World Culture 1950-1999
1950s
Media
All About Eve Joseph Mankiewicz (US) 1950. Biting drama about the Hollywood star system.
Rashomon Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1950. Kurosawa's breakthrough classic, a meditation on history and meaning.
Early Summer Yasujiro Ozu (Japan) 1951
Ikuru Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1951. Elegy on loss and remembrance.
The Day The Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise (US) 1951. Smart, subtle sci-fi.
Strangers on a Train, Alfred Hitchcock (US) 1951. Topnotch Hitch. Game, set, M-U-R-D-E-R.
The Vagabond [Awaara] Raj Kapoor (India) 1951. Classic Bollywood tale of an orphan who has to face up to the truth of his past.
Secrets of Women Ingmar Bergman (Sweden) 1952. Superb melodrama from Bergman.
Tokyo Story. Yasujiro Ozu (Japan) 1953. Ozu at his peak. Wondrous framing and subtle characters.
Two Acres of Land [Do Bigha Zamin] Bimal Roy (India) 1953. Classic film of a peasant family trying desperately to save their land from a greedy landlord.
Forbidden Planet, Fred Wilcox (US) 1954. Beware monsters from the (corporate) id! Crackerjack sci-fi.
Rear Window Alfred Hitchcock (US) 1954. Hitchcock at his high modernist best.
Godzilla Inoshiro Honda (Japan) 1954. The original (and best) Lizard Stomp. Moving thermonuclear allegory of the early Cold War era.
Song of the Road [Pather Panchali], Satyajit Ray (India) 1954. The first of Ray's magnificent Apu trilogy.
The Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1954.
Rebel Without a Cause Nicholas Ray (US) 1955. James Dean delivers the performance of a lifetime, in the single most interesting US domestic drama of the 1950s.
The Unvanquished [Aparajito], Satyajit Ray (India) 1956. Ray moves the action from the countryside to the city. Profound meditation on modernization.
The Man Who Knew Too Much Alfred Hitchcock (US) 1956. Stellar action thriller.
Teahouse of the August Moon Daniel Mann (US) 1956. Madcap comedy set in Okinawa, and also a subtle commentary on the US occupation of Japan.
Mother India Mehboob Khan (India) 1957. Foundational text of Indian cinema.
The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman (Sweden) 1957.
The Thirsty One [Pyaasa] Guru Dutt (India) 1957.
Throne of Blood Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1957.
Two Eyes and Twelve Hands [Do Ankhen Barah Haath] Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram (India) 1957. Surging Nehru-era tale, of a prison warden who redeems six inmates.
Ashes and Diamonds Andrzej Wajda (Poland) 1958. Stinging, sorrowful tale of the dawn of post-WW II Poland.
Hidden Fortress Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1958 Kurosawa's signature action thriller
The Unmechanical [Ajantrik] Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1958. Ingenious fable of love between man and auto, which is also a tremendous parable of Third World film.
Runaway [Bari Theke Paliye] Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1958. Charming, insightful children's film by Ghatak, about a young boy who runs off from his village to Nehru-era Kolkata (Calcutta).
Floating Weeds Yasujiro Ozu (Japan) 1959. Romantic drama about a theatrical troupe on its last legs.
Good Morning Yasujiro Ozu (Japan) 1959 Light-hearted comedy from Ozu.
The 400 Blows Francois Truffaut (France) 1959
North by Northwest Alfred Hitchcock (US) 1959. Hitchcock at his action-adventure peak.
On the Beach Stanley Kramer (US) 1959. The best of the anti-nuclear dramas.
Paper Flowers [Kaagaz ke Phool] Guru Dutt (India) 1959.
The World of Apu [Apu Sansar], Satyajit Ray (India) 1959. Dazzling culmination of the Apu trilogy, suffused with the revolutionary optimism of the Nehru years.
Music
Thelonius Monk (jazz, numerous albums)
Charlie Parker (jazz, numerous albums)
Texts
The Balcony, Jean Genet (France) 1950
The Palm-Wine Drinkard Amos Tutuola (Nigeria) 1952. The breakthrough modernist classic of Nigerian fiction.
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison (US) 1952
The Screens Jean Genet (France) 1952
Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett (Ireland) 1952
Buckower Elegies Bertolt Brecht (Germany) 1953.
The Demolished Man Alfred Bester (US) 1953. Crackerjack science fiction.
The Blacks, Jean Genet (France) 1954
Endgame Samuel Beckett (Ireland) 1954
Monstre Gai, Malign Fiesta Wyndham Lewis (UK) 1955. Conclusion of the Childermass trilogy; theological sci-fi.
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands [Grande Sertao: Veredas], Joao Guimares Rosa (Brazil) 1956. Epic, sweeping Brazilian novel.
The Seedling's Tale Sulekha Sanyal (India) 1956. Powerful coming-of-age tale dealing with women's resistance and anti-colonial struggle, set in 1940s Bengal.
The Stars, My Destination Alfred Bester (US) 1956. Not quite as intense as Demolished Man, but still worth a look to find out where cyberspace came from.
Palace of Desire, Palace Walk, Sugar Street Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1956, 1957. Sweeping, epochal trilogy of a mercantile family's rise and decline, by one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
Children of the Alley Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1959. Densely allegorical, subversive novel, as Mahfouz moves underground.
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) 1959. Scathing tale of the colonization of Nigeria.
Theory
Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon (Algeria) 1952. Classic critique of colonialism.
Metacritique of Epistemology. Theodor Adorno (Germany) 1954. Analysis of Husserl's logical positivism and the legacy of the radical philosophic modernisms of the 1920s.
1960s
Media
The Bad Sleep Well Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1960. Crackerjack noir from Kurosawa.
The Cloud-capped Star Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1960. Powerful tale of the price an ordinary Bengali family pays to survive in post-Partition India. Riveting visuals and sound-track.
The Magnificent Seven Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1960.
Jules and Jim Francois Truffaut (France) 1961.
The Softer Note [Komal Gandhar] Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1961. Drama of a Leftwing theater troupe, struggling with the exigencies of daily survival, political struggle, and occasional moments of redemption.
The Silence Ingmar Bergman (Sweden) 1963
The Big City Satyajit Ray (India) 1963. Sterling parable of modernization from Ray.
The High and the Low Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1963. Kurosawa's signature noir thriller.
The Battle of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo (Italy) 1965. Epic drama of anti-colonial resistance and revolution in French-occupied Algeria.
The Golden Line [Subarnarekha] Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1965. Ghatak moves beyond neo-Expressionism, in this powerful critique of the Nehruvian state. Watch for the extraordinary scenes at the abandoned airport and the river bank.
The Last Trick Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1965. Delightfully insouciant parable from the master Czech animator.
For A Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone (Italy) 1965. Leone's spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s redefined the genre in the same way that John Woo transformed the action film.
The Hawks and the Sparrows Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy) 1965. Stinging satire and fable of the rise of the post-PCI Left.
The Black Girl from... [La Noire de...] Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1966. Breakthrough classic of African cinema. Watch for the astounding conclusion!
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Sergio Leone (Italy) 1966. Outstanding spaghetti Western.
Punch and Judy Jan Svankmajer (Czech R) 1966. Sly and subversive fable.
Tokyo Drifter Seijun Suzuki (Japan) 1966. Stylish, over-the-top yakuza thriller. Like watching Batman crash into Melville's The Samourai.
Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia) 1966. Sweeping epic from Russia's tormented past.
The Prisoner Patrick McGoohan 1967 (17-part TV series). Part Bond parody, part spy thriller, part counter-cultural fable, and simply one of the greatest TV series ever made.
Memories of Underdevelopment Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Cuba) 1968. The bravura Third World film of the 1960s tells the story of a comprador intellectual living in revolutionary Havana, who decides to stay in Cuba to see what the Revolution brings. Remarkable for its vision, complexity, montage technique and powerful gender subtext.
2001 Stanley Kubrick (US) 1968. The classic sci-fi movie.
Hour of the Furnaces Fernando Solanas (Argentina) 1968. Classic documentary of the Latin American Third Cinema.
Once Upon a Time in the West Sergio Leone (Italy) 1968. Leone's most visually expansive film.
Z Constantin Costa-Gavras (Greece) 1968. Soaring drama of political assassination in 1960s Greece. Based on a true story; popular protest finally chased a brutal Greek military junta from power in the early 1970s. Costa-Gavras made other fine films, including the excellent Missing, but nothing quite matches this.
Music
A Love Supreme, John Coltrane (US) 1964. Majestic work of free jazz from Coltrane.
Meditations, John Coltrane (US) 1965. Coltrane's musical genius moves beyond free jazz. Certain of the more frenzied passages of this album come amazingly close to Hendrix's work in the late 1960s.
The Velvet Underground and Nico, Velvet Underground (US) 1967. The Velvets, along with Jimi Hendrix, pioneered multinational music, a.k.a. hip hop. Extraordinary sonic polarization and fuzz guitars anticipate 1970s punk rock; Lou Reed's lyrics are outstanding, and Nico gives the performance of a lifetime.
White Heat/White Light, Velvet Underground (US) 1968. The Velvet's musical peak. "Sister Ray" is mind-boggling.
Are You Experienced? Jimi Hendrix (US) 1967. Breakthrough album which fused the psychedelic sound with reverb guitar.
Axis:
Bold as Love Jimi Hendrix (US) 1967. Uneven, but at its best
soars beyond Are You
Experienced.
Electric Ladyland Jimi Hendrix (US) 1968. Epochal work which invented the musical categories of multinational music, a.k.a. hip hop.
Texts
Dance of the Forests, Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) 1960. Masterwork of the theater of decolonization.
Solaris Stanislaw Lem (Poland) 1960. Greatest science-fiction novel of the 1960s.
The Soft Machine William Burroughs (US) 1960. The cybernetic resistance to the Cold War.
The Thief and the Dogs Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1961. Riveting crime drama.
The Ticket That Exploded William Burroughs (US) 1962. Stunning first half moves beyond The Soft Machine, second half bogs down.
Another Birth Forugh Farrokzhad (Iran) 1964. Iran's great modernist poet.
The First Promise Ashapurna Debi (India) 1964. Touchstone novel which rewrites the colonial-era bildungsroman into a powerful feminist text.
Nova Express William Burroughs (US) 1964. Founding text of the information culture. Cybernetic sci-fi fluoresces global
The Cyberiad Stanislaw Lem (Poland) 1966. Some of the smartest (and funniest) sci-fi ever written cybernetic fairy-tales for an age when Cold War dragons still stalked the Earth.
Adrift on the Nile Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1966. Mahfouz' existential masterpiece, and a stinging critique of Nasserism.
The Heart Breaks Free Ismat Chughtai (India) 1966. Late classic by Chugtai.
Miramar Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1967. Mahfouz' epic homage to the neocolonial proletariat.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia) 1967. Classic of Latin American magical realism.
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino (Italy) 1968.
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (US) 1968
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon (US) 1968.
Theory
Critique of Dialectical Reason. Jean-Paul Sartre (France) 1960. One of the great theoretical works of the 20th century. Concepts such as seriality, the practico-inert, scarcity as socialized violence have become the basic building-blocks of culture studies.
Three Studies on Hegel. Theodor Adorno (West Germany) 1960. The missing link between Metacritique of Epistemology and Negative Dialectics.
The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon (Algeria) 1961. Scorching indictment of colonialism.
The Making of the English Working Class E.P. Thompson (UK) 1963. Thompson's path-breaking account of class formation during the English industrial revolution.
Gandhi's Truth. Erik Erikson (US) 1965. Indispensable psychobiography and micropolitical study of Gandhi and the Indian anti-colonial movement.
The Order of Things Michel Foucault (France) 1966
Negative Dialectics Theodor Adorno (Germany) 1966. The first great text of multinational Marxism. Note that an all-new and vastly improved English translation is available at <http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/nd.html>.
Fanshen. William Hinton (US) 1966. The great journalistic account of the Chinese Revolution in a northern Chinese village.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paolo Freire (Brazil) 1969. The great Brazilian educator and teacher.
1970s
Media
The Adversary Satyajit Ray (India) 1971. The first of Ray's luminous Kolkata (Calcutta) trilogy. Magnificent meditation on the crisis of the Nehruvian state and the rise of neocolonialism.
God of Thunder [Emitai] Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1971. Riveting drama of anti-colonial struggle which breaks out in Senegal during WW II.
