OSA (Office of Special Affairs) -- The Secret CIA of Scientology

 

Remember one thing, we are not running a business, we are running a government. We are in direct control of people's lives.

-- L. Ron Hubbard, Policy letter of 5 August 1959

 

By the mid-1960s, Scientology was a religion under siege. In the U.S., the Church had been raided by the F.D.A. In England, Scientology was being investigated by Parliament and St. Hill students lived in danger of being deported. The Australian Inquiry was underway and there were tremors from South Africa. Hubbard had been deported from Rhodesia and was under constant F.B.I. surveillance at St. Hill.

Predisposed to paranoia, Hubbard was not one to remain on the defensive for long. "Don't ever defend, always attack," he wrote. "If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace...." (1)

Evidence of the war mentality promoted by Hubbard and highly contagious within Scientology is a policy written by Hubbard called The War, in which he announced:

You may not realize it ... but there is only one small group that has hammered Dianetics and Scientology for eighteen years. The press attacks, the public upsets you receive ... were generated by this one group. Last year we isolated a dozen men at the top. This year we found the organization these used and all its connections over the world.... (2)

Hubbard claimed that a group of twelve men associated with the World Bank had set up psychiatry and the mental health movement as a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West. And this twelve-man conspiracy was the real source of all opposition to Scientology.

In February of 1966, Lord Balniel of the English House of Commons called for an investigation into Scientology. Hubbard responded by setting up the Public Investigation Section at St. Hill for the purposes of "helping LRH (Hubbard) investigate public matters and individuals which seem to impede human liberty," and to "furnish intelligence." (3)

By the late 60s, the Public Investigation Section had evolved into the "Guardian's Office," a separate and unique agency within Scientology which became Hubbard's private intelligence bureau, a private CIA within the "Church."

Hubbard appointed his wife, Mary Sue, as "Comptroller" or head of the newly formed Guardian's Office, which was headquartered at St. Hill.

The Guardian's Office had six bureaus:

 

1. Legal, which handled litigation involving Scientology;

    

2. Public Relations, and media relations;

    

3. Information, including the controversial Overt and Covert Data Collection and Operations Sections;

    

4. Social Coordination, establishing the many Scientology "front organizations";

    

5. Service, for training G.O. staff members; and

    

6. Finance.

Branch One of the Information Bureau, called "B-1," was the real nerve center of the G.O., where files were maintained on all Scientologists, as well as on every perceived "enemy" of the organization.

Illegal as well as legal means of obtaining information were sanctioned. In a Scientology policy called Re: Intelligence, the following are given as possibilities for collecting data:

1. INFILTRATION
2. BRIBERY
3. BUYING INFORMATION
4. ROBBERY
5. BLACKMAIL

In discussing the criminal policies of the Guardian's Office, it is important to remember the frame of reference from which Scientologists operate and from which these policies were conceived.

From a Scientology perspective, the world is in great danger of nuclear extinction, and Scientology exists as the only deterrent to this terrible inevitability.

To a Scientologist, Scientology is the elite organization on this planet, superior to all other earth organizations. The Scientology system of ethics, based on the "greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics," is therefore superior to any system of "wog" law.

Transgressions of "wog" law necessary to further the ends of Scientology are sanctioned on the basis of the "greatest good." In this way, lying, stealing, burgling and a host of other crimes become justified as means to the end of saving mankind.

Shielded by this philosophy, Scientologists have, over the years, been involved in a staggering array of crimes most unbecoming to members of a church.

It is a fact that Scientologists, particularly members of the G.O., are trained to lie. In a policy called Intelligence Specialist Training Routine -- TR-L (which stands for Training Routine Lie), the student is trained "to outflow false data effectively."

In the drill, the student has to tell a lie, which is then challenged by a coach, who works with the student until the student becomes able to "lie facily."

The ability to lie convincingly is used by the Scientologist in a variety of situations, including the giving of courtroom testimony. A Scientologist feels no obligation to be truthful in a "wog" court, even under oath. Again, this is because the Scientologist is operating under a higher law, that of the "greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics."

Another Scientology policy contains a series of Drills used to train G.O. agents. The student has to choose the best of several alternative solutions:

A. General scene: person to restrain/remove Mr. Jones, employee in local government agency attacking the Org.

1. Order hundreds of dollars worth of liquor in Jones' name and have it delivered to his home to cause him trouble and make the liquor store owner dislike him.
2. Call up Jones' boss and accuse Jones of being a homosexual.
3. Send Jones' boss evidence of Jones accepting bribes on his job, with copies to police and local FBI.

B. General scene: a psychiatrist who has instigated attacks on the Org via police and press.

1. Expose his Nazi background to the press with evidence that he still attends local Nazi meetings.
2. Wake him up every night by calling him on the phone and threatening him.
3. Send a Field Staff Member in to be a patient of his for a year to disperse the psych during sessions.

C. General scene: a newspaper executive Clyde McDonald who's behind local attacks.

1. Poison him while he's asleep so he'll never start another attack.
2. Make known to the paper's owner that McDonald is responsible for the paper's decreasing advertising revenues.
3. Spread a rumor around to the paper's employees that McDonald is a Communist.
4. Put itching powder in McDonald's clothes so he'll scratch himself all day, thus preventing him from writing a story.

And, if these plans seem farfetched, an example of a Scientology "operation" actually carried out is the one against Paulette Cooper, who in 1971 wrote a book critical of Scientology.

In church documents labelled "Operation PC (Paulette Cooper) Freakout," various scenarios were listed. In one scenario, a Scientologist impersonating Cooper was to make threatening phone calls to an Arab consulate. Another plan was to mail a threatening letter to the same consulate, or to make a bomb threat against them.

In still another plot, a Scientologist impersonating Cooper would go to a laundromat and threaten to kill then-President Nixon or Henry Kissinger. Yet another plan was to get Paulette's fingerprints on a piece of paper, then type a bomb threat to Kissinger on the paper and mail it.

Something very similar to this was, in fact, carried out. G.O. agents succeeded in getting Paulette's fingerprints on some stationery, then used the stationery to make bomb threats against the Church. Cooper was indicted on three counts of making bomb threats, and faced fifteen years in jail before she cleared herself by taking a sodium pentothal test.

Cooper was completely exonerated only when the F.B.I., in their 1977 raid of the G.O. offices in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, California, uncovered documents which detailed the church's plans to frame her.

Paulette Cooper's situation is not unique. Many people who have incurred the wrath of the Church of Scientology have found to what extent Scientologists are prepared to go in fighting "the enemy."

In one case, a woman found thousands of worms thrown at her front door. Defectors have been harassed by church agents spreading lies about them to employers or neighbors. Endless frivolous lawsuits have been launched. In one case, Boston attorney Michael Flynn narrowly avoided a crash when water was put in the gas tank of his private plane. This occurred at a time when he was representing several litigants against the "church."

The F.B.I. raids brought to light many of the written policies used to train G.O. members in criminal activities. One such policy is Security and Theft of Materials which contains the following quotes:

The first step in any breaking and entering job is casing. This consists of checking out the area to ascertain the possibilities for breaking into the premises....

Professionals at all times wear gloves during an operation. This prevents fingerprints being left behind by which the agents could be traced....

One trick used by professionals is ... a series of cover stories are mocked up (invented) to cover each stage of the operation in the event that the operation is blown at any point.

If you are picked up by the police, don't say anything more than you are required to by law, which is usually your name and address....

Additionally, any agent working on such operations would have nothing in his possession that connected him with the organization (Scientology)....

