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 Roach, and Nina Simone. Ballas breaks down how the film links Cold War coups and cultural propaganda to present-day resource extraction in the Congo, and why the documentary’s archival style is itself a radical political act. Ballas also discusses his recent piece on the film (co-authored with Gerald Horne), "Antidote to Soft Power: Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État" for Scalawag Magazine.

Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Also, make sure you check out and subscribe to Wise the Dome TV.

_____________________

Logo by Jason Christian

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!

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 cinema. We hope you enjoy this show! Don't forget to subscribe to The Socialist Shelf and The Desi Gaze, and leave us a review!

Jacob, from The Socialist Shelf, has written a novel, and you can pre-order it here.

Music for The Socialist Shelf by Solo Monk (@SoloMonk256 on Twitter).

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 embasy in Ottawa, where he worked, and defected to Canada. This act of espionage led to the dismantling of a Soviet "atomic spy ring," and the arrests or numerous people both in Canada and the United States.

At a time of relative peace post-WWII, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther considered The Iron Curtain "a highly inflamatory film" and a dangerous provocation. "Hollywood fired its first shot in the 'cold war' against Russia yesterday," Crowther writtes in his review, "just when a faint hope was glimmering that maybe moderation in fact might be achieved.”

_____________________

We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:

Paul recommends the pro-Soviet Hollywood propaganda film Mission to Moscow (1943; dir. Michael Curtiz)

Jason recommends the 2000 book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders

_____________________

Please subscribe to the podcast, and don't forget to leave a review!

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonAChristian and Anthony at @tonyjballas (same handles on BlueSky). Follow Paul on BlueSky at @ptklein.com. Paul writes about movies at www.howtoreadmovies.com. Paul's handle on Letterboxd is https://letterboxd.com/ptklein/; Jason's is https://letterboxd.com/exilemagic/.

_____________________

Logo by Jason Christian

Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).

Please drop us a line anytime at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.

Happy listening!