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When Herbert Kline, Hans Burger, and Alexander Hammid’s Crisis: A Film of the Nazi Way premiered in New York City on March 11, 1939, agitprop was largely affiliated with European styles of theater, literature, and film that confronted viewers and readers with political messages. The Soviets in particular helped to define this mode of art in conjunction with the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Crisis, though, introduced a new form of agitprop that combined the style of an expository documentary with the exigency of a newsreel.

The film documents the circumstances that led to the occupation of Czechoslovakia, beginning with images of maps and narration by American actor Leif Erickson before portraying daily life in Prague. Crisis abounds in luminous shots of Prague’s many cathedrals and castles, presenting the city as a thriving, peaceful place that will shortly be uprooted by Nazi infiltration.

Redolent of Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera,...

Doclisboa's retrospectives are moments distinguished by curatorial projects that aim to offer a precise and comprehensive vision of the themes and filmmakers to which they are dedicated; the preview session that will take place on the terrace of the Cinemateca Portuguesa on the 7th of July at 21h30, will be a first glimpse into this year's programme.

This year Doclisboa, in partnership with Cinemateca Portuguesa, dedicates its thematic retrospective to the delicate coalition of radical filmmakers who, in the midst of the Great Depression, fought to birth the new genre of Social Documentary as a tool for socio-political change in the USA.

In parallel to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's commitment to social justice through the policies of his government's New Deal in the 1930s, a generation of filmmakers sought to infuse facts with feelings, art with agitprop and propaganda, through a cinema of reality that sought to communicate, and perhaps even help resolve,...

As is annual tradition, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced this year’s 25 film set to join the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Selected for their “cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance,” the films picked range from such beloved actioners as “Die Hard,” childhood classic “The Goonies,” the seminal “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and the mind-bending “Memento,” with plenty of other genres and styles represented among the list.

The additions span 1905 to 2000, and includes Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, silent movies, animation, shorts, independent, and even home movies. The 2017 selections bring the number of films in the registry to 725.

“The selection of a film to the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to American cinema and the nation’s cultural and historical heritage,” Hayden said in an official statement. “Our love affair with motion pictures is a testament to their enduring power to enlighten, inspire and...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 725 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2017 list, which includes such Hollywood classics as Die Hard, Titanic, and Superman along with groundbreaking independent features like Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of Performers, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger, and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Also making this list are a pair of Kirk Douglas-led features, Ace in the Hole and Spartacus, as well as Christopher Nolan’s Memento and more. Check out the full list below and you can watch some films on the registry for free here.

Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)

Based on the infamous...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

For almost 30 years, Mark Landis forged artwork and passed it off as his own to various museums around the country. It wasn’t until Matthew Leininger, a registrar at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, investigated the pieces in 2008 that the forgery was exposed. Leininger dedicated his time to investigating Landis further, and the scale of forgeries was revealed in 2012. Both men are featured in Art and Craft, a documentary about Landis, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Sam Cullman and co-directed by Mark Becker. Because Landis never sold his work to the museums, only donated the works in what he calls acts of “philanthropy”, he was never prosecuted.

The Hollywood Reporter’s John DeFore said, “The film will appeal to art lovers, but some viewers who can hardly tell their Cezannes from Chagalls will find the story fascinating as well.”

The film was picked by...