And so forth. An interesting policy letter for a church!

Another G.O. policy called The Strike, defines a strike as "the action of gathering information on a covert basis, performed by one or more agents." An example of a strike actually carried out by the church was breaking into the IRS offices in Washington, D.C. and photocopying all files related to Scientology.

A policy called Walk-ins gives more detailed instructions for breaking and entering. Instructions are given in this policy for various aspects of burglarizing an office building: how to break into a locked xerox machine, how to break into a locked door using a credit card, how to fashion a metal tool for breaking into a lock, how to use a strand of wire to break into a lock, how to break into a combination lock, etc.

This policy comes complete with illustrations.

In a policy called B & E's (breaking and entering), the writer comments that "some of our most successful collections actions fall into this category." A good G.O. agent is also trained to bug and debug telephones in the policy called Re: Debugging. This policy, also illustrated, gives techniques for bugging and debugging phones, describes the four common types of bugs used, and explains the difference between a "bug" and a "tap" and how to deal with each.

Most Scientologists are unaware that their supposedly confidential auditing files are forwarded to the G.O. where, should they defect from the organization, the folders will be systematically culled for information which can be used to intimidate or blackmail them.

Most Scientologists are unaware of G.O. policy #121669 called Programme: Intelligence: Internal Security, which states:

Operating Targets: To make full use of all files of the organization to affect your major target. These include personnel files, Ethics files, training files, processing files and requests for refunds....

The fact that a person's auditing or processing files may contain sensitive personal information given to an auditor under assurances of confidentiality is reflected in some of the reports generated by the G.O. from these folders.

In one such report, information gathered on a disaffected Scientologist includes:

While at the (Scientology org) she was promiscuous. She slept with four or five men during the course, two of them on the org premises. She has quite a record of promiscuity.... With three male preclears, she let them touch her genitals during sessions.... She has masturbated regularly since she was eight years old, mentions doing it once with coffee grounds and once had a puppy lick her....

Another such report includes the names of the person's children and the items:

Several self-induced abortions. Saw a psych due to alcoholism problems. Drug history: Librium, Valium, LSD, opium, heroin. Son is in jail, etc.

In 1973, Hubbard authored a plan for the G.O. called "Snow White," instructing the G.O. to gain access to all federal agencies to obtain their files on Scientology. The name of this operation derived from Hubbard's opinion that once these agencies had their files "cleaned," they would be "snow white."

Infiltrating, or "penetrating," these agencies was achieved by having a Scientology agent obtain employment at an agency, then use his credentials to gain access to desired materials in the agency's files.

A report called Compliance Report lists 136 such agencies targeted for penetration, prioritized by a star system, i.e., * low priority, ** higher priority, and *** highest priority. Some of the *** agencies listed in this report are: the AEC, the CIA, the FBI, the FTC, the FDA, the IRS, the NSA, the US Air Force, the US Army, the US Attorney General, the DEA, the US Coast Guard, the US Department of Justice, the US Department of Labor, the US Department of State, the US Department of Treasury, the US House of Representatives, the US Department of Immigration and Naturalization, the US Marshall's Office, the US Navy, the US Post Office, the US Selective Service, and the US Senate.

In this report, several agencies, such as the IRS, the DEA, the US Coast Guard, and the US Department of Labor are marked: "Done."

Another policy called Safe U.S. details plans to get agents into the US Attorney's offices in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, into the IRS Office of International Operations, into the headquarters of the AMA, and into various state and local district attorneys' offices.

In a policy concerning the World Federation of Mental Health called Compliance Report GO#121569, the writer states that: "everything possible was done to collect the data, everything from infiltrating to stealing to eavesdropping, etc."

The G.O. used a complex system of coding, especially in any written communications involving criminal or illegal activities. In policies such as The Correct Use of Codes and Re: Coding/Wording of Messages, G.O. staff members are instructed to code the following:

Incriminating, undercover activities and the like, such as violations of our status as a tax exempt non-profit organization; subversive activities; covert operations; and money deals that might provoke government tax offices....

Things that we want unknown as connected to the Church of Scientology, i.e., secret front groups;

Words that would dispute the fact that the Church of Scientology's motives are humanitarian, i.e., harass, eradicate, attack, destroy, annihilate, entrapment...

Admission to unpunished crimes and/or incriminating data;

Mentions or the ordering of a B & E (breaking and entering);

Implications of posing as a government agent;

Evidence of tapping phone lines or illegal taping of conversations;

Mentions of harassment;

Any evidence of bribery;

Wordings like "let's wipe him out";

Etc.

Another set of G.O. policies has to do with disposing of incriminating documents quickly should the org be raided by the FBI or other government agency.

One policy describes a system known in the G.O. as the "Red Box." This policy gives instructions for keeping all G.O. documents related to incriminating activities in a special folder or briefcase called the "red box" that can be quickly destroyed in case of a raid.

Another policy called Basic and Essential Security instructs the G.O. staff member to be able destroy all such incriminating material within 30-60 seconds. "Destruction by fire is usually most thorough and practical. Probably the easiest and least expensive method is to purchase a metal container, some lighter fluid and have matches on hand...."

Especially illuminating is the course checksheet for the "Information Full Hat," the course used to train G.O. agents. Included on this course are the following:

To read a book on brainwashing;

To be able to define the following words: Spy; Spying; Agent; Operative; Information; Intelligence; Espionage; Counter espionage; Counter intelligence; Fascism; Socialism; Communism; CIA; FBI; MI6; MI5; KGB; GRU.

To write an essay on: What could happen if Intelligence was not anonymous or elusive;

To read the following policy letters written by Hubbard:

"Terror Stalks"
"Communism and Scientology"
"The War"
"PDH" (Pain, Drugs, Hypnosis)
"Intelligence"
"The Art of Building a Cover"
"Covert Operations I"
"Covert Operations II"
"Black PR"
"Secret, Notes on SMERSH"
Etc.

Other books read on the course include: The Spy and His Master; KGB; CIA and the Cult of Intelligence; Psychological Warfare Against Nazi Germany; and The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.

A sample of the hundreds of drills on this course:

Demo a covert operation on an opponent which restrains him and the beneficial result.

Demo why it is important to know your public's hate and love buttons when running an operation on an enemy.

Write an essay on what you would do if while running operations on an opponent, the opponent begins to run a black propaganda campaign on you.

Write up an operation in which the agent carrying out the operation would need a pretty good cover.

Demo how knowing the enemy makes for a better operation than being ignorant of the enemy.

Also included on this checksheet is TR-L (training routine lie).

Again, an interesting course for a "church"!

Unquestionably the most spectacular "operations" carried out by G.O. agents were those connected to "Operation Snow White," in which scores of government offices were burglarized in an attempt to retrieve every government file on Scientology. These operations resulted in some 30,000 government documents being either copied or stolen. Unfortunately for the Scientologists, they also resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of eleven Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife.

Michael Meisner, as Assistant Guardian for the Bureau of Information, was chosen to supervise this operation.

He selected a G.O. staff member, Gerald Wolfe, to infiltrate the IRS in Washington, D.C. Wolfe, codenamed "Silver," was hired as a clerk typist with the I.R.S. in May of 1975.

From May of 1975 until June of 1976, Wolfe and Meisner, using Wolfe's ID card as well as five forged ID cards, burglarized offices of the IRS Chief Counsel, several IRS attorneys, the IRS Exemptions Office, the Tax Division of the U.S. Justice Department, the Deputy General of the U.S., the IRS Office of Intelligence Operations, the Department of Justice Information and Privacy Unit, and the Interpol Liaison Office.

