Film artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries have, in many ways, grappled with the power of the mass media and its effects on the political and social sphere. With the relatively recent rise of Internet-based social media, we are experiencing new forms of news reportage, opinion, collective action, and the leverage of data in our everyday lives. But before this digital revolution, crucial public outlets such as newspapers, television, newsreels, and radio disseminated information one-directionally. Cinema has always had a strange, contentious relationship with the mainstream press, and so with Print the Legend, we look back not only at classic film examples of the mass media’s portrayal of politics in the US, but also some of our favorite explicitly or implicitly political films that have resonated deeply with audiences over the years and which have often provided perspectives that the neither the media nor the people are normally able to access. With a focus on films that satirize the political sphere or the machinations of the media, Print the Legend seeks to be an antidote to and critical lens on the 24-hour news cycle. Take a break from the smartphone, be with others, laugh, cry, and consider a different perspective on the mediated theater of political reality, even just for two hours.

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