Red Hollywood: An Interview with Thom Andersen

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Cinephile, historian, filmmaker and one of the most knowledgeable persons I’ve ever met, Thom Andersen visited the Austrian Filmmuseum during the fall of 2017 where I interviewed him about Red Hollywood (1996), a film he co-directed with Noel Burch. The groundbreaking documentary studies the films directed, written or produced by the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist, using both archives from their films and interviews with the people concerned. Red Hollywood doesn’t simply tell the story of the witch-hunt, but brings all the important issues of those filmmakers to light, such as the depiction of World War II or their relation to European communism and feminism, among others.

About Senses of Cinema:

Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study.