Meisner and Wolfe were able to pull off their astonishingly successful burglaries for over a year, until a suspicious library clerk alerted the authorities. In June of 1976, Wolfe was caught by the FBI with one of the forged ID cards, for which he was arrested and prosecuted. Meisner managed to flee prosecution for a year, during which time he was held prisoner by the G.O., until he managed to escape and defected to the FBI.

A month after Meisner's defection, the FBI launched surprise raids against the G.O. offices in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, seizing thousands of documents, including most of those previously stolen from the government offices.

As a result of the evidence obtained in the raids, eleven G.O. officials were indicted, and nine of the eleven served prison sentences ranging from six months to five years.

Mary Sue Hubbard, as head of the G.O., was fined $10,000 and given a five year prison sentence for her part in the illegal operations. Although she pleaded for leniency, she was told by the judge:

We have a precious system of government in the United States.... For anyone to use those laws, or to seek under the guise of those laws, to destroy the very foundation of the government is totally wrong and cannot be condoned by any responsible citizen. (4)

Mary Sue Hubbard reported to Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, where she served one year of her term before being released. Shortly after her release from prison, she was ousted from her position as head of the Guardian's Office by the new leadership of the church Her present whereabouts remain unknown.

The Guardian's Office was renamed the "Office of Special Affairs" by the new church leadership in the mid-1980s, in an effort to shed the tarnished image of the G.O. But, like the tiger unable to change its stripes, OSA is simply the old G.O. with a new name.

Strange activities for a church?

True, not every church comes with its own information and intelligence agency, illustrated instructions for burglary, espionage training, and its own corps of highly trained secret agents.

It is the siege mentality of Scientology, the idea of "us" against "them," that helps to maintain a high degree of unity within the cult.

The G.O. was formed to deal with the many real and perceived "enemies" of Scientology. This enemy mentality in Scientology was born from the paranoid lobes of Hubbard's mind.

And it is this mentality which makes the G.O., and now OSA, the danger that it is.

 

READ MORE:

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A decade before hacker Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, the Church of Scientology had already been in his crosshairs while he was a systems administrator with the Australian Internet Service Provider, Suburbia. At the time, Suburbia was known for hosting online chat forums that ranged from a number of topics, which included the Church.

While Assange was there, an anonymous Scientology critic obtained secretive documents and leaked them online. The documents were only meant to be seen by the highest ranking members of the Church, and the leaks revealed—among other things—that Scientologists believed it was possible to communicate with plants. The Church set off on a manhunt of find the leaker and stop the spread of the information. American lawyers representing Scientologists emailed Assange to demand information about one of Suburbia's customers, David Gerard, who was a major critic of the Church. It was an attempt to censor Suburbia and Gerard, but Assange didn't give in to their demands, and gave Gerard a heads up that the Church was gunning for him. 

 

This was during the early to mid '90s, at the same time hacker Johan Helsingius built an anonymous remailer server (a server that receives messages with instructions on where to send them without revealing the original sender), called Penet. It was used by hundreds of thousands of people and was off to a merry start until Helsingius was contacted by lawyers from the Church (Scientology lawyers also paid calls on Assange). They wanted him to block messages containing copyrighted Scientology material that the Penet server was sending to a forum of Church critics. Helsingius didn't cooperate, and found himself in a year-long legal battle that forced him to give up information on the anonymous Penet user who uploaded the material. Helsingius ultimately made the decision to shut the entire server down. The Church would go on to attack other publications, both print and digital, in this fashion in order to stop negative press and leaks.

After the Church's attempt at censoring Suburbia and Penet, Assange joined Cypherpunks, a mailing list used by radical hackers. While many of his posts were funny takedowns of other users, Assange—who posted under the name "Proff"—used the mailing list to create an anti-Scientology manifesto, which was just as much about protecting the Internet as it was taking down the Church:

 

If Nicole Kidman, Kate Cerberano, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Tom Cruise want to spend their fortunes on learning that the earth is in reality the destroyed prison colony of aliens from outer space then so be it. However, money brings power and attracts the corrupt... To the Church the battle isn't won in the courtroom. It is won at the very moment the legal process starts unfolding, creating fear and expense in those the Church opposes. Their worst critic at the moment is not a person, or an organization but a medium—the Internet. The Internet is, by its very nature, a censorship free zone. Censorship, concealment and revelation (for a fee) is the Church's raison d'être.

Fast forward to 2008, nearly two years after Assange founded WikiLeaks. The non-profit got its hands on a set of Scientology documents that, like the leak that happened during Assange's time at Suburbia, were only meant to be available to high-ranking members of the Church. This leak offered even more detailed accounts of how the gears of the highly secretive Church worked. Andy Greenberg, author of This Machine Kills Secrets, called it, "the most gratifying moment of WikiLeaks ascension." 

 

The documents totaled 208 scanned pages provided by the Church's former Office of Special Affairs employee and defector, Frank Oliver, who was declared a "suppressive person" by the Church and suspended. Mind you, this is after Oliver had signed a contract to work for the Church for the next billion years. The documents largely span six years, from 1986 to about 1992, and were labeled the "bibles" of Scientology by WikiLeaks. 

The documents revealed that there are eight "Operating Thetan" ranks that Scientologists could aspire to, known as OT1 to OT8. In order to reach the higher levels, members had to go through difficult to understand drills, like, "Find a tight packed crowd of people. Write it as a crowd and then as individuals until you have a cognition. Note it down." Many of the documents seem to be handwritten by Hubbard himself. By following these instructions, the documents insisted, "A great many phenomena (strange things) can happen while doing these drills, if they are done honestly."

 

Obviously, this kind of shit will get you some ridicule, so the Church wanted this information kept private in order to protect their reputation. One document, called the Manual of Justice, revealed how the Church handled critical journalists—they'd hire a detective to investigate the writer, and find any criminal information in their background. When the Church has enough dirt, officials would invite the journalist to a meeting, and pressure them to confess to slander. "Chances are he won't arrive," the document explains. "But he'll sure shudder into silence." 

There were also lists of airline frequent flyer phone numbers, so detectives could look into where their critics were traveling—according to the Church, there was a lot to keep track of: nearly 7,000 organizations and individuals were named "suppressive" by the group. The Church's Department of Special Affairs were in charge of "cleaning up the rotten spots of society in order to create a safer and saner environment for Scientology expansion and for all mankind," one document explained.

 

The Church's lawyers came after WikiLeaks and Assange within three days of the leaks. They predictably asked for the materials to be taken down from the website, but Assange—who finally had his chance to give a big "fuck you" to the Church after watching them bully hackers and publications for years—responded by posting more of the internal documents in spite of the Church's demands. “WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.”

To make sure his point couldn't be left up to interpretation, Assange laid out what he thought of the Church: "We have come to the conclusion that Scientology is not only an abusive cult, but that it aids and abets a general climate of Western media self-censorship. If the west [sic] can not defend its cultural values of free speech and press freedoms against a criminal cult like Scientology, it can hardly lecture China and other state abusers of these same values."

 

You can view the pages yourself since WikiLeaks' website still has a section dedicated to the Scientology leak on its website with more than 100 documents. In the years after WikiLeaks' confrontation with Scientology, the organization leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. Scientologists would also have a new enemy to contend with: the Internet hacktivist group, Anonymous, which released a video in 2008 that announced a call-to-arms against the Church after they tried to use legal action to get Gawker to take down a leaked internal video of Tom Cruise. 

