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The Resistance Film Fest: A Call to Action Against Fascism and Trump

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A colorized still from Casablanca

Cringing at yet another media outlet or prominent billionaire publicly falling over themself to bend their knee to the future Felon-In-Chief? Tired of yet another supposed political opponent to the Orange Fascist and his hordes rationalizing their political spinelessness? Then feed your fighting spirit by attending the upcoming Resistance Film Festival!

Running from January 18-19, 2025 at the beloved Roxie Theater, curator and legendary Roxie film programmer Elliot Lavine returns to San Francisco to present a quartet of films celebrating resistance to fascism. All four films may have been made in the 1940s, but modern audiences will spot parallels to the new American fascism promoted by the Orange Rapist and his MAGA cultists.

In the MIchael Curtiz classic Casablanca (1:00 PM on January 18, 2025), embittered Rick Blaine (the unforgettable Humphrey Bogart) is prepared to sit out World War II in the titular city running his neutral Rickโ€™s Cafe Americain nightclub. But the unexpected return of former lover Ilsa Lund (a ravishing Ingrid Bergman) into Rickโ€™s life sets off a chain of events that might get Rick back into the fight against fascismโ€ฆor not.  

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Andre DeTothโ€™s searing None Shall Escape (3:40 PM on January 18, 2025)โ€ concerns a Nuremberg-like trial of former Nazi officer Wilhelm Grimm. How did Grimm go from being a German World War One veteran to becoming a man responsible for deporting and then executing Jews from a Polish village?  Amazingly, this film posited Germanyโ€™s defeat before World War II ended, and was the only wartime Hollywood film to refer to the Shoah.  

The Mortal Storm (1:00 PM on January 19, 2025) from director Frank Borzage will be sickeningly familiar to viewers whose friends and/or family members have gone full MAGA. In a small German village, the quiet and peaceful life of Professor Viktor Roth and his circle of family and friends gets torn apart after the rise of Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship. Roth, his student Martin (James Stewart), and his daughter Freya (Margaret Sullivan) embrace human decency and reject Nazism. But they face increasing social pressure and worse from the rest of their circle, as the others have either embraced Nazism outright or enabled the authoritarian creedโ€™s spread.  

Casablanca

Ernst Lubitschโ€™s closing dark comedy-thriller caper To Be Or Not To Be (3:45 PM on January 19, 2025) centers on a Polish theatrical troupe led by couple Joseph (Jack Benny) and Maria Tura (Carole Lombard). The actors wind up getting involved in a plot to stop the traitorous Professor Siletsky from handing over to Polandโ€™s Nazi occupiers a list of Polish resistance members. To pull this caper off, the troupe will need to use their stash of Nazi uniforms (for a cancelled anti-Nazi play called โ€œGestapoโ€) and one actorโ€™s physical resemblance to German leader Adolf Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Germanyโ€™s Nazi regime banned public showings of Lubitschโ€™s film.

To talk about the origins of the Resistance Film Festival and other related subjects, this writer conducted an e-mail interview with Lavine, who will appear at the Roxie in person to introduce all of the festivalโ€™s films. (The interview text has been lightly edited for clarification.)

Broke-Ass Stuartโ€™s (BAS): I noted that you did a film festival back in 2018, The Dark Side Of The Dream.  That series was inspired by the Orange Fascist first becoming POTUS, but it took a while after the notorious 2016 election before your mini-festival was ready.  By comparison, the Resistance Film Festival is happening in the days before the Orange Felonโ€™s new โ€œcoronationโ€ (in his mind). Could you talk about the differences between the two festivals? How and why did this one come together so much quicker?

Elliot Lavine (EL):  It came together quicker because of the specific urgency this time around. In 2018 the country was settling in for what it hoped would be an aberration and, in time, would go away. Nevertheless, the feeling of dread back in 2018 was palpable enough to inspire a festival of films that, while not directly pointing at Trump, aggressively attacked social issues that reflected on Trumpโ€™s abnormal obsession with hurting people. This time, with the stakes ramped up even higher, itโ€™s more important than ever to focus on resistance, even if it only means going to the movies.  

BAS:  Why did you choose these particular four films for the festival?

EL:  I wanted to focus on films from the 1940s, as this was the decade when the entire world could have succumbed to Nazism had it not been for the combined Allied forces and a general sense that resistance was the only conceivable answer to defeating this ungodly scourge. Each one of the four films project an unwavering sense of purpose in the midst of unspeakable horror. They also seem to correspond with conditions still festering in this country, providing an interesting mirror to reflect upon.

BAS:  Of the films in the Resistance Film Festival, Casablanca is the most famous of the lot. Yet this classic is remembered more for its incredibly quotable dialogue and Rick and Ilsaโ€™s doomed romance as opposed to the storyโ€™s political underpinnings (e.g. Rickโ€™s pre-WWII background). What similarities do you see between Rickโ€™s situation at the start of โ€œCasablancaโ€ and the emotionally devastated condition of those viewers who see the Orange Rapistโ€™s return to the White House as a disaster in the making?

None Shall Escape

EL:  Difficult question to answer, but I will say this. Casablanca was the film that inspired this festival in the first place. I showed it in Portland at Cinema 21 (where I program a regular film series) just eighteen days after the election. The program was decided on the previous August shortly after Kamala Harris was proclaimed to be the new Democratic nominee and I thought watching a film like Casablanca would be a joyous experience, one to be savored in the afterglow of a Harris victory. There was lots of misplaced optimism at the time, and I rode right along with it. In the days after November 5, I began regretting my decision to play Casablanca, feeling that hardly anyone would be interested in seeing it now. I couldnโ€™t have been more wrong. A huge crowd turned out on a cold, rainy morning to see this eighty-year-old classic. And yes, over the years and countless viewings, the film had always been about the sad, soggy fate of the star-crossed lovers on the screen and not the much larger issue that hovers over the entire film: Resistance! In the scene where Madeleine LeBeau belts out La Marseillaise at Rickโ€™s in front of a table-full of frustrated Nazi officers, the folks watching in Portland were on their feet, cheering and clapping as if they were seeing it for the very first time. It was then, in that moment, when I decided what I needed to do next. Bogartโ€™s callous indifference as seen at the beginning almost feels like the despair and disappointment that gripped so many Americans. The Bogart we see at filmโ€™s end became the idealized and renewed sense of purpose that so many of us had been seeking.

