Cold War Cinema is a podcast about movies made during the first few decades of the Cold War (1947–1991). Each episode primarily focuses on one film, and the hosts, Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas, discuss the director's life and work, the historical context of the film, and examine its themes that relate to the turbulent politics of the era.
Theme music and editing on the first 14 episodes by Tim Jones; theme music from then on by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt), and editing by Jason Christian.
Logo by Jason Christian
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In this episode, Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas are joined by guest Silas Nathan to discuss Mikhail Kalatozov's iconic film, I Am Cuba (1964), a Soviet-Cuban collaboration about the years just before and during the revolution.
Silas Nathan is a Latin Americanist, translator, and photographer whose work focuses on US-Latin America relations. He wrote his undergraduate thesis about Cuban cinema. He has a BA in Spanish Studies and a master's degree in teaching, both from Bard College.
In this episode we discuss:
The recent US State Department Cuba report, its implications for political organizing, and its connection to Cold War history.
The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, or ICAIC, the state-funded filmmaking organization established in March of 1959, just three months after the Revolutionary victory. The organization is still making films to this day.
The historical and political context of I Am Cuba
Kalatov's dialectical aesthetic vision
The incredible production and cinematography of I Am Cuba
The misunderstood legacy of I Am Cuba and its orginal reception in Cuba.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Silas's recommendations: the books Cuban Cinema by Michael Chanan and Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott; the news organization Belly of the Beast; and the 1968 film Memories of Underdevelopment, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
Tony's recommendations: the 1944 Haitian novel Gouverneurs de la rosée, by Jacques Roumain, and the 1968 Soviet novel The Foundation Pit, by Andrei Platonov.
Jason's recommendations: the Cuba Analysis podcast, especially the recent episode with Prof. Isaac Saney; the book We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World by Helen Yaffe; and the 1977 film De cierta manera (One Way or Another), directed by Sara Gómez.
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
Bonus: Getting to Know Your Hosts
Season 2
Saturday, August 1, 2026 • Duration 01:46:44
In this bonus episode we thought we'd do something different and chat about our personal backgrounds, our early cinema memories, and our scholarly interests today. We had fun with this conversation and we hope you enjoy it!
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Jason Christian recommends the book-length essay The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
Tony Ballas recommends the book The Antinomies of Realism by Fredric Jameson and the movie Toy Story 5 (2026)
Paul T. Klein recommends the books The Monster Show by David J. Skal and Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People by Despina Kakoudaki, as well as the film Intruder in the Dust (1949)
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Follow Taylor uses the handle @trgenovese on X, Instagram, and Letterboxd. Information on his scholarship and visual art can be found on his website at taylorgenovese.com.
Bonus: Robert Kramer's Radical Cinema w/ guest Whitney Strub
Season 2
Wednesday, July 1, 2026 • Duration 01:51:23
In this bonus episode, Jason interviews the historian Whitney Strub about his scholarship and his new book Films That Explode Like Grenades: Robert Kramer and the Search for a Radical Cinema, just published by University of Chicago Press. The book examines the New Left and its underground cinema through the life and films of one its most important participants, Robert Kramer (1939-1999).
Whitney Strub is associate professor of History at Rutgers University–Newark. He is the author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (Columbia University Press, 2011) and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression (University Press of Kansas, 2013), co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), and editor of Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community (Rutgers University Press, 2024). His work has also appeared in Radical History Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Nation, and Temple of Schlock, among other venues. He is a longtime member and former chair of North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
The Cold War Cinema team returns to discuss Sidney Lumet's 1964 film Fail Safe, a powerful (and bold) independent Hollywood production that paints a horrific picture of a potential nuclear war. The film was released the same year as Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and has remained in its shadow, unfairly, ever since.
In this episode we discuss:
Sidney Lumut's fascinating and underrated cinematic career
The political and historical context of Fail Safe (1964), a film that captures the paranoia of nuclear proliferation
The film's critique of war technology and how that maps onto our current era of AI-assisted warfare.
The limits of Hollywood storrytelling for a truly radical critique of US imperialism
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Jason recommends the 1992 book Signatures of the Visible by Fredric Jameson.
Paul recommends the novel Advise and Consent by Allen Drury and Otto Preminger's 1962 film adaptiion Avise & Consent.
