Cold War Cinema

In this episode, Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas are joined by guest Silas Nathan to discuss Mikhail Kalatozov's iconic film, I Am Cuba (1964), a Soviet-Cuban collaboration about the years just before and during the revolution. 
Silas Nathan is a Latin Americanist, translator, and photographer whose work focuses on US-Latin America relations. He wrote his undergraduate thesis about Cuban cinema. He has a BA in Spanish Studies and a master's degree in teaching, both from Bard College. 
In this episode we discuss: 
The recent US State Department Cuba report, its implications for political organizing, and its connection to Cold War history. 
The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, or ICAIC, the state-funded filmmaking organization established in March of 1959, just three months after the Revolutionary victory. The organization is still making films to this day. 
The historical and political context of I Am Cuba
Kalatov's dialectical aesthetic vision
The incredible production and cinematography of I Am Cuba
The misunderstood legacy of I Am Cuba and its orginal reception in Cuba.  
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Silas's recommendations: the books Cuban Cinema by Michael Chanan and Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott; the news organization Belly of the Beast; and the 1968 film Memories of Underdevelopment, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
Tony's recommendations: the 1944 Haitian novel Gouverneurs de la rosée, by Jacques Roumain, and the 1968 Soviet novel The Foundation Pit, by Andrei Platonov.
Jason's recommendations: the Cuba Analysis podcast, especially the recent episode with Prof. Isaac Saney; the book We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World by Helen Yaffe; and the 1977 film De cierta manera (One Way or Another), directed by Sara Gómez.
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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 coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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:
Follow Silas on X (Twitter) here: @jsnathan03, and check out Concrete Conditions, Silas's Substack on history and culture.
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. 
Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X 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!

In this bonus episode we thought we'd do something different and chat about our personal backgrounds, our early cinema memories, and our scholarly interests today. We had fun with this conversation and we hope you enjoy it! 
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Jason Christian recommends the book-length essay The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
Tony Ballas recommends the book The Antinomies of Realism by Fredric Jameson and the movie Toy Story 5 (2026)
Paul T. Klein recommends the books The Monster Show by David J. Skal and Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People by Despina Kakoudaki, as well as the film Intruder in the Dust (1949)
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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 coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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:
Follow Taylor uses the handle @trgenovese on X, Instagram, and Letterboxd. Information on his scholarship and visual art can be found on his website at taylorgenovese.com.
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. 
Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X 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!

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). 
Whitney Strub is associate professor of History at Rutgers University–Newark. He is the author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (Columbia University Press, 2011) and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression (University Press of Kansas, 2013), co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), and editor of Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community (Rutgers University Press, 2024). His work has also appeared in Radical History Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Nation, and Temple of Schlock, among other venues. He is a longtime member and former chair of North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Whitney recommends Roberta Findlay's 1975 adult film Anyone But My Husband and the new book Baltimore's Black Arts Then & Now: Behind the Scenes of a Collaborative Public Humanities Project by Mary Rizzo
Jason recommends the book Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse, 1960–1990, co-edited by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan. Check out our interview with Andrew Nette from 2024. 
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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 coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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:
Follow Whitney on X at @whitstrub. 
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. Jason also writes an infrequent newletter on left-wing cinema at Notes on Radical Cinema. 
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 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 cinematic career
The political and historical context of Fail Safe (1964), a film that captures the paranoia of nuclear proliferation
The film's critique of war technology and how that maps onto our current era of AI-assisted warfare. 
 The limits of Hollywood storrytelling for a truly radical critique of US imperialism
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Jason recommends the 1992 book Signatures of the Visible by Fredric Jameson.
Paul recommends the novel Advise and Consent by Allen Drury and Otto Preminger's 1962 film adaptiion Avise & Consent. 
Tony recommends the book Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality by Fredric Jameson and W.E.B. Du Bois's  book Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. 

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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 coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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:
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. Jason also writes an infrequent newletter on left-wing cinema at Notes on Radical Cinema. 
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!

"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."
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (1986)

The Cold War Cinema team is joined by guest Taylor R. Genovese to discuss Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature film, Ivan's Childhood (1962), a Soviet masterpiece about the Great Patriotic War and prime example of Thaw–era cinema.
Taylor R. Genovese is an assistant professor of philosophy at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He has also been a filmmaker and photographer for over a decade. His multimodal and transdisciplinary research focuses on Marxism, historical memory, and borderlands. He is also an editor and board member at Iskra Books, a nonprofit scholarly publisher that releases original works of revolutionary theory, history, ecology, and art. 
In this episode we discuss: 
Andrei Tarkovsky's life and career
The historical and political context of Ivan's Childhood
Tarkovsky's aesthetic vision and theological concerns
How the concept of "toska" shapes the sensibilities of the literary and cinematic arts in the Slavic world, including in Tarkovsky's films.
The moving image representation of trauma and transcendence in Ivan's Childhood.
The poetry of Andrei's father, Arseny Tarkovsky, and its influence on the filmmaker.
The Soviet astethetics of Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), as articulated in his book Art and the Working Class, which Genovese translated from the Russian in 2022. To purchase the book (or download a free PDF), click this link.  
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode: 
Taylor recommends the films Come and See (1985, dir. Elem Klimov) and Dead Man's Letters (1986, dir. Konstantin Lopushanskiy).
Paul recommends a film and a record: Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925) and U2's War (1983).
Tony recommends the book Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, by Valentin Voloshinov, and the new essay "The Enchanted Biopolitics of Dark Cosmism" by our guest Taylor R. Genovese.
Jason recommends the film Kes (1969, dir. Ken Loach)
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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 coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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:
Taylor uses the handle @trgenovese on X, Instagram, and Letterboxd. Information on his scholarship and visual art can be found on his website at taylorgenovese.com.
Follow Jason on Bluesky at @JasonChristian.bsky.social, on X at @JasonAChristian, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic. 
Follow Anthony on Bluesky at @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X 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!