How did 9/11 change Hollywood and when does entertainment become propaganda?

Marking 25 years since 9/11 and coinciding with LAB111’s Manufacturing Consent programme, Elliot Bloom and film critic Hugo Emmerzael trace cinema’s long relationship with propaganda and political power. From revolutionary montage and The Battle of Algiers to Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty and Iron Man, they look at how wars are sold, enemies invented and ideology turned into entertainment.

At the centre of the conversation is the profound shift in American cinema after 9/11, when the War on Terror became embedded in Hollywood storytelling and spectacle. Elliot and Hugo unpack why propaganda rarely announces itself as propaganda, and how the films we watch can shape whose stories we believe, whose violence we accept and who gets cast as the enemy.

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A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.

Are we witnessing the end of American mainstream cinema? Diving deep into this topic, Hugo invites filmmaker, film critic and video essay connoisseur Scout Tafoya. In collaboration with Tucker Johnson, Scout explores this very question with a compelling 10-part video-essay series through the lens of Ridley & Tony Scott as the forefathers of the American blockbuster. Why has Hollywood become so stale? Together, Hugo & Scout discuss the End of History, the end of American cinema as we know it, but what comes next?