The Popular Front Years and World War II

Georges Auric ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Colin Roust
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Arts Organizations ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Intellectual Networks ◽  
French Communist Party

During the Popular Front Years (1934–1939), Auric’s politics swung to the left and he joined several arts organizations of the French Communist Party. His populist works from these years include numerous pieces of incidental music and film scores, but also concert music, music for young musicians, campfire songs, and other popular songs. Although his music hardly changed stylistically from the 1920s, he now actively reached out to the broadest audiences possible. During the German Occupation, Auric joined or otherwise contributed to several intellectual networks of the French Resistance. His war-time roles would result in a privileged position after the war, as a leading critic and arts administrator.

The Film World’s Cooperative Store: Institutions and Films of the 1930s and 1940s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Meat Products ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Early History ◽  
World War ◽  
International Context ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.

Lincoln Kirstein’s Social Modernism and the Cultural Front

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Relevance ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter takes a biographical approach to Lincoln Kirstein’s creation of a modernist theory of ballet to situate its development in the 1930s cultural wing of the Popular Front and explore its evolution through and after World War II. Fueled by the cultural front’s belief in the role of the arts in social revolution, Kirstein seized the opportunity to decouple ballet from existing biases about its elitism and triviality, and formulate new ideas about its social relevance in the Depression period. After exploring the development of Kirstein’s social modernism in the cultural front, chapter 2 then turns to the challenges posed to the 1930s belief that art could be productively combined with politics through two major turning points in Kirstein’s life. These are his experiences in World War II, and the erosion of his own artistic role in the ballet company after the formation of the New York City Ballet and the ascendance of George Balanchine’s dance-for-dance-sake aesthetic in the late 1940s. The chapter illustrates Kirstein’s attempts to negotiate the social modernist aesthetic he crafted under the wing of the cultural front within the volatile political, economic, and artistic circumstances of World War II, anticommunism, and the Cold War.

scholarly journals Proof of Life: Mark-Making Practices on the Island of Alderney

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-254
Author(s):  
Caroline Sturdy Colls ◽  
Rachel Bolton-King ◽  
Kevin Colls ◽  
Tim Harris ◽  
Czelsie Weston
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Life ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Translation Services

Currently, mark-making practices as a form of identification and proof of life are an unrealized resource. Over a three-year period, systematic walkover surveys were conducted on and within fortifications and other structures on the island of Alderney to locate historic and modern marks. The investigations presented in this article demonstrate the importance of non-invasive recording and examination of marks to identify evidence connected to forced and slave labourers, and soldiers present on the island of Alderney during the German occupation in World War II. Names, hand and footwear impressions, slogans, artworks, dates, and counting mechanisms were recorded electronically and investigated by using international databases, archives, and translation services. We discuss the value and challenges of interpreting traces of human life in the contexts of conflict archaeology and missing person investigations and underline the need for greater recognition of marks as evidence of past lives.

scholarly journals The Illusion of Perfect Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Christian Tomuschat
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
International Court ◽  
The World ◽  
The Icj ◽  
The Right ◽  
Italian Constitution

AbstractThe judgment of the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) of 22 October 2014 has set a bad precedent for international law by denying the implementation, within Italy, of the judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 3 February 2012. The ICJ found that Italian courts and tribunals had violated German jurisdictional immunity by entertaining suits brought by Italian citizens against Germany on account of damages caused by war crimes committed during World War II by German occupation forces. According to a well-consolidated rule of general international law, no state may be sued before the courts of another state with regard to acts performed in the exercise of its sovereign power. In contravention of Article 94 of the UN Charter, the ItCC deemed it legitimate to discard that ruling because of the particularly grave character of many of the violations in question. It proceeded from the assumption that the right to a remedy established under the Italian Constitution was absolute and must apply even where the financial settlement of the consequences of armed conflict is at issue. However, it has failed to show the existence of any individual reparation claims and has omitted to assess the issue of war reparations owed by Germany in their broader complexity. The judgment of the ItCC might be used in the future as a pretext to ignore decisions of the World Court.

