ONLY IN AMERICA? DELUSIONS OF DEMOCRACY | Offscreen

Under this heading we present a small but incisive selection of six American "political" genre films from the 1970s that now seem more pertinent than ever. These fictions are complemented by the 2024 documentary Suburban Fury, which provides historical context for this turbulent decade.
 
In 1970s America, the optimistic gains of the 1960s were eroded by the oil crisis, economic uncertainty and social unrest. After the resignation of President Nixon and a humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam, the United States was desperate for a new national narrative. (It would ultimately find one in the 1980s, thanks to Ronald Reagan, whose presidency instigated a transfer of wealth to the oligarchy that continues to this day.) The 1970s marked a pivotal transitional period that played out, often in contradictory ways, on the big screen, riffing on the American Dream in films like Rocky, or demolishing it in disaster movies, before the reign of New Hollywood's "movie brat" auteurs definitively gave way to the era of blockbuster spectacle, à la Jaws or Star Wars, in which profits would take precedence over artistry. 
 
This mini-retrospective draws on that quintessentially 1970s subgenre, the political paranoia thriller or drama, in which filmmakers reflected the uneasy mood of the nation. Our selection includes two films undervalued on initial release, but ripe for rediscovery: Robert Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming and William Richert's hallucinatory Winter Kills. In Blue Collar, Paul Schrader lays bare corruption in American labor unions, while in Network, Sidney Lumet exposes the machinations of powerful media consortia. Politics and entertainment converge on the country music capital of the world in Robert Altman's Nashville. And as the cherry on top of our "American Pie," we present Punishment Park, a dystopian but dismayingly prescient faux-documentary about US law enforcement by British filmmaker Peter Watkins, part of a special evening programme featuring shorts, trailers and other curiosities. Eat your heart out, Uncle Sam!
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TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

19 March 2026 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

A disillusioned US army general (Burt Lancaster) and his cohorts take over a Montana missile silo and threaten to launch its ICBMs unless POTUS (Charles Durning) pays $10 million and makes public a secret document about Vietnam. A punchy, cynical, neo-noir conspiracy thriller, enhanced by clever use of split screen.
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AMERICAN NIGHT: PUNISHMENT PARK

20 March 2026 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

Each year, Offscreen hosts a themed evening event packed with marvels: forgotten trailers, public service films, television archives... This year, the centrepiece of our American Night is the faux-documentary Punishment Park, part of a 1970s US-themed soirée of shorts, trailers and other curiosities
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BLUE COLLAR

21 March 2026 - 17h00 | Cinema Nova

Schrader's hard-hitting directing debut is still one of his best films. Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor (terrific in a non-comedic role) play workers on a car production line in Detroit. In dire financial straits, the men conspire to rob their corrupt union - only to find themselves caught between the mob and the FBI.
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NASHVILLE

22 March 2026 - 14h00 | Cinema Nova

A zillion characters, and almost as many subplots, converge on the country music capital of the world in Altman's masterpiece. It's a microcosm of the USA: music, stardom, sex, populist politics and lurking death in the form of an assassin's bullet, with Lily Tomlin and Keith Carradine standouts in the ensemble cast.
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SUBURBAN FURY

28 March 2026 - 17h00 | Cinema Nova

Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old single mom from the San Francisco suburbs, was radicalised while working as an FBI informant in the mid-1970s, and tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Devor's documentary uses archive footage and Moore's own account to paint a portrait of an era full of conspiracy and contradiction.
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WINTER KILLS

28 March 2026 - 19h00 | Cinema Nova

The scion of a political dynasty (Jeff Bridges) seeks the truth about the assassination of his brother, a JFK-adjacent US President, and finds conflicting narratives, all-star cameos and a DOGE-style "information czar". This flamboyant satirical conspiracy thriller flopped on its release, but now feels unnervingly prescient.
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NETWORK

28 March 2026 - 21h30 | Cinema Nova

Ratings soar at an ailing TV channel when a news anchor vows to kill himself live on air, and amoral CEOs exploit the situation. Paddy Chayefsky's sharp satirical screenplay skewers a world in which nothing matters but viewing figures, and is brought to life by a superb cast, headed by Peter Finch in his final role.