The next installment of the Locarno Film Festival will feature a major retro focusing on one of the darkest chapters in the US entertainment industry: the infamous Hollywood Blacklist.
Titled “Red and Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist,” this timely retro piece, which opens Thursday at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, was overseen by Locarno’s Ethan Hoschbaft, who is also co-director of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato festival. Locarno is producing Retro in partnership with Cinémathèque Suisse and with support from the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
“As the U.S.-Soviet Cold War grew to become a defining feature of world politics, right-wing voices in the American political system advocated communist infiltration of Hollywood,” the festival said in a statement. “At the instigation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), public hearings much like prosecutors ensued. The industry reacted in horror, upending careers, forcing artists to adopt pseudonyms, stifling free expression, and imposing blacklists that exiled creators overseas. Guilt by association tore families apart, and films embodying left-wing ideas, real or imagined, were suppressed.”
The Red and Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist program “paints a complex portrait of a time when creators faced unprecedented abuses of state and industry power and braved fierce artistic resistance,” the statement said.
The retro will feature yet-to-be-identified important films by a wide range of directors, writers and stars, including John Garfield, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright and Charles Chaplin, and will trace “the origins and aftermath of the Red Scare in the United States, Europe and beyond,” according to a statement. Covers fiction, documentaries, newsreels and short stories from the US, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico and Argentina.
“Red and Black – The Hollywood Left and the Blacklist” brings together digital restorations and archival prints for a unique examination of the films of the period, and is accompanied by a book featuring contributions from international film scholars and critics on the films of the Hollywood left, and a podcast written by Khoshbakht.
In a statement, Khoshbakht called the retro piece “the most timely work I’ve ever worked on in my life.”
“The imaginative ways in which political consciousness is incorporated into the film, and the tragic consequences of those political decisions, form the show’s thrilling story and provide a new perspective on the McCarthy-era witch hunts,” he said.
Locarno Artistic Director Jonah A. Nazzaro commented, “This retrospective will be a unique critical and historical endeavor that sheds new light on the grim history of Hollywood history.”
The 79th Locarno Film Festival will be held from August 5th to 15th.
