
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at [email protected].
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema. 
 For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Aspen on Letterboxed at @aspenballas.
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X at @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed at @tonyjballas.
Follow Paul on Bluesky at @ptklein.com, or on Letterboxed at @ptklein. Paul also writes about movies at www.howotreadmovies.com 
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Logo by Jason Christian 
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt). 
Happy listening!