Happy Birthday, Emile de Antonio! Born today in 1919 as Emile Francisco de Antonio, this American producer and director of documentary films usually detail in political, social, and counterculture events circa 1960s–1980s.
He has been referred to by American author and associate professor Randolph Lewis as, "…the most important political filmmaker in the United States during the Cold War."
Among his credits, de Antonio is best known for writing, co-producing and directing the 1968 American black and white documentary/war film 'In the Year of the Pig'.
During the time of its release in 1968, the United States was in the middle of its military engagement, and was politically controversial.
Nonetheless, one year later, the film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. This occurred at the 41st Academy Awards in April 1969.
However, the film lost the Best Documentary Feature award to American writer, film producer and director Bill McGaw's forty-seven-minute 1968 American black and white documentary/independent film 'Journey into Self'.
The documentary had been narrated by American film director and producer Stanley Kramer ('The Defiant Ones').
The documentary had been narrated by American film director and producer Stanley Kramer ('The Defiant Ones').
'In the Year of the Pig' delivers both a condemnation of the Vietnam War and a history lesson on its roots.
Beginning with the French colonialists at the turn of the 20th century and continuing through Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's rise to power and the beginnings of American involvement in the region in the early 1950s, de Antonio combines historical news footage and his own interviews.
Beginning with the French colonialists at the turn of the 20th century and continuing through Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's rise to power and the beginnings of American involvement in the region in the early 1950s, de Antonio combines historical news footage and his own interviews.
These included with prominent figures like American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author Daniel Berrigan and American writer, journalist, and historian David Halberstam.
Other notable interviews included American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Harry Ashmore, American soldier, government official, political scientist and author Roger Hilsman, French journalist, historian and author Jean Lacouture, American politician Thurston B. Morton, French author and scholar Paul Mus and American journalist Harrison Salisbury.
Produced during the Vietnam War, 'In the Year of the Pig' was greeted with hostility by many audiences, with bomb threats and vandalism directed at theaters that screened it.
In 1990, American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum characterized the film as "the first and best of the major documentaries about Vietnam".
De Antonio’s films were on the leading edge, both politically and aesthetically. He also challenged the form of films, going against the grain of traditional expository documentaries and the new trend of documentary film: cinéma vérité.
Moreover, De Antonio did not embrace the traditional documentary form, with its authoritative voiceover narration, because he believed that it manipulated viewers by playing on their emotions and by interpreting images and sounds for them.
He also scorned cinéma vérité because of its makers’ impossible claim of objectivity and their forays into rock concert films, both of which led to a cinema too apolitical for de Antonio’s taste.
His sophisticated sense of craft, and his Marxist political beliefs, led him to conduct extensive research and create a collage-like cinema that activated his viewers’ intellects.
Calling himself a “radical scavenger,” de Antonio used a multitude of materials to make his films, bringing together stock footage, clips from fiction films, interviews, and newly-shot footage.
De Antonio had been active from 1961–1989.
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