This paper presents an extended analysis of my two recent feature documentaries, RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy (2008) and Children of the Revolution (2010), which seek to challenge state narratives and demystify the lives and actions of three central characters – Robert Kennedy’s convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan, the German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof and Japanese Red Army leader Fusako Shigenobu. I explore key issues that arose during the production of these films, and the strategies a documentary filmmaker can use to re-investigate and re-present the lives of political subversives, using Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘field theory’ and Frederic Jameson’s ‘three levels of narrative’ as my theoretical framework. With RFK Must Die, I stress the primacy of the research and writing of documentaries in their power to challenge conventional wisdom and examine the interplay between historian, filmmaker and investigator in finding an alternative history. I explore the historiography of both Kennedy assassinations and the historical reliance on independent filmmakers to re-examine the state’s evidence and present the case for the defence. I also explore what issues affect credible witness testimony and what audiovisual evidence can tell us about a crime scene. I explore two key elements of Children of the Revolution: the decision to tell the stories of Meinhof and Shigenobu ‘through the eyes of their daughters’ and the use of archive concerning their revolutionary movements. I present a case study of my working relationship with Meinhof’s daughter, Bettina Röhl, analysing the complex issues of trust, identity and authorship that arose in telling Meinhof’s story from another person’s perspective. I also discuss the critical misalignment between the cost of archive and the budgets and prices paid for documentaries, and analyse the hypothesis of the recent Hargreaves Report (2011) that the audiovisual archive sector ‘is not fit for purpose for the digital age’.

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Master thesis The film and politics. Propaganda and political agitation in Czech feature film 1948-1956 regards form and range of political, respectively communist ideology in chosen successful Czech feature motion pictures of the above mentioned time period. Investigates how and how far communist ideology influenced the examined films, even e.g. how much open or hidden agitation and propaganda it was. Main question of the thesis is why these films - which are often designated as propagandistic, agitation or at least ideologically tendentious - were so attractive for their viewers at that time. The thesis is theoretically based on supportive literature on history, totalitarianism and Czech film and practically on analysis of particular movies, which are absolutely essential for that time period.

The aim of this study is to explore the correlation between contemporary political agenda and film themes, how and if the antagonists’ behavior is depicted in relation to whom the political opponent was at the time of the making of the film. The literature is concurrent: movies are used to spread norms and political messages. There are several examples; during the Cold War people and antagonist behavior could clearly be linked to the Soviet Union. During the Gulf War the antagonists was often depicted as Arabic terrorists, but after the war the villain character became unclear and was often represented by natural disasters, organized crime, corruption etc. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Arabic terrorists once again became the new antagonists. The film selection is made out of the five most profitable movies (adjusted for inflation) that take place in our world that was produced during the Cold War, and five films that fill the same criteria that was produced after the Cold War. My goal was to see if I could see a correlation between the political agenda at the time of the making of the movie, how the antagonists are portrayed and what political themes were addressed. Unexpectedly, I found no such correlation in my film selection. However, I could see similarities in certain genres, such as action, thrillers and adventure movies, that support the theories in the literature. / Jag studerar huruvida man kan dra en parallell mellan den rådande politiska agendan och filmens politiska teman samt hur skurkgestaltningen ter sig i relation till vem den politiska motståndaren var då filmen gjordes. Litteraturen är tydlig kring att film används för att sprida normer och politiska budskap. Det finns flera exempel kring hur man under kalla kriget främst hade Sovjet eller personer och beteenden som tydligt kunde kopplas till Sovjet som skurkar. Efter kalla kriget, i samband med Gulfkriget, blev det under en tid araber för att därefter vara en mer oklar skurkroll (ofta naturkatastrofer, organiserad brottslighet, korruption, etc.). Efter terrorangreppen mot USA den 11:e september 2001 fick man återigen en tydlig motståndare och den arabiske terroristen blev den nya antagonisten. I min studie utgår jag från de fem filmer som drog in mest pengar (justerat för inflation), som utspelar sig i vår värld och som kom under kalla kriget, samt de fem filmer inom samma kategorier som kom därefter. Detta för att se om jag kan se en tydlig parallell mellan den rådande politiska agendan och hur skurkarna gestaltas samt vilka politiska teman som tas upp. Oväntat nog finner jag att ingen sådan tydlig koppling finns i de exemplen. Jag finner liknande paralleller inom vissa genres, såsom actionfilm, thrillers och äventyrsfilm, men ingen direkt koppling till filmen generellt kan göras.

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