Tony recommends the book Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality by Fredric Jameson and W.E.B. Du Bois's book Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil.
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
S2 Ep. 13: Ivan's Childhood (1962, Andrei Tarkovsky) w/ guest Taylor R. Genovese
Saturday, May 30, 2026 • Duration 01:48:38
"I want to underline my own belief that art must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition to it—otherwise life would become impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence."
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (1986)
The Cold War Cinema team is joined by guest Taylor R. Genovese to discuss Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature film, Ivan's Childhood (1962), a Soviet masterpiece about the Great Patriotic War and prime example of Thaw–era cinema.
Taylor R. Genovese is an assistant professor of philosophy at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He has also been a filmmaker and photographer for over a decade. His multimodal and transdisciplinary research focuses on Marxism, historical memory, and borderlands. He is also an editor and board member at Iskra Books, a nonprofit scholarly publisher that releases original works of revolutionary theory, history, ecology, and art.
In this episode we discuss:
Andrei Tarkovsky's life and career
The historical and political context of Ivan's Childhood
Tarkovsky's aesthetic vision and theological concerns
How the concept of "toska" shapes the sensibilities of the literary and cinematic arts in the Slavic world, including in Tarkovsky's films.
The moving image representation of trauma and transcendence in Ivan's Childhood.
The poetry of Andrei's father, Arseny Tarkovsky, and its influence on the filmmaker.
The Soviet astethetics of Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928), as articulated in his book Art and the Working Class, which Genovese translated from the Russian in 2022. To purchase the book (or download a free PDF), click this link.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Bonus: New German Cinema and the Red Army Faction w/ guest Ryan Ruby
Season 2
Monday, April 27, 2026 • Duration 01:54:17
In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Anthony Ballas speak with the literary critic Ryan Ruby about New German Cinema, particularly the directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander Kluge, and the film movement's fascination with the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) A.K.A. the Baader–Meinhof Gang, an ultra-left militant group in West Germany that existed in various forms from 1970 to 1998.
Ryan Ruby is the author of Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024) and The Zero and the One: A Novel (Twelve Books, 2017). For his essays and reviews, which have recently appeared in such venues as Harper's, Bookforum, and the New Left Review, he has received the Silvers Prize in Literary Criticism. He lives in Berlin, where he is working on a book of creative nonfiction about the city's mass transit system, tentatively titled Ringbahn: On Berlin Time, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in late 2027.
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Ryan Ruby's forthcoming book on the cultural history of Berlin, with particular interest in the music scene and cinema of the 1970s
The films Germany in Autumn (1978) and The Third Generation (1979)
The Red Army Faction and 1960s/'70s militancy
The political climate in Berlin today
V.I. Lenin's critique of "adventurism"
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We love to give recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Tony recommends the two-volume book The Magic of Robert-Houdin An Artist's Life The Watchmaker, Mechanician and Conjurer by Christian Fechner
Ryan recommends the books Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust and Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman
Jason recommends Bruce LaBruce's 2004 satirical RAF film . [Warning: the film contains explicit sex scenes]
Bonus: Interview w/ Dr. Alice Lovejoy
Season 2
Tuesday, March 24, 2026 • Duration 01:15:55
In this bonus episode, cohosts Jason Christian and Paul T. Klein interview the film historian Dr. Alice Lovejoy about her scholarship and her new book, Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War. The book examines the long and storied histories of the film manufacturing giants Kodak and Agfa and provides a materailst analysis of their involved in US and Germany imperialism around the world.
Alice Lovejoy is a media and cultural historian and comparatist whose research examines governmental and institutional media, and media technologies, in transnational perspective. Her book Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (University of California Press, August 2025) is a history of film and the factories where it was made. Shifting focus between the United States, Germany, the Belgian Congo, and the Soviet Union, the book considers the military, colonial, and environmental implications of film's entanglement with the chemical industry.