 

In This Machine Kills Secrets, Assange says that Suburbia served as one of the biggest prototypes for WikiLeaks, and it's almost poetic that he would later get his chance to get pay back after witnessing the Church's power during his time there. "Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars," was one of L. Ron Hubbard's sayings for Scientologists. Well, it's been a war of attrition, and with Scientology's membership declining over the years, a popular documentary may be all there is to put the final nail in the coffin. If not, there's enough material for many more.

 

Going Clear premiered on HBO.

 

 

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Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to films like ‘Top Gun’?

 

BY ROGER STAHL

 

As this country commemorates Memorial Day, many will head to theaters to bathe in the nostalgia of “Top Gun: Maverick,” which opened Friday. With Tom Cruise on screen, the multiplex will crack with high-fives and roar with F-18 fighter jets, those sleek emblems of American power.

The film’s F-18s and other military gear are courtesy of the Pentagon. This is the job of the U.S. Defense Department’s Entertainment Media Office, which allows use of such assets in exchange for control of the script. Each military branch — except for the Marine Corps, which operates out of Camp Pendleton in San Diego County — maintains satellite offices along Wilshire Boulevard to do outreach with the entertainment industry. The original 1986 “Top Gun,” which was intimately guided by the Navy, has long represented the military’s capabilities when it comes to steering pop culture.

Until recently, the scholarly consensus had been that this phenomenon was isolated to perhaps a couple of hundred films. In the past five years, however, my small group of researchers has acquired 30,000 pages of internal Defense Department documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and newly available archives at Georgetown University, which show that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions about the government’s reach at a time when deciphering propaganda from fact has become increasingly difficult.

 

This includes a history of excising unsavory or controversial topics — or “showstoppers” as they’re often called in the documents — including depictions of war crimes, torture, security of the nuclear arsenal, veteran suicide, sexual assault and racism in the ranks. At the same time, these institutions have used their clout to promote weapons, gin up recruiting and normalize U.S. military action around the world.

We have also discovered dozens of instances where films, denied U.S. government assistance because of objectionable content, were ultimately never made. Jerry Bruckheimer, a top producer, said that “Top Gun” and 2001’s “Pearl Harbor” simply wouldn’t exist without military approval. Mace Neufeld, who produced virtually the entire Jack Ryan film franchise, also needed Pentagon and CIA support. Neufeld has acknowledged that Paramount Pictures would greenlight the first film in the series, 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October,” only if it secured Defense Department approval first. It was even in the contract. One can imagine the chilling effect this has on screenwriters.

“Top Gun,” also a Paramount product, came out post-Vietnam, at a time of public reticence about military adventurism. The movie became a military-supported public relations blitz that supercharged recruiting. As we found in our research, the Pentagon’s Entertainment Media Office internally wrote that the film “completed rehabilitation of the military’s image, which had been savaged by the Vietnam War.”

The film later caused trouble for the military, though, during the 1991 Tailhook scandal, in which hundreds of Navy servicemen sexually assaulted more than 80 servicewomen at a convention in Las Vegas. When Congress investigated, it called out “Top Gun” for fostering an assault-prone environment.

Now, more than three decades later, memories of Tailhook and other sexual assault controversies have faded with the help of the Entertainment Media Office’s red pen, no less. That has allowed the Navy to dust off the franchise. According to documents obtained by our research team member Tom Secker, the military began meeting with Bruckheimer, the producer, about the reboot as far back as 2012. In 2018, Entertainment Media Office personnel found “no major problems with the storyline,” but asked for “some revision to characterization and actions of Naval aviators.” Later that year, the “Production Assistance Agreement” formally stipulated the Pentagon’s right to “weave in key talking points” in exchange for all that expensive equipment.

What exact changes did the Pentagon make to the new “Top Gun: Maverick”? We don’t know, and that’s part of the problem. While we have script change details for hundreds of other productions, such as “Godzilla” and “Fast and Furious 8,” the military has repeatedly invoked a “trade secrets” exception to block our Freedom of Information Act requests when it comes to its most high-value assets.

Americans should have a right to know the extent of the military’s influence on the shows and films they consume. One solution would be to require that all script negotiations automatically be made public. Barring that, Congress could pass legislation that requires producers to disclose CIA or Department of Defense influence before the opening credits. Such a notice would alert moviegoers that they were about to experience a “two-hour infomercial” as the Pentagon proudly called “Lone Survivor,” a 2013 film about four Navy SEALs in Afghanistan, in one of the internal memos we obtained.

The entertainment industry can play a role too. Although producers and directors have largely benefited financially over the years from these arrangements, they should fight for creative integrity and refuse to give up control of their scripts. With rising audience awareness of this issue, turning a movie into a propaganda poster may no longer be the blockbuster brand strategy it once was. In fact, successful evasion of military influence might well be viewed as a badge of honor.

If we’re to truly honor the ideals veterans fought and died for, we shouldn’t allow the military to wage a stealth propaganda campaign on an unsuspecting public by commandeering the world’s largest entertainment industry.

 

 

Roger Stahl is a communication studies professor at the University of Georgia and director of the documentary film “Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood.”

 

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-maverick-memorial-day-tom-cruise-pentagon-propaganda

 

I WOULD NOT WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT producers and directors who have largely benefited financially over the years from these arrangements... Few producers/directors would go against the concept of THE EMPIRE, would they, if they want to make money at the box office? No?....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.....

 

 By SHANE DANIELSEN ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ hits screens as its ruthlessly career-oriented star turns 60 

Even by the abbreviated standards of the form, the bio on Tom Cruise’s Twitter account is remarkably succinct. Just seven words: “Actor. Producer. Running in movies since 1981.” 

That might raise a smile. It’s true: he does run a lot. But it’s that date that might get the bigger reaction: it feels like he’s always been around. And at his peak, between big-budget action blockbusters (the Mission: Impossible franchise), Very Serious Dramas (A Few Good Men, Born on the Fourth of July) and commercial triumphs (Rain Man, Jerry Maguire), he seemed for a while capable of being all things to all audiences – the complete movie star.

How long has Tom Cruise been famous? Consider that the first time any of us ever saw Naomi Watts she was in a TV commercial, knocking him back for a date in favour of her mum’s lamb roast. That was 1990, though it feels today like a transmission from the late Cretaceous period. And even then, Cruise had been the biggest thing in Hollywood for at least half a decade, his very name a kind of shorthand for global celebrity.

But in July of this year, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV will turn 60, an occasion that presents him, and us, with an almost existential dilemma. What does an old Tom Cruise look like? And where exactly does he fit today in a film industry almost unrecognisable from the one he originally conquered? What kind of movies does he make in future, and for whom?

The most obvious answer – a dignified retreat into more “intimate” storytelling, small-scale dramas about sorrowful older men trying to put their affairs in order, or right some longstanding wrong – is also the most unlikely. Mellow reflection? The autumnal register? Not his thing. And anyway, Kevin Costner – who never seemed young – already has that hustle locked down. It’s impossible to imagine Cruise in something as elegiac as Open Range or as despairing as Let Him Go. That weary resignation, the wistful acceptance of time’s passing and the body’s decline… it just isn’t in him. The guy’s a runner.

Likewise, I’d be surprised if he ever buckled and joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe – for the simple reason that he’s engaged in the long-term bet that his brand is stronger than Marvel’s. Cruise is his own superhero, valiantly striving to bend the laws of physics to his will; like Kang the Conqueror, he wants to triumph over time. And to prove it, we now have Top Gun: Maverick, a much-belated, almost certainly superfluous sequel to the movie that consecrated his stardom, 36 years ago. Directed this time by Joseph Kosinski, and made once again in loving lockstep with the United States armed forces (which happily offered facilities and materiel to the cause), it marks a very deliberate call-back to an era of excess and bombast, and a time when living, breathing movie stars, not comic-book characters, were the stuff of dreams.

As such, it has rather a lot to prove. Not only must it live up to its predecessor, one of the best-loved films of the past few decades, but it also has to succeed in its own right, in a theatrical market still finding its feet after the advent of the COVID-19 epidemic. (“We’re trying to hit a bullet with a bullet,” Cruise admitted to co-star Miles Teller.) For the film to underperform would deal a serious blow to his prestige, his unerring ability to draw an audience. But early word of mouth is strong – the flight scenes, at least, look as thrilling as the original’s – and its international premiere at Cannes, accompanied by a career tribute to its star, looks set to anchor a robust foreign rollout. We’ll see.

One thing, however, is certain: the day his international press duties end, Cruise will return home and pour himself a drink and then settle down to work again, toiling away at the task of his life, the business of maintaining his place in a world that may yet outgrow him.

Born in upstate New York in 1962, Cruise reportedly decided to give acting a shot not long after he turned 18. It worked out pretty well. Within a year he’d signed with Creative Artists Agency and scored a bit part (“Billy”) in Endless Love, the now-forgotten Brooke Shields weepie. Just five years after that he was filming Top Gun, with another six credits already under his belt, including performances for Francis Ford Coppola, Curtis Hanson and Ridley Scott. 

This, too, is a kind of running – the kind of headlong sprint into the spotlight that most actors can only dream of. In retrospect, it’s clear why he prospered. It was the ’80s, a decade of abundance. He was young and white and handsome, and supremely confident. He held the screen effortlessly, whether dancing to Bob Seger in an unbuttoned shirt and underpants, or shooting pool alongside Paul Newman (the latter, in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money, the kind of intergenerational benediction that is, again, little more than a pipedream for most aspiring hunks). 

Above all, he communicated something uniquely appealing at that particular time, a potency that was partly his own – he seemed, in films such as Risky Business and Cocktail, to be pure id, equal parts instinct and appetite – and partly a projection of the values and self-image of Reagan-era America. Not strength, mind you: the 1980s was also the heyday of a particular kind of muscle-bound action hero, men who, in Clive James’s immortal formulation, resembled condoms stuffed with walnuts, and Cruise was never that. He always looked human, even boyish, and this accounted for a good deal of his charm. But he radiated a can-do sort of resolve, a determination before which every obstacle simply crumbled. Compared to the meathead machismo of Stallone and Schwarzenegger, his was a particularly seductive brand of soft power, his grin – that head-turning, gravity-inverting, million-dollar smile – proving hardly less effective than a mortar.

In fact, considering how easily fame found him, perhaps the single most remarkable thing about Tom Cruise is not that he never seemed to take it for granted, but that he appeared to believe it demanded of him constant and unrelenting attention. Speak to anyone who’s worked with him (I don’t say “anyone who knows him”, because I suspect no one really does), and you’ll hear the same things: Nice guy. Bit intense. Really does the work. No Vin Diesel candy-assing it, here: he does immense amounts of prep, turns up each morning on time and off-book, and expects the same level of commitment from his co-stars and crew. Some people enjoy this discipline. Others don’t. Thandiwe Newton called working with him on Mission: Impossible 2 “a nightmare”. (“I think he has this sense that only he can do everything as best as it can be done.”) Like most control freaks, he views himself as the indispensable element, the fulcrum upon which an entire, fragile structure rests.

At this point, of course, we must acknowledge his curious faith and the outsized role it plays in his life. Scientology blossomed in LA for a reason, but its appeal for Cruise is particularly easy to deduce. A self-help course in the guise of a religion, Dianetics is essentially a series of puzzles to be solved – puzzles of you: why you are the way you are and why you do the things you do. You work each one out in order to move up to the next level, with sartori-like enlightenment – I’m sorry, “clarity” – promised at the end, after many thousands of hours (and dollars) have been expended. This process is catnip to a particular kind of person, and especially for someone like Tom Cruise, who appears to have viewed his entire life as a kind of quadratic equation.

Ironically, this is why he’s so good in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, a weirdly underrated sci-fi film whose chief selling point is that it’s a kind of meta-text about its leading man: both his real-life willingness to withstand physical punishment (he’s like a live-action Wile E. Coyote in it), and his underlying belief that success is essentially a series of dance steps to be learnt and rehearsed and perfected. Any desired outcome can be achieved, eventually. You just have to put in the work.

But his affiliation with Scientology also highlights a paradox. For a man determined to be ubiquitous, Cruise has, at times, made it a lot harder than it should be to enjoy his movies. This manifests in ways both negative (bouncing on Oprah’s couch like a lunatic, dismissing psychiatry as a pseudoscience) and positive: good as they frequently are, it’s all but impossible to watch the recent Mission: Impossible films without having 20 per cent of your brain remind you that he’s doing all his own stunts. That’s really him up there, clinging to the side of that plane as it takes off, or scaling the Burj Khalifa. That’s the jump where he broke his ankle! (Look carefully, and you’ll see him wince.) We know he survived these moments, but even so, the knowledge can’t help but take us out of the story. There’s a critical theory that every film is actually a documentary of its own making, and that notion is not without merit. But it works a little differently for a Glauber Rocha docu-fiction, I think, than for a $200-million action blockbuster starring one of the most famous human beings on the planet.

Again and again, real life – and the full-time, oxygen-sucking business of simply being Tom Cruise – intrudes on the narrative. It was clear early on that some roles would be beyond him: for all its pretty set designs, 1994’s Anne Rice adaptation Interview with the Vampire exposed a star swimming out beyond his depth. (Though to be fair, one could say the same of his co-star Brad Pitt.) Likewise, his cod Oirish routine in Far and Away two years earlier – a slice of bullshit blarney that might be the single worst entry in his filmography. Even then, Cruise’s wattage was too bright, his public persona too colossal and distracting, to allow him to fully disappear into a role so far outside the here and now.

But even when a part cleaved closely to real life, his very presence could destabilise it, as was seen all too clearly in 1999, with the making of Eyes Wide Shut. On paper, you could see the project’s appeal. Living in luxury in London for a year. Working at Pinewood opposite your wife and for Stanley Kubrick, at the time just about the biggest fish an actor could hope to hook. Alas, the film was not enhanced by Cruise and Kidman’s relationship, as Kubrick presumably intended, but derailed by it. Their scenes together revealed neither empathy nor sizzle, which may have been the point, story-wise (the jury is still very much out on this), but led to all sorts of speculation about their marriage, their private selves… all of which, in turn, further overshadowed the release. And Kubrick’s unexpected death, just six days after showing a first cut to the couple and some Warner Bros. execs, made Eyes Wide Shut an unresolved object, forever debated and conjectural. Whatever it would finally have become, after its famously obsessive director’s tinkering, it’s likely not quite what we saw. Nevertheless, it is what we’re left with, for better and for worse.

The experience (or the result, perhaps) seemed to sour Cruise a little on working with auteurs. Another star in his position – his soon-to-be-ex-wife, for example – would have drawn up a list of Important Filmmakers I Want To Work With and methodically worked their way down it. But aside from Hong Kong veteran John Woo (whose secondment to the Mission: Impossible franchise proved an unhappy one), two dalliances with Spielberg (Minority Report in 2002 and War of the Worlds in 2005), and one-and-done turns for Michael Mann (Collateral  ) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), he’s mostly relied since on second-stringers and B-listers, journeymen directors he can trust not to muddy his vision. Sometime around 2010 he seemed to realise that, when it came to his career, he was the auteur, as megawatt star and lead producer. So why bother introducing another voice into the mix? What point could it possibly serve, except to cause trouble?

There are some Cruise performances I haven’t seen. Rock of Ages, for example – a film, like Mamma Mia!, that I simply can’t watch because I’m too mortified with embarrassment for all involved. (“Nothing can scare me now,” Colin Firth told me once. “I was in Mamma Mia!, you see.”) Valkyrie looked like an extended Mitchell and Webb sketch; Lions for Lambs just felt like homework.

But others endure, and not always the expected roles. Take Collateral, a film I liked well enough when it came out, but adored when I revisited it a few years ago. Cruise is utterly magnetic throughout, in part because he gives so little. As a hitman charged with taking out five targets in the course of a single LA night, he’s a study in glacial proficiency, so aloof from ordinary human life as to be almost a different species. Like Alain Delon’s assassin in Melville’s Le Samouraï (an obvious influence here), he regards the world with forensic dispassion, dividing it reflexively into predators and prey. He wears a beautiful dove-grey suit. Single-buttoned, no belt or pocket flaps, nothing whatsoever to detract from the pared-down minimalism of the silhouette. He has fantastic salt-and-pepper hair. He’s rarely looked hotter, and I think it’s because he’s never been so indifferent to his own appeal. There’s nothing needy in this performance; he doesn’t meet the viewer halfway, or indeed at all. You come to him. Because you’re fascinated by the cold, hard, uniquely capable thing he is. 

Cruise has two final Mission: Impossible films slated for release in 2023 and 2024, and right now is reportedly playing a high-stakes game of brinksmanship with Paramount Studios, refusing to hand over the first of them until they agree to his terms for the second. As The Hollywood Reporter put it, this is Cruise “exercising the power he’s accrued from bringing in $3.6bn in box office starring as Ethan Hunt over three decades”. 

What he does after that is anyone’s guess. I can’t imagine him ever doing television, prestige or otherwise. It’s not that he would think it beneath him (though who knows, maybe he would). It’s just not what he signed up for – the single, improbable, glorious thing he set out to be. He is, goddamn it, a movie star in the old-fashioned, red-carpet, Hollywood-glamour sense of that term. He might even be the last of them. He demands to be seen in a cinema, on as big a screen as possible, and so requires that you get off your couch and get in your car and go meet him there. He wants you, in short, to make the effort – because Christ knows, he has. That’s what his whole career is about, and his entire life. Day in, day out, he’s doing the work, even as the film industry – and maybe the world – collapses around him. He won’t stop running because he can’t.

 

SHANE DANIELSEN

Shane Danielsen is a screenwriter and former artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2022/june/shane-danielsen/sixty-business-tom-cruise#mtr

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

So is it time for Thomas Cruise Mapother IV to stop pretending running? Pretending is what actors do, in movies or TV series. May be he should not stop pretending if people still like his play-acting. But one thing that Tom could do FOR REAL, IS TO PUBLICLY PRESSURE THE US GOVERNMENT TO DROP ALL THE CHARGES AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE. This would be a REAL bit of goodness.... We expect no less.

 

 

The Movie Top Gun Maverick "produced by the Pentagon" has been rated FANTASTIC! by the man in the street... Ready to enlist!!!!!

Meanwhile, one thing that Tom could do FOR REAL, IS TO PUBLICLY PRESSURE THE US GOVERNMENT TO DROP ALL THE CHARGES AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE. This would be a REAL bit of goodness.... We expect no less.

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

See also: https://www.voltairenet.org/article217310.html

Released on 13 June 2022, the film Top Gun: Maverick has already garnered more than 750 million dollars. It is among the 100 highest grossing films in history.

It was conceived as a propaganda clip for enlistment in the United States Armed Forces, which for the purpose made available a considerable amount of software, equipment and men, in addition to two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. In exchange, the producers accepted to have their script rewritten by the Pentagon, which also got to pick the cast.

The contract between the civilian producers and the Pentagon can be found below.

 titre documents joints

Control money and media and you can control a country. It was the Jewish "Father of Propaganda", Edward Bernays, who stated in his book titled, PROPAGANDA, in 1928 that "The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is the greatest distributor of ideas and opinions."

 

 

By Timofey Konstantinov, Moscow-based journalist

 

Hollywood abandoned Russia one year ago, but the country's box office has just set an all time record: How did this happen?

 

Film industries around the world exist independently of Hollywood, and Russian producers might just be about to strike gold 

Over the past year, many Western companies have left Russia. This hasn't just affected the economy, it has also altered the cultural landscape. The film industry is no exception. Without Western premieres and streaming services, the country is reconsidering its approach to the film business. 

Russia has many examples to look to for inspiration. In many places, national cinema retains a leading position at the box office. It is both financially successful and independent of Hollywood, in the likes of France and India, to name just two examples. Different countries have built their film industries in different ways. Some have focused on domestic audiences, while others fostered a state-supported concept aimed at both local and foreign viewers. Many have developed under strict censorship and invented a metaphorical film language that resonated with international film festival audiences.

So how did these countries escape the grip of Hollywood? And how far has Russia traveled in this direction over the past year?

 

What happened? 

After February 24, last year, many Western production companies closed their Russian offices and terminated contracts with local studios. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., Netflix and Amazon Prime, Marvel and Disney all stopped releasing films in Russia or suspended access to their streaming platforms.

This decision impacted both the film industry and ordinary viewers. Joint projects with Netflix have been paused indefinitely. The global streaming platform previously purchased Russian series like “The Epidemic” and “The Method” and planned to produce its own original content in Russian. The year’s highest-grossing movies globally – “The Batman” and “Top Gun: Maverick” have become unavailable in Russia. Legally, at least. 

Along with US motion picture companies, several West European studios also left Russia. However, within a year it became evident that they are more dependent on the Russian market than their US counterparts. One example is the French cinema company Pathé which announced in early December that it would return. 

For the past decade, Russia has been an active part of the international film market. While in the 1990s and 2000s its cinema was primarily associated with film festivals, in the 2010s a homegrown blockbuster market emerged. Russian directors, such as Kantemir Balagov and Ilya Naishuller, took part in big-budget international movie projects.

Russian movies and series found an audience. For example, “The Epidemic” made Netflix’s most-viewed list.

Political differences cast Russian cinema into a new reality. The industry will now have to revisit traditional production and distribution methods and explore how they work beyond Hollywood.

 Why does Hollywood dominate the world’s cinema?

Hollywood is a unique industry. Its modern movies are specifically tailored to international audiences. Their goal is to encompass the widest possible number of viewers.

There are a variety of reasons and viewpoints on why Hollywood dominates the global film market. Among other factors, this is linked to a greater urban population in the US, as opposed to other countries. In the US, the domestic market proved to be so large that movies made returns at home and were then exported abroad to compete with local film industries. Such a strategy eliminates risks, since, even in case of failure, the production can't suffer a significant financial loss. Moreover, the growth of the US economy in the post-WWII era contributed to the strengthening of the film industry, especially against the background of the economic damage inflicted on Europe.

However, even Hollywood hasn’t been able to take over all markets. It is much less popular in countries with protectionist laws in place, such as France. The share of American movies is also smaller in regions with significant cultural differences like India, China, and Africa.

 China. Dictates its own rules to Hollywood

Currently, China has one of the largest film industries in the world. But just a few decades ago, its cinema was largely provincial and unable to win over the hearts of local audiences. The primary reasons for the progress have been surging development and new economic and technological opportunities that allowed the Chinese film industry to directly compete with big-budget Hollywood blockbusters.