scholarly journals Dialectal texts from Russkaya Mokraya (Transcarpathia, Ukraine)

2021 ◽  
pp. 238-280
Author(s):  
Sergey L. Nikolaev ◽  
◽  
Marfa N. Tolstaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Slavic Studies

The Transcarpathian village of Russkaya Mokraya is located in the historic North Maramorosh region and has been known since the 17th century. The published texts were recorded during the expedition of the Institute of Slavic Studies in 1995 and contain mainly stories about the period of World War II, the Hungarian-German occupation, relations with the Hungarian administration and historical German and Jewish neighbors, deportation of Jews. The introduction briefly describes the phonetics of the dialect and its place on the dialectological map.

The Venezuelan Left in the Era of the Popular Front, 1936–45

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Ellner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The Comintern's adoption of the popular front strategy in August 1935 marked a new stage in the history of world Communism which lasted until the end of World War II. Communist leaders embarked on this course in the hope of isolating the fascist movement which was then in the ascendant throughout the world. Their strategy was to create coalitions (‘popular fronts’) of progressive groupings on the basis of a reformist program and anti-fascist rhetoric. This conciliatory position towards the rest of the left represented a sharp departure from the policy of previous years when Communists frequently denounced their leftist rivals as ‘ social fascists’.

Metered

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
First Century ◽  
War Films ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Green Zone ◽  
Fathers And Sons ◽  
The Military ◽  
Red Line

Having set aside the military march, serious post-Vietnam war films have explored other strongly metrical musics. Three World War II films have turned to triple-meter, or waltz-time, themes. Band of Brothers and Flags of Our Fathers alike use tuneful waltz-time music to support a sentimental transgenerational agenda linking fathers and sons. The Thin Red Line supports the philosophical ruminations of soldiers with a group of triple-meter melodies that create a zone of quiet reflection. Twenty-first-century war films use beat-driven music to excite the audience physically and also to characterize new sorts of soldierly action—such as work at a computer—as exciting combat action. Beat-driven combat film scores for Black Hawk Down, United 93, and Green Zone are compared. Finally, an extended combat sequence from The Thin Red Line scored to a stately ostinato musical cue is considered as an extreme case of music taking the place of diegetic sound.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 268-280
Author(s):  
Kory Olson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Capital City ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Napoleon Iii ◽  
Housing Shortages ◽  
Paris Region ◽  
To Come ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The City

The tumultuous nineteenth century brought Parisian led regime change in 1830, 1848 and in many respects 1870. Although Napoleon III and Haussmann had hoped their Paris works would tame the capital city as they constructed uniform boulevards and transformed the crowded medieval centre into a bourgeois space. Throughout the twentieth century, the movement of people and goods throughout the Paris region remained a challenge and official maps showed how to address that issue. The German occupation during World War II effectively ended any hope of Prost’s 1934 plan to come to fruition. However, the damages afflicted on the city during combat allowed leaders to refocus their attention on the city. The pre-war work done by the Service géographique, Jaussely, and Prost allow future urban officials, such as Lopez and Bernard Lafay, to address problems such as increased traffic, parking, housing shortages, decentralization, and increased sprawl. The end of the war shifted national priorities away from the capital but by the 1950s, economic growth meant that urban planners needed to focus yet again on ameliorating development in greater Paris.

Blasting Out of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramsay Burt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Communist Countries

This chapter analyzes three reenactments by the Slovenian director Janez Janša, two reconstructions of experimental performances made under communism in Ljubljana during the late 1960s and early 1970s by poets and performers associated with the Pupilija group, and one which subversively reappropriates canonical contemporary dance works from the United States, Germany, and Japan. The two earlier works, it argues, interrogate the utopian ideals espoused by the communist partisans who freed Yugoslavia from German occupation during World War II. It develops a framework for this analysis by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the philosophy of history and on Michel de Certeau’s work on memory and the everyday. It places the three reconstructions in their social, historical, and political context and evaluates their meanings in relation to misperceptions about art in post-communist countries.

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