Propaganda Film - History

History

At the turn of the 20th century, films emerged as the new cultural agents, depicting events and showing foreign images to mass audiences in European and American cities. Politics and film began to intertwine with the reconstruction of the Boer War for a film audience and recordings of war in the Balkans. The new medium proved very useful for political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy. They also provided a forceful voice for independent critics of contemporary events.

The earliest known propaganda film was a series of short silent films made during the Spanish American War in 1898 created by Vitagraph Studios.

At an epic 120 min running time, the 1912 Romanian Independenţa României is the first fictional film in the world with a deliberate propagandistic message. Filmed with a budget that will not be reached by a Romanian movie until 1970 (Michael the Brave, supported by the Romanian communist regime also for propagandistic purposes), the movie was meant to shift the perception of the Romanian public towards an acceptance of Romanian involvement into an expected Balkan conflict (the First Balkan War).

Another of the early fictional films to be used for propaganda was The Birth of a Nation (1915), although it was not produced for the purposes of indoctrination.