Lovejoy's first book, Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military (Indiana University Press, 2015), was named co-winner of the Modern Language Association's 2018 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures. It was also awarded Honorable Mention for the 2016 University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies (ASEEES) and the 2017 Czechoslovak Studies Association Book Prize, and longlisted for the 2016 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. This book traces the emergence of an experimental film culture in the Czechoslovak Army's film studio (1929-1969), and includes a DVD of thirteen short films produced by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense. Lovejoy is also at work on a project studying the intertwined histories of postwar children's television and film institutions—among them, Yugoslavia's "Film and Child" Commission, Iran's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon), East Germany's National Center for Children's Film and Television, Czechoslovakia's Center for Films for Children and Youth, and UNESCO's International Centre for Films for Children and Young People. With Mari Pajala, she co-edited (Indiana University Press, 2022), and she has published widely on East European, particularly Czech and Slovak, film and literature.
S2 Ep. 12: Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer) w/ guest Adam McKay
Season 2 · Episode 12
Thursday, February 19, 2026 • Duration 01:28:20
On this episode, the Cold War Cinema crew is joined by director, writer, and producer Adam McKay to discuss John Frankenheimer's paranoid, psychological thriller Seconds (1966). McKay has written and directed many celebrated feature films such as Anchorman (2004), Talladega Nights (2006), Step Brothers (2008), The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018), Don't Look Up (2021), and numerous others. Prior to this, McKay was a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade in the early 1990s, and head writer for Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2001. In 2019, McKay founded Hyperobject Industries, and has served as the executive producer of HBO's Succession (2019–2023), Game Theorywith Bomani Jones (2022–2023), and, most recently, The Chair Company (2025) starring Tim Robinson.
Synopsis of the film: Middle-aged banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) feels trapped in a life that has calcified into routine and regret. When he receives a phone call from an old friend who he thought was long dead, and a shadowy organization known simply as "the Company" offers him the ultimate second chance, he fakes his death, and undergoes radical surgery to assume a new identity. Reborn as artist Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson), he's given youth, wealth, and access to a new bohemian lifestyle on a seaside in Malibu. While his transformation at first feels intoxicating, the promise of freedom begins to fray and ultimately fracture. As Tony struggles to inhabit his new self, paranoia creeps in and the illusion of choice gives way to something far more unsettling.
Shot in stark black-and-white with disorienting lenses and claustrophobic compositions, Seconds is less a sci-fi fantasy than an existential nightmare—an unsettling meditation on identity, conformity, and the seductive lie that starting over can save us from who we are.
On this episode we discuss: McKay's work as a comedian, comedy writer, and filmmaker, his political and cinematic influences, the paranoid style of filmmaking in the 1960s, satire, the looming specter of climate apocalypse, why the world needs a Ho Chi Minh biopic, and much more.
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S2 Ep. 11: Letter Never Sent (1959, Mikhail Kalatozov)
Season 2 · Episode 11
Thursday, February 12, 2026 • Duration 01:36:38
The Cold War Cinema team, Jason Christian, Anthony Ballas, and Paul T. Klein, return to discuss Mikhail Kalatozov's 1959 drama Letter Never Sent.
Synopsis of the film: Four geologists descend on the Siberian Taiga. Over the course of a backbreaking summer sifting minerals in the icy, rushing waters of boreal rivers, the group–the experienced guide, Konstantin, a young couple, Andrei and Tanya, and the brooding Sergei–search for diamond deposits to enrich themselves and their country. Throughout, Konstanin writes an extended letter home to his wife Vera. Sergei, too, writes a letter, though never meant to be read, expressing his jealousy and Andrei and love for Tanya. When a massive forest fire breaks out, however, the group must work together to survive, not only the blaze, but the ravages of the elements and the fast-approaching and deadly Siberian winter…
On this episode we discuss:
The unbelievable production of a film shot on location in the USSR taiga.
How the film reflects the tenents of socialist realism in complex and creative ways.
How the film shares many of the sensibilites of the western genre and pairs nicely with John Ford's The Searchers in this regard.
The basic theoretical aspects of scientific socialism and how the filmmaker uses them to shape the film's narrative and themes.
The allegorical use of a diamond in the Soviet context versus the same in the capitalist West.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Paul: Two "Northwesterns": Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952) and River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954)
S2 Ep. 10: The Searchers (1956, John Ford) w/ guest Aspen Ballas
Season 2 · Episode 10
Thursday, January 15, 2026 • Duration 01:44:15
The Cold War Cinema team returns with special guest Aspen Ballas to discuss John Ford's 1956 western The Searchers. Aspen is a PhD student of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research primarily focuses on aesthetics of race and class, and the relation between genre, medium, and politics.
Synopsis of the film: Texas, 1868. A lone figure approaches a windswept homestead, against a dusty blue sky and flaming red buttes and cathedral-like mesas. Returning from the fight for the Confederacy, Ethan Edwards arrives home to his brother Aaron, Aaron's wife Martha, and to their children Ben, Lucy, little Debbie, and their adopted son Martin Pawley. But this is rough country, and a Comanche raid leaves the Edwards family torn asunder–Aaron, Martha, and Ben dead, and Lucy and Debbie taken captive. For seven years, Ethan and Martin search the vast wilderness, motivated not only by family bonds, but in Ethan's case, bloodlust and wild, racist hatred–a search not only to find Lucy and Debbie, but to enforce racial and sexual purity and to define Americanness itself…
On this episode we discuss:
The American mythmaking in The Searchers and in westerns generally.
John Ford's attempt to critique anti-Indigenous racism, and the limitations of such a critique in the context of Hollywood filmmaking of this era.
Militant Liberty, a top-secret psychological warfare program created by the Pentagon to promote anti-communist themes in Hollywood movies during the Cold War. John Ford was an eager participant in the program.
The broader US imperialist context of the film's release and the historical background of the setting.
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We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Aspen: The Face on Film by Noa Steimatsky; Raoul Peck's docuseries Exterminate all the Brutes (2021)
Paul: The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend by Glenn Frankel
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
Taylor recommends the films Come and See (1985, dir. Elem Klimov) and Dead Man's Letters (1986, dir. Konstantin Lopushanskiy).
Paul recommends a film and a record: Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925) and U2's War (1983).
Tony recommends the book Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, by Valentin Voloshinov, and the new essay "The Enchanted Biopolitics of Dark Cosmism" by our guest Taylor R. Genovese.
Jason recommends the film Kes (1969, dir. Ken Loach)
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Taylor uses the handle @trgenovese on X, Instagram, and Letterboxd. Information on his scholarship and visual art can be found on his website at taylorgenovese.com.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
The Raspberry Reich
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Find past guest Andrew Nette's Letterboxd list of films inspired by or about the Red Army Faction here. Check out our interview with Nette here.
Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
Remapping Cold War Media: Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations
Lovejoy has worked as a film critic, curator, and filmmaker, including as an editor at Film Comment magazine. _____________________
We love to give recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Alice recommends the Norwegian television series Occupied (2015–2020), created by Jo Nesbø
Paul recommends the 2016 documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time, directed by Bill Morrison
Jason recommends Walter Rodney's 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema.
For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Alice on Instagram @alice__lovejoy, or on Bluesky @alicelovejoy.bsky.social,
Follow Jason on Bluesky @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed @tonyjballas.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
We love to give book or film recommendations on the podcast, so here are ours for this episode:
Adam: Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident (2025) and Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014)
Paul: A Little Solitaire: John Frankenheimer and American Film by Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer
Anthony Ballas: The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh by Dai Trang Nguyen and "Ho Chi Minh and Black Liberation" by Gerald Horne and Anthony Ballas.
Jason: John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964).
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
To stay up to date on Cold War Cinema, follow along at coldwarcinema.com, or find us online on Bluesky @coldwarcinema.com or on X at @Cold_War_Cinema.
For more from your hosts and guest:
Follow Adam on Instagram @mr.ghostpanther, or on Bluesky @ghostpanther.bsky.social,
Follow Jason on Bluesky @JasonAChristian.bsky.social, or on Letterboxed at @exilemagic.
Follow Anthony on Bluesky @tonyjballas.bsky.social, on X @tonyjballas, or on Letterboxed @tonyjballas.
Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
Theme music by DYAD (Charles Ballas and Jeremy Averitt).
Happy listening!
Tony: Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous Land by Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Jason: Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema: Studies in Ford, Wilder, Coppola, Scorsese, and Others by Carl Freedman
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Like and subscribe to Cold War Cinema, and don't forget to leave us a review! Want to continue the conversation? Drop us a line at any time at coldwarcinemapod@gmail.com.
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