Chinese Propaganda Posters

okay, so it's a bit of a stretch to relate Chinese communist propaganda to the thirties, but never mind, it's too cool for me not to post it.. and in a way it feels like the artistic style in some communist countries never developed, so it's like they continued living in the the 30s or 40s forever.:

Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages

"This site is dedicated to the Chinese propaganda poster as it has been produced from 1937 till the present day. So-called propaganda art has played a major supporting role in the many campaigns that were designed to mobilize the people, and throughout the People's Republic, the propaganda poster has been the favored vehicle through which art conveyed model behavior. I've been collecting these Chinese political posters for many years now, and have brought together quite a nice collection of some 2,000 titles, spanning almost six decades of Chinese poster production. From time to time, new sections will be added to the site, devoted to the political, social and economic movements and developments that have found their way into visual propaganda over the years. As my collection expands over time, existing sections will expand as well in order to include more or more exciting posters that I have acquired."

Soviet propaganda DVD

Another super interesting DVD title on the DVD Savant list is the 4 DVD box set "Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika". Not all of us have the money for the set, but fortunately there's a cool 27 minute excerpt from the extra material available on the this web site: http://store.russiananimation.com/ansopr.html

Soviet Posters

And International Institute of Social History has Soviet Posters!

Spanish Civil War posters

And on a similar note, University of California has a collection of propaganda posters from the Spanish Civil War.

Nazi Propaganda

Calvin College has a collection of Nazi (and East German) propaganda translated into English . The collection also includes scans of posters and post cards .

Public domain films: Reefer Madness (1936)

Some films from the 1930s have entered the public domain and are available on youtube.

As one Youtube comment writer puts it, " Our grandparents smoked pot!"


(That's only part I of the film, more parts here.)

From wikipedia: "Reefer Madness is a 1936 propaganda film revolving around the tragic events that follow when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marihuana": a hit and run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and descent into madness all ensue. The film was directed by Louis J. Gasnier and starred a cast composed of mostly unknown bit actors. It was originally financed by a church group and made under the title Tell Your Children."

Complete wikipedia article.

Leni Riefenstahl

So. Leni Riefenstahl. Leni "I'm completely innoncent. I wasn't a party member. I thought the nazi-thing was some kind of boy-scout organisation" Riefenstahl. Master director and master nazi propagandist.

(I plan to de a series of short visual portraits of female icons from the 30s, and it's propably a bit unfortunate that Riefenstahl is the first one. But I'll probably do famous anti-Nazi Marlene Dietrich next, hopefully that'll even things out.)

The page http://www.dasblauelicht.net has a lot of Riefenstahl information, including posters from her early career as an acress. She mostly acted in German 'mountain'-films, a late 20s/early 30 strange proto-nazi breed of national cinema, which were mostly about good looking young atheltic Germans, climbing German mountain peaks. Weird shit:








Now her propaganda masterpiece "Triumph of the Will", that's a truly scary film. I have a hard time getting through the last part, which has all the really annoying nazi speeches, but the first part and the middle section are completely terrifying. Sometimes it feels almost like someone had travelled to a parallel universe with a camera, a parallel universe where the Third Reich won the war and became this all encompassing global Empire, bigger than The Roman Empire. It's so big, it's so dark, it's so chilling.

Of course you also get the feeling that it wouldn't have lasted that long - if all those ugly stupid semi-bald male nazis had married all those beautiful teutonic maidens, they'd probably have ruined the bloodline because of bad genes, and after a couple of generations they have to kill their own sons according to their own ideals about a master-race. Oh well. It's never easy being an 'über-mensch'.















I've never seen her 2-part "Olympia" sports documentary, but there are some clips on Youtube. Great editing, and nice bodies. You gotta admit that. Looks pretty awesome actually. And it probably has fewer stupid nazi speeches than in "Triumph of the Will", I might get it on DVD one day:



Prologue



Last Diving Sequence: