A Look Back at the Hollywood Blacklist in the Locarno Film Retrospective at the Academy Museum
The Locarno Film Festival will host a film retrospective focused on the Hollywood Blacklist during August at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. Titled Red & Black – Hollywood Left and the Blacklist, the retrospective is curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht.
This comprehensive program will showcase a variety of films, including fiction, documentaries, newsreels, and shorts from countries such as the U.S., Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, and Argentina. Notable figures from the era featured in the retrospective include John Garfield, Joseph Losey, Dalton Trumbo, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wright, and Charles Chaplin.
In keeping with previous retrospectives, the program will be accompanied by a detailed book featuring insights from international film scholars and critics. Additionally, a podcast written by Khoshbakht is set to be released.
The Hollywood Blacklist represents a troubling period in American filmmaking history, beginning in 1947, when studios imposed bans on individuals suspected of Communist affiliations.
Khoshbakht emphasized the retrospective’s significance, stating, “If you insist on calling classic Hollywood a ‘dream factory,’ you have also to see how that notion was hammered into pieces by some of the most politically progressive figures in the history of American cinema across the more than forty films brought together in this retrospective.” He remarked that this is “the timeliest one I have worked on in my life,” highlighting the innovative ways filmmakers incorporated political consciousness into their work and the tragic repercussions of that determination.
The 79th Locarno Film Festival is scheduled to take place from August 5 to 15, 2026.
