Film Series 2026
- Dr. Kathryn Campbell
- Feb 13
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 1
Moral Responsibility of Artists in the Face of Political Power
A series review by Kate Campbell
How do art and politics meet? Do they conflict? Can art serve a political purpose and remain art? Do artists have any moral responsibility outside of their art? These are very complex questions, which this year’s films addressed.
Opening Credits
The first two films were set in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The first artist claimed her films for Hitler were only about art, yet after those films she never made another. The second was a thinly veiled portrayal of a real stage actor and director who completely adopted the Nazi line. The film showed the fictionalized character caught in terror, but the real man remained a major figure in German theatre until his death in 1963.
Trumbo shifted our attention to mid-twentieth-century America, where a gifted screenwriter chose prison and professional exile rather than betray his principles, later writing beneath his talent to support his family while waiting for public opinion to change. Finally, Death and the Maiden confronted the aftermath of dictatorship, asking whether justice, revenge, memory, and art can ever be untangled from one another.
Together, these four films asked how artists — and those shaped by political violence — respond when power demands loyalty, silence, compromise, or reckoning. Self-deception, ambition, courage, survival, and moral clarity all appeared, sometimes in the same person.
Feature Presentation
FEBRUARY 3
The Wonderful, Awful Life of Leni Riefenstahl
A 1993 German documentary
This film portrayed the amazing life and some of the work of Hitler’s most skilled propagandist. Her masterworks were of Nazi spectacles, including the Nuremberg Rally of 1934 - a huge display of marching, music, flags, and Nazi leaders, especially Hitler. The first part of this screened film was her work there.
Her second work was “Olympia,” four hours on the Berlin 1936 Olympics, which was also her last film. She was disgraced but always claimed that the films were not propaganda. Why? Because there was no voice-over. Puh-lease.
According to Google, her post-war photography included a portrait of Mick and Bianca Jagger. She became a counter-culture icon? Her films are artistically stunning—but the message? She wishes she hadn’t done the films, but only because of her trouble after the war.
FEBRUARY 10
Mephisto
A 1981 Hungarian historical drama
The actor/director in Mephisto got his start in a provincial revolutionary small theatre, which was definitely not good enough for him. A powerful ally helped him get an inferior position in Berlin, but he eventually came to star as Mephisto, the devil, in one of Germany’s best-loved plays.
As a protégé of the Prime Minister, he then became director of the Prussian State Theatre, which required him to adopt the whole German racist line, in spite of his Black lover.
His version of Hamlet was a strong North German thinker, which was strange enough. At the curtain call, the whole cast, except Hamlet, was dressed like Hagar the Horrible, with horned helmets and shields. Ophelia had two long blond milkmaid-braids. The former revolutionary perfectionist had come to this. A man who once prided himself on artistic integrity and radical ideals became exactly what he would once have despised — an instrument of state propaganda and personal ambition. A dramatic humiliation underscoring his moral collapse ended the film.
Having learned the gossip about Gustaf Gründgen, the artist portrayed in this film, I can’t resist sharing it. The author of the book Mephisto, the basis for this film, was Thomas Mann, Gründgen’s brother-in-law. Gründgen remained a major director until his death in 1963. Although Mann wrote the book in 1936, it was not published in West Germany until 1980. I couldn’t find anything that even commented on his collaboration. The film was much more satisfying.
FEBRUARY 17
Trumbo
A 2015 American biopic
The first two films of this series showed how two major artists responded to the challenges of Nazi Germany: one to praise the evil beautifully, the other to prostitute his art for fame and power.
Trumbo, however, is an American film about a dark and largely forgotten period in the mid-twentieth
century United States: the Red Scare, culminating in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
During the 1930s and early 1940s, a number of American intellectuals saw communism as an antidote to the desperate poverty of the Depression and the growing power of fascism. After World War II, many powerful Americans, alarmed by Soviet military strength, feared internal subversion from communists, particularly in Hollywood. In 1944, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was formed to protect the film industry and the nation from “communist and fascist infiltration.” Members included John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Walt Disney, Cecil B. DeMille, and many others. In 1947, HUAC came to Hollywood to expose communist influence in the movie industry.
The Hollywood Ten, including Dalton Trumbo, refused to cooperate with the investigation, were convicted of contempt of Congress, and were imprisoned for a year. Some refused to “name names,” while others did, likely to protect their own careers. Film studios responded with an unofficial blacklist banning anyone even suspected of communist ties from work in the industry. At least 250 people were banned, including Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Lena Horne, Leonard Bernstein, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Pete Seeger, Arthur Miller — and, of course, the Ten.
Enough background. On to the film.
We see Trumbo in the context of the groups he opposes: first the alliance of Hollywood super-patriots, then the House Un-American Activities Committee. Trumbo and friends pass out leaflets about the First Amendment to a crowd leaving an event featuring John Wayne. Wayne’s speech praises soldiers, with film clips showing him as a war hero, but as he leaves, Trumbo reminds him that he never served.
HUAC’s questioning of Trumbo is introduced by clips from the actual hearings, showing youthful images of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney, and Robert Montgomery. Trumbo refuses to cooperate, asking what evidence they have against him. The other nine claim First Amendment rights. All are convicted of contempt of Congress and imprisoned for a year. When they are released in 1951, no one will hire them.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Trumbo had been the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. After prison, he had to persuade others to put their names on his work and, along with the other Ten, wrote poor scripts for King Brothers under false names. He needed to feed his family. During this period, he wrote two Oscar-winning films, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, but not under his own name. In 1960, Otto Preminger hired him to rework the script of Exodus under his own name, and Kirk Douglas did the same for Spartacus. That was essentially the end of the blacklist.
So far, this series of films has shown a screenwriter who gave her gifts to Nazi propaganda but insisted it was all about art; another who prostituted his gifts for fame without signs of self-awareness; and Trumbo, who wrote below his skill level to support his family, fully aware of what he was doing and even maintaining a sense of humor. When the Screen Writers Guild honors him in 1969 with its Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, he urges everyone to make peace with the past and with each other — absolving friends who had cooperated with HUAC and remained prosperous.
The story is harsh, but it is told with Trumbo’s sense of humor. The performances deserve mention. Trumbo grows through each experience — prison, family strain, anonymity, and isolation — and Bryan Cranston’s nuanced performance holds it all together. Helen Mirren’s Hedda Hopper, the powerful Hollywood gossip columnist famous for her hats, is dogmatic and devious. John Goodman is very funny as King, the highly self-aware producer of low-budget films. Cranston, Mirren, and the film received numerous award nominations.
FEBRUARY 24
Death and the Maiden
A 1994 Chilean/Argentinian psychological thriller/drama
Death and the Maiden, a 1994 film directed by Roman Polanski and adapted from the play of the same name by Ariel Dorfman, defies simple characterization. Earlier films in our series were complex and thoughtful but comparatively easy to understand.
Not so this one. A synopsis of the action is easy: a survivor of torture during a past dictatorship confronts the man she believes raped and tortured her during the bad old days.
Paulina (played by Sigourney Weaver), who has been tortured, fiercely insists to her husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson), whom she protected by accepting the torture, that a stranger who seems like a good Samaritan (Dr. Miranda, played by Ben Kingsley) was her torturer and would pay for it. Right there. Right then. Baffling mind games and threats of violence bounce around, especially between Paulina and Gerardo, but are never really resolved. Amid the suspense, the viewer learns (or do we really?) secrets all three had kept hidden.
Our film series’ theme is the relation between art and politics, but Paulina, who demands a reckoning for past sufferings, is not an artist. So what about the director and author? The director, Roman Polanski (b. 1933), is a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust as a child, though his mother died in Auschwitz. His films, including Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974), have won accolades and numerous awards. While he lived in the US, the Manson family killed his wife Sharon Tate and their baby and he now lives in France to avoid prosecution for drugging and raping a 13-year-old in 1978. The film’s setting is an unnamed country in South America, but Polanski insists that its action is universal, that all over the world people have to deal with their former oppressors or torturers. His own life has taught him about oppression and suffering, though his life choices raise even harder questions than this film.
The playwright, a Russian Jew named Ariel Dorfman (b. 1942-), was born in Russia but spent the first ten years of his life in the US until the Red Scare that got Trumbo forced his family to Chile. He was cultural advisor to the democratically elected Salvador Allende, and has lived in several countries since then, most recently dividing his time between Chile and the US. A prolific writer in all genres, Dorfman frequently writes about his experience after the fall of Allende and living in exile. He is the perfect example of an artist witnessing to evil and demanding a moral reckoning.
Final Frame
This series asked difficult questions about art, ambition, politics, memory, and moral responsibility. None of the answers are simple, and that's the point. If you were not able to attend every screening, these films are well worth seeking out. Each one lingers long after the credits roll.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the series and helped make these conversations possible. Your thoughtful presence in the audience matters more than you know.
We would love to hear from you. Which film stayed with you the longest? Did you have a favorite? Leave a comment and share your thoughts. And if you have ideas for next year’s series — whether a single film or a unifying theme — please let us know. The conversation continues.
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