In 2007, 14 of the 25 top movies at the Chinese box-office were shot in the United States. In 2019, that number dropped to 8. All remaining 17 movies were Chinese. In addition, box office receipts have grown from $800 million to $9.2 billion in ten years. The coronavirus pandemic dealt a significant blow to the industry, but over the past two years, it has almost recovered, and in 2023, will likely break previous records.

 

Having acquired an independent position in cinematography, China has been able to dictate its own rules to Hollywood. Due to its volume, the Chinese market has become so important for Hollywood that US film companies are ready to adapt to the requirements of local partners, especially regarding movies targeted at Asian audiences.

Moreover, Chinese censorship is unique because the content censored during post-production doesn’t just affect the copy meant for Chinese audiences – it influences the version shown to the whole world.  For example, in 2020, at the insistence of the Disney office in China, the kissing scene between the main character and her beloved was cut from the movie “Mulan”. This decision was made so that Chinese viewers would not consider this plot twist disrespectful to the original myth of Hua Mulan.

Political factors are the most common reasons behind the censorship or even the ban of Hollywood movies in China. Movies directly or indirectly referring to the three “Ts” – Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen – will definitely not be shown in China. In 2016, in order to placate Chinese audiences, the Tibetan ethnicity of one of the characters in the Marvel film “Doctor Strange” was changed. Commenting on the decision, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill said that following the comics to the letter would “risk alienating one billion people”. China doesn’t just fail to recognize the independence of Tibet but denies the very existence of Tibetan identity. The failing career of actor Richard Gere, who was a friend of the Dalai Lama and an active supporter of Tibetan independence, is also linked to Chinese censorship. Moreover, Gere has long been persona non grata at the Academy Awards after he publicly criticized China's policy at the event in 1993.

 Iran. Triumphs at film festivals despite isolation

In 2022, Russia experienced fresh interest in Iranian cinema. Once considered exclusively a film festival phenomenon, today it’s emerging into an industry that may help Russia understand its own near future. Some officials see Iran as an alternative to Hollywood. State Duma deputy Sergey Solovyov suggested that in Iranian cinema, Russian audiences will find “long-missed stories”. In June 2022, the production of the first joint Russian-Iranian film was announced.

The social problems of ordinary people lie at the heart of Iranian cinema. Their stories mix the everyday and the metaphorical. This intersection of social issues and symbolic film language is tied to strict state and religious censorship. Iranian artists often have to find non-trivial ways of implementing their ideas, and this applies to the movie industry as well.

For example, director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for participating in anti-government protests against official election results in 2009. In addition to the imprisonment, which was reduced to house arrest, he was forbidden to make films and give interviews for a period of 20 years. But despite this, over the past 12 years Panahi managed to shoot five movies and send them to international film festivals. Three of them were created with a minimal budget and shot in one location (apartment, house, car). Making a strong political statement in regard to modern Iran, these movies are also valuable from an artistic point of view.

There’s a paradoxical link between censorship and the development of cinematic language. Having no chance to state things directly, the authors find ways to enrich their movies with symbols and metaphors, while trying to keep the balance between politics and capturing the interest of the audience. As an example, we can take the many movies on the subject of the Iran-Iraq war. Iranian directors manage to shoot unique war films without showing the bloodshed and violence on screen.

Iranian cinema is prized all over the world. In addition to awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival, Iranian releases have won two Academy Awards for “Best foreign language film”. These were two of Asghar Farhadi’s movies, produced five years apart: “A Separation” and “The Salesman”. They are based on everyday subjects with universal themes.

 France. Makes its own movies at the expense of others 

The French film industry is the oldest in the world and, based on the number of movies produced each year, the most successful in Europe. It is also known for its successful protectionist policies, a model that Russia’s former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky has proposed to emulate. The policy is rooted in the interwar period (1918-1939). At that time, Hollywood's expansion into war-weakened European markets called into question the existence of national film industries. Due to minimal cultural, language, and economic barriers, Great Britain was hit the hardest. In France, the share of French films fell to a mere 10%.

 

In 1928, the government approved quotas for foreign cinema. The introduction of protectionist measures coincided with the birth of "talkies." A year earlier, “The Jazz Singer”, the first sound film in the history of cinema, was released in the US. When the characters started speaking, the number of foreign movies at the French box office naturally decreased because of the language barrier.

The policy fulfilled its mission and helped save French cinema. Following WWII, mutual agreements were concluded between Paris and the US, and quotas were replaced by a system of support for the local film industry. Since 1948, about 10% of the cost of each ticket has gone to the Centre National du Cinéma (CNC). These funds go into supporting domestic output, as well as building and modernizing movie theaters.

Television companies, internet providers, and video producers also contribute a percentage from sales to the CNC. The amount depends on several factors such as whether the organization is state or individually owned, how large it is, and the kinds of products it sells. For example, DVD and Blu-Ray movies are taxed at 2%, while pornography is taxed at 10%.

Unlike Russia, the film industry in France doesn’t receive direct state funding. This is replaced by a complex system that collects and distributes taxes according to the needs of the industry. However, as film critic and Cannes Film Festival correspondent on former USSR countries Joel Chapron writes, the money allocated by the CNC constitutes less than 10% of the total budget of the motion picture. Another 25% is provided by French television channels, which are legally required to invest in film production. According to Chapron, nearly half of all French movies are co-productions “made in three, four, or even seven countries”.

France is one of the few places in the world where US movies make up less than half of the market. Local cinema constitutes 35%-45% of the French film market, and Hollywood makes up 45% according to 2014 statistics.  Incidentally, France became the main foreign market for Russian cinema in the first half of 2022. In 2021, the war drama “Persian Lessons” became the highest-grossing Russian movie abroad.

The protection of national interests does not interfere with French cosmopolitanism. As the birthplace of cinema, France embraces representatives of different nationalities and cultures. Thus, the Spaniard Luis Bunuel, the Austrian Michael Haneke, and the Poles Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski shot some of their best films in French, and Argentinian-born filmmaker Gaspar Noe is considered an icon of modern French cinema.

 India. Many competing markets in one country

Movies came to India quite early, just a year after the Paris premiere of the Lumiere brothers' “Arrival of a Train”. Today, India is the world’s largest producer of films. The country has many independent companies that produce movies for the local population. This is due to the large variety of languages spoken by the Indians. 

For most foreign viewers, Indian cinema is directly associated with Bollywood. It’s indeed one of the centers of the industry but is in no way inferior to other, less popular “-woods”. In addition to Bollywood, there is Tollywood (Hyderabad), Kollywood (Chennai), Mollywood (films in Malayalam) and others. India even has its own Hollywood (Gujarat).

Bollywood has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Among other things, this proved that the old ways of making movies aren’t effective anymore. The audience isn’t satisfied with a few popular actors and familiar narratives that aren’t rooted in Indian culture. Critics of modern Bollywood warn that the industry is losing its identity and is ignoring India’s social, cultural, and political characteristics.

However, in recent years, many motion picture studios have emerged in South India. Compared to the Westernized Bollywood that ignores India’s regional identity, their movies are closer to the people. One example is the action movie RRR about the fight for the independence of India. It grossed $160 million internationally and became the third highest-earning Indian movie. Local audiences prefer South Indian motion pictures. A study by the Confederation of Indian Industry showed that in 2021, 62% of total box office receipts came from films produced there.

