This selection of short fiction and documentary films presents cinematic examples that handled the concepts of power and authority in its social context from a critical standpoint, a representations of innovative cinematic narratives as a form of protest and direct criticism to historical sociopolitical tribulations, employing cinema in a direct confrontation with power and repression in their various forms.

The War Game
Peter Watkins
United Kingdom 1965
48 min

The War Game is a fictional, worst-case-scenario docu-drama about nuclear war and its aftermath in and around a typical English city.

The Mallet
Malj
directed by Aleksandar Ilic
Yugoslavia 1977
9 min

In a futuristic, antiseptic food factory, workers select healthy chicks, while the rejects are carried along a conveyor belt until they are crushed by a mallet and drop into a garbage bin. A single black chick appears and before the mallet strikes, he rebels.

The Red Balloon
Le Ballon Rouge
Albert Lamorisse
France 1956
34 min

Albert Lamorisse’s exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children’s films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris.