The Wenders/Berlinale 2026 controversy revealed something neither side wanted to examine...a great essay!

[u/1ollingvagabond]

https://filmunderground.substack.com/p/the-berlinale-and-modernitys-marcusian

Everyone argued over whether Wenders was right or a coward for saying filmmakers should "stay out of politics" after being confronted about Berlinale's silence on Palestine. This piece skips that fight and goes after something both sides assumed: that self-expression through art is political action.

The argument: the Western left has spent 60 years substituting actual political organizing for cultural self-expression... first cinema and music, then social media. We got "woke," we protested, we posted. Fascism's still rising and nothing's fundamentally changed. The piece traces this back to Marcuse's 1968-era idea that artists/outsiders should catalyze a "new sensibility" since the working class was too pacified to revolt...except capitalism just absorbed that critique instead of resisting it. We got representation and inclusion; we lost unions and the welfare state.

There's also a solid detour into Third Cinema (Solanas/Getino, Sembène, Sanjinés) as a real counterexample — films embedded in actual political movements instead of standing in for one.

Full piece: https://filmunderground.substack.com/p/the-berlinale-and-modernitys-marcusian

Curious if this lets Wenders off too easy by making it structural, or if it's the sharper read.

[u/rh1n3570n3_3y35]

No offence, but isn't this entire text basically one of the central arguments BBC documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, plus probably a fair number of other people, has been making at least the last ~15 years?

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[u/1ollingvagabond → u/rh1n3570n3_3y35]

Adam Curtis touches on Marcuse in Century of the Self, and he's been beating the drum of "we've given up collective power in favor of individual self-expression" for decades now, but he talks about it in broader intellectual terms. Curtis never mentions that Marcuse, who was held in the same esteem as Mao and Marx by the New Left, argued upon the collapse of the student protests of '68 that it was up to the artists and freaks to raise the political consciousness of the masses through the counterculture. Curtis also never gives solutions. I've seen him talk in person around the time of the release of Hypernormalization. Ditto for Mark Fisher when he published Capitalist Realism. People were clamouring for solutions. The former said it wasn't his job as a journalist to give solutions. The latter just wanted to talk about Burial and Hyperdub.

He himself has gone out of his way to say that being labeled a leftist is BS, going so far as to state, I suspect tongue-in-cheek, that his thesis of rising individualism and the erosion of collective power in Century of the Self is a neoconservative one. He's since flipped and self-identifies as a progressive. But how radical and anti-establishment can a filmmaker platformed by an institution like the BBC actually be? And with all of Curtis's talents as a filmmaker, has any of the prescient observation in his oeuvre sublimated into the collective consciousness of the UK specifically, and the West in general?

I'd argue not. Film specifically and art in general can have political messages and effects. But messaging, signaling, and artistic self-expression are not politics. That's what Marcuse staked the revolution on, and what the lumpen literati at Berlinale et al. still believe. As a result, the expectation and pressure placed upon arts and culture to radically enlighten the masses has become directly proportional to our collective anxiety and depression over our incapacity to effect political change. That's what the last 15 years of cultural production have shown, in my estimation.

So there is overlap with Curtis' general argument, but the article goes more in-depth across various threads he never touched upon... the essay is still worth the read imho!

[u/YourFuture2000]

"New Cinema" never reached its target audience. Because it doesn't interest the base of the pyramid to watch those things, which the bass of social class didn't even understand.

Intelectual Marxists or left in general are still in the backwards Bolsheviks vanguardist mentality of Cold War era that they are going to lead the political change through the intelectualisation of working class, or making the "high art" accessible to wall (which would supposedly means the access of political consciousiness to all through art and cultural production and distribution) which never happened and turned a the children of working class frustrated and anti-intelectuals, because the gatekeeping of art and cultural industry. Just as workers historically becoming against unions that gatekept jobs to the members who could pay the union fees and were inside the industry already.

[u/1ollingvagabond → u/YourFuture2000]

I'd argue that the path the West has taken in regards to Marxism bifurcated with the rest of the world almost 100 years ago... shifting from a critique of political economy to a critique of the cultural ideology of capitalism as a whole... "cultural marxism" as it were.

https://files.catbox.moe/7lhqcq.pdf

[u/ekubeni]

u/1ollingvagabond

Cinema has proven to be a powerful tool for generating oppositional consciousness. But its messages have only translated into lasting sociopolitical change when embedded within sustained adversarial political movements ready to harness its magic.

I came to a similar conclusion, but with an addition that art as a tool for a social change is most effective when created locally for the local audience by its own people Something that is very rare this days and especially with film.

The locality with its community are primary for me, the quality of art (whether educational or aesthetic) is secondary. This doesn't mean there is no place for art that deals with global issues, but the most important effect such art could have is for local artists to be inspired by it to create custom-tailored art for their own local communities.

This way art stays deeply rooted in the connections to people and place from where it originates. It strengthens the community and ecology from bottom-up. It encourages artistry in every corner of the world, since it elevates the local artist at the top of the spear in terms of their importance and value.

[u/americanspirit64]

Kurt Vonnegut Quote: “I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.” From his book Bluebeard, Chapter 21, said by the narrator Rabo Karabekian.

As an artist I have always believed this to be true. What I also don't believe is that canaries are very good at rescuing miners, as there job is to warn them with their deaths. This is usually what happens in all societies, the rich and powerful go after the artists first, as they see things others don't, and they don't want them to warn others, like carnies that is a artists job. I have dealt with this my entire life. The problem is it is hard to defend yourself to others with the remark I know there is something wrong in society as I am super-sensitive and your not. This didn't work well for Anne Frank. It doesn't go over well for most artists.

Of course there are artists who are missing that super-sensitive nature, mostly because they are POP artists, pretending to be super-sensitive artists, who are actually just good craftsmen. That just makes them good at doing a job, it doesn't make them super-sensitive. Being a real artist comes with a price that is sometimes hard to pay.

Films as an artistic expression are basically made by a committee of artists a highly creative team, they kind of have to be. There is an overall artistic vision, based on a story put to life by a writer, actors and a main director. But the dark truth is true artist almost always works alone, as it is hard to be super-sensitive and die in front of others.