BAS: By barely electing the Orange Menace, it feels as if a bare majority of the American public has rejected the point of Casablancaโ€™s famous โ€œhill of beansโ€ line.  How do you see Casablanca as still giving hope for a better future given the current political situation?

EL: What choice do we have? Many lessons are learned a little too late and after the fact. Countless millions of brain-dead voters will wake up one morning with the realization theyโ€™ve been played for suckers. Sure, many will remain unfazed and will continue to do as theyโ€™re instructed, despite the fact the cost of eggs remains unchanged. And what can we expect from that? We know exactly what kind of violence these people are capable of.

BAS: None Shall Escape definitely speaks to the present moment as I can imagine an Orange Cultist becoming a real-life version of the filmโ€™s Wilhelm Grimm.  What points does this film make to rebut the air of public impunity and callousness displayed by the Orange Liar and his followers?

EL: As much as any of these films, this one speaks its frightening truth the loudest. With so many โ€œWilhelm Grimmsโ€ out there today eager to become active participants in this horrific new American regime, we will undoubtedly experience a wave of outrageous hatred and violence, all in the name of a warped ideology. The Wilhelm Grimm in the film was an educated man, a German by birth who felt a terribly misguided urge to place his loyalty to his homeland over that of being a decent human being. Sadly, the โ€œWilhelm Grimmsโ€ of today exist as the result of a madman who heads a dangerous cult, with avarice and self-enrichment as its only goals.

The Mortal Storm

BAS: Accountability, if not in the moment but later, happens to be one of None Shall Escapeโ€™s themes.  Yet in the present political climate, the Orange Menace has continually spun attempts at holding him accountable into lies about being politically persecuted. What does None Shall Escape say about pushing the needle from acceptance of selective accountability for oneโ€™s allies to full accountability for all?

EL: Hopefully, it will be a reminder that all hope is not lost. None Shall Escape is a bold and unpredictable film, maybe the most potent of the group. I hope when people look at it, theyโ€™ll come away with the renewed hope that, in one way or another, justice will be servedโ€ฆ[T]he โ€œWilhelm Grimmsโ€ of 2025 who sought to destroy our nation will meet the same fate as the Wilhelm Grimm of None Shall Escape.

BAS: The Mortal Storm seems the most timely of your selections, with its tale of good people turned into social pariahs for having different political views from their families and friends. I can easily see Orange Cultists trying to liken themselves to the filmโ€™s James Stewart and Maureen Sullivan characters. Yet aside from the fact that the Stewart and Sullivan characters are resisting Nazismโ€™s rise while MAGA cultists embrace [Nazi ideology] for America, what other points do you see as distinguishing The Mortal Stormโ€™s heroes from the folks backing the Orange Fascist?

EL: Only a blind and deaf person could possibly draw a parallel between Stewart and Sullavanโ€™s characters and those of the MAGA-sympathetic, though it wouldnโ€™t surprise me in the least that these delusional folks would be capable of that. But the truth is right up there on the screen. And as you pointed out, the immediate division created at the dinner table when the news of Hitlerโ€™s rise to power in 1933 comes to this family will send shivers of recognition to all those who have experienced the dismal reality of family members today drifting over to the dark side. The new Nazis who emerge in this story are motivated by the same emotional rhetoric used by todayโ€™s political insurrectionists and they, in turn echo these convictions in the same shrill voice as their masters. Stewart and Sullavan, and those who defy the New Order, possess a sane and rational approach to their views, always proud to display their humanitarian concerns on their sleeves. This is a film that should be seen by anyone who feels unmoved by our current circumstances.

To Be Or Not To Be

BAS: The last film in your festival, To Be Or Not To Be, might in some ways be a predecessor to The Daily Show with its use of derisive laughter towards a serious subject such as Nazismโ€™s power. However, the straight spy thriller aspects of Lubitschโ€™s film distinguish it from even a Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.  Does Lubitschโ€™s film still have something to offer modern audiences despite that thematic imbalance?

EL: Ernst Lubitsch was probably one of the few Hollywood masters who could make a film like this, where the entire lunacy of Nazism can be lampooned in such a devilishly clever way at a time when there was absolutely nothing funny about what was going on in Poland in 1942. And it gave something important for people to think about while they wiped tears of laughter from their eyes. So yes, To Be Or Not To Be definitely does have something to offer modern audiences: a grim, but determined sense of humor. 

BAS: What life lesson, if any, can a viewer get from this film and the others in the festival for surviving these coming hard times?

EL: Each has their own piece to get off its chest, yet they all wind up conveying the same message: Resistance is the only way.

(Tickets to the individual screenings are $15 each, while a 4-film pass for the entire festival costs $45.  To order the festival pass, go here.  To order tickets for a particular film, go to the link for the film included in the body of this article.)

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Peter Wong

Peter Wong

I've been reviewing films for quite a few years now, principally for the online publication Beyond Chron. My search for unique cinematic experiences and genre dips have taken me everywhere from old S.F. Chinatown movie theaters showing first-run Jackie Chan movies to the chilly slopes of Park City. Movies having cat pron instantly ping my radar.