Worldwide, Indian cinema is most popular in Asian countries. The country's traditional values – prioritizing family and respect for elders – relate to Asian audiences. At the same time, Indian cinema is also undergoing major changes and is turning to previously taboo subjects, like same-sex relationships. Modern Indian cinema carefully and respectfully explores phenomena beyond traditional Hindu morality.

 Nigeria. Thousands of movies for DVD and VHS

Nigerian cinema is practically unknown abroad. However, the country is second only to India in the number of movies produced annually, which puts it ahead of the US. The film industry has helped Nigeria develop the strongest economy on the African continent. Additionally, cinematography is Nigeria’s second largest economic sector, after agriculture.

The Nigerian film industry has been nicknamed Nollywood, by The New York Times. 

Many Nigerians want the term dropped, since it was thought up by an American, and they see it as a concealed form of imperialism. Moreover, they consider that “Nollywood” discredits the African identity, because it implies that Nigerian directors are inferior to Hollywood. Nearly 15 years later, the same New York Times journalist cites both African researchers and ordinary people, all of whom agree that Caucasians cannot fully appreciate Nollywood cinema. Its traditional themes like witchcraft don’t typically resonate with Western or Asian audiences.

In the 2000s, the budget of a Nigerian movie could range from $1,000 to $15,000. Sometimes filming would stop due to a power outage or the threat of terrorists nearby. These movies were produced in just a few days and were immediately distributed on video. In the West, Nollywood is mainly known for outdated special effects. Yet despite the low quality of these films, production was quite profitable since the meager budgets were easily compensated through the sale of VHS with more left to invest into new content.

To estimate the scale of the endless stream of movies in a country where in 2020, only a third of the population used the internet, we can take a look at the filmography of one of Nollywood’s directors. Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen’s IMDB.com profile states that he directed 112 movies. However, the director himself says that in over 20 years, he has shot somewhere between 150-200 movies. 

The number of annually produced flicks peaked in 2008 and since then has declined. But for the industry, this indicates growth. It is no longer possible for one person to juggle the roles of director, operator, and composer. Nigerian cinema is becoming more professional and is steadily moving away from the technical inconsistencies of the 1990s and 2000s.

However, distribution is still a major challenge for Nollywood. For many years, the movies came out on DVD and VHS and were sold at local markets. Most of the copies were unlicensed. For a long time, this didn’t stop the creators from making money, since the initial investments were trivial.

Western distribution methods are only starting to become popular in Nigeria. In 2021, the country had only 68 movie theaters with a population of over 200 million people. Some streaming platforms, including Netflix, have also become available in Africa. The number of subscribers grows every year.

 

South Korea. A fierce and successful struggle

In the 21st century, South Korean cinema stopped being a film festival phenomenon and became mainstream, even in the West. The result of this long journey was the triumphs of Bong Joon-ho’s film “Parasite”. It received the Gold Palm Branch of the Cannes Film Festival, won several Academy Awards in key categories including “Best director” and "Best film”, and became an international sensation gathering enthusiastic reviews from critics and audiences alike. The South Korean boom broke out once again after the release of “Squid Game” on Netflix, where it quickly became the top series.

Until recent times, the history of South Korean cinema was littered with failures. For many years, Korea was in a politically subordinate position, which reflected its cinematography. Cinema was a latecomer, and Japanese authorities used it for propaganda purposes. For example, only several “harmless” genres were allowed: costume dramas, melodramas, and propaganda films glorifying Japan. This policy didn’t contribute to the development of viewers’ sympathies.

A former civil servant, Kim Dong-ho, took many measures intended to help Korean cinema. Foreign movies were limited, and each Korean film was shown for nearly half a year. In the 1980s, Koreans weren’t interested in locally produced movies, preferring American titles. However, there were several known instances where nationalists sabotaged screenings of Hollywood films – such as the erotic thriller “Fatal Attraction,” where they planted non-venomous snakes in the hall. A year later, when “Rain Man” was released, venomous snakes were used.

In the 1990s, the state began actively supporting Korean cinema. This is sometimes attributed to the fact that “Jurassic Park” earned more in 1993 at the box office than Hyundai did selling cars. Investors received tax breaks, censorship restrictions no longer applied to directors and screenwriters, and for every foreign film shown, one Korean film had to be produced. Gradually, quotas were reduced, which resulted in protests that included many industry professionals. Renowned Korean actors shaved their heads and burned tapes with Hollywood films in front of the US embassy. “Oldboy” director Park Chan-wook protested at the Berlin Film Festival with a poster “No Screen Quota = No Oldboy”, and leading actor Choi Min-sik stopped acting for several years.

From the mid-1990s to 2001, the share of domestic films at the box office grew from 23% to 50%, and the number of movie theaters tripled. Some attribute this rise to the introduction of quotas. Despite the popularity of quotas in the cinematographic industry, their effectiveness is arguable: protectionist measures were introduced in 1988, but five years later the share of domestic cinema in Korea was no larger than 16%. Today, quotas continue to be applied (a Korean film is guaranteed a little over two months at the box office), but their relevance is still questionable. For many years in a row, Korean films have made up over half of the country’s film market, and local audiences no longer need incentives to choose domestically-produced movies over foreign options.

The early 90s brought a new generation of Korean directors. They consisted of both “festival” auteurs like Park Chan-wook, Hong Sang-soo, and Kim Ki-duk and mainstream film directors such as Kim Jee-woon, and Yeon Sang-ho.

Fans of South Korean cinema often contrast it with Hollywood. One of the arguments in favor of Korean movies is that the average age of the Korean audience is 10 years older than that of the American audience. Hollywood blockbusters are primarily aimed at teenagers, while the average Korean viewer is older and more demanding.

 

So, what about Russia?

2022 was the first year when Russian-made movies accounted for over half of all box office receipts with a total share of 52.1%. In comparison, at this time last year 73.36% of the content shown here was foreign. January 2023 became the best month ever for Russian cinema and box office earnings topped 8,663 billion rubles ($118 million). This was a 61.8% increase from 2022 and improved on the 2020 record by 12.3%.

This success was largely due to the release of the family blockbuster “Cheburashka”, which set a record at the national box office and collected 6 billion rubles (almost twice as much as “Avatar” in 2009) or $80 million. Currently, there are several movies in post-production that may not break the record but will likely be successful. For example, “The Challenge” is set to be released in cinemas this April. This is the first feature film to be partially shot in space on the ISS.

The absence of Hollywood is already balanced by the development of domestic drama. By the end of 2022, the number of Russian films and TV series that went into production increased by 16%.

This growth has been prompted by the withdrawal of Hollywood blockbusters, which accounted for a major share of box office receipts. If Hollywood does decide to return, it will probably face much fiercer competition than before.

By Timofey Konstantinov, Moscow-based journalist

 

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GUSNOTE: WE HAVE OFTEN MENTIONED THE NERARIOUS TRIUMPHALISTIC INFLUENCE OF HOLLYWOOD ON THE WORLD ON THIS SITE.... IT'S TIME TO IMPOSE QUOTAS FOR AUSTRALIAN FILM PRODUCTIONS THAT ARE NOT HOLLYWOODIAN IN STYLE, INFLUENCE AND MONEY.

 

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The Academy Awards are adopting a new set of diversity rules that will dictate whether future films will be eligible for the Best Picture Oscar. Starting with the March 2024 awards, movies will not be considered for a Best Picture nomination unless they meet two out of four standards — those standards include featuring a lead or significant supporting character from an “underrepresented racial or ethnic group,” having a main storyline that focuses on an underrepresented group, or at that least 30% of the cast comes from two or more underrepresented groups (women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ or the disabled).

 

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