Jabberwocky Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1971
The Harder They Come Perry Henzell (Jamaica) 1972. The breakthrough reggae thriller, starring Jimmy Cliff and featuring one of the greatest sound-tracks of all time.
Enter the Dragon Robert Clouse (Hong Kong-US) 1973. Bruce Lee's blockbuster bombshell, which paved the way for the Hong Kong films of the future.
Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia) 1973. Intelligent, moving Russian sci-fi.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tobe Hooper (US) 1974. The greatest horror film of the 1970s, Hooper innovated many of the editing techniques of video.
A Reason, An Argument, and a Story [Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo] Ritwik Ghatak (India) 1974. Ghatak's final completed work and in many ways his elegy. A stinging political critique.
The Curse [Xala] Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1975. Marvelous satire of post-colonial Africa.
The Middleman Satyajit Ray (India) 1975. Ray's last truly great film is scathing satire of modernization, and a prescient anticipation of the neoliberal era.
Flames of the Sun [Sholay] Ramesh Sippy (India) 1975. Blockbuster Bollywood thriller.
Man of Marble Andrzej Wajda (Poland) 1976. A brash young film student stumbles onto the epic tale of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland. Outstanding.
Amar, Akbar, Anthony Manmohan Desair (India) 1977. Hugely entertaining Bollywood tale, about three long-lost brothers.
Outsiders [Ceddo] Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1977. Historical drama telling the tale of the successive waves of colonization which washed over Africa as well as the unlooked-for resistance thereto.
Drunken Master Woo-ping Yuen (Hong Kong) 1978. Jackie Chan's breakthrough film. Stylish, inventive and often uproarious.
Music
Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols Sex Pistols (UK) 1976. The greatest punk album ever recorded. Superb lyrics and guitar riffs.
Legend Bob Marley and the Wailers (Jamaica) 1977. One of the two best compilations of Marley's reggae, the great forerunner of hip hop dubbing.
Exodus Bob Marley and the Wailers (Jamaica) 1977. The other essential compilation of Marley's work.
Texts
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou (US) 1970. Searing autobiography.
Sula Toni Morrison (US) 1970
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson (US) 1971. Savage burn on 1970s consumerism. Punk writing at its ferocious best, and one of the funniest books of all time.
Germania Death in Berlin, Heiner Müller (East Germany) 1973. Voyage into the heart of Central Europe's 20th century darkness.
Mother of 1084 Mahasweta Devi (India) 1974. Piercing story of a mother politicized by her son's death in the Naxalite uprising of the early 1970s.
Life of Gundling Frederick of Prussia Lessing's Sleep Dream Cry, Heiner Müller (Germany) 1976. The supercollider express through the nightmare of Central Europe's prehistory. All hail the Prussian orange!
Woman at Point Zero Nawal Sadawi (Egypt) 1976. The book which dropped the bomb on the Middle Eastern one-party state/Nasserist pa(y)triarchy. Scorching.
The Hamletmachine, Heiner Müller (Germany) 1977. A specter is haunting Europa: the specter of the Eurobankers. And somewhere in Denmark, Ophelia is powering up the gluon gun.
Petals of Blood Ngugi Thiongo (Kenya) 1977. Titanic novel from Ngugi, and a devastating critique of African neocolonialism.
The Seabirds are Still Alive Toni Cade Bambara (US) 1977.
The Mission, Heiner Müller (Germany) 1979. The local resists globally.
Theory
Marxism and Form. Fredric Jameson (US) 1972. The classic text which almost single-handedly invented Northamerican dialectics. Jameson's readings of Bloch, Benjamin, Adorno and Sartre bridge the gap between the late philosophical modernisms and early multinational theory (loosely defined as culture studies, micropolitics and media theory).
The Family Idiot Jean-Paul Sartre (France) 1973. Sartre never finished this multi-volume study of Flaubert, but what he did achieve revolutionized the field of psychobiography.
Lineages of the Absolutist State Perry Anderson (UK) 1974. Magisterial history of Western European mercantilism and the rise of capitalism.
Discipline and Punish Michel Foucault (France) 1975
Distinction. Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1975. Bourdieu's breakthrough work on the social function of taste, fashion, symbolic and cultural capital.
Late Capitalism Ernest Mandel (Belgium) 1975.
Orientalism. Edward Said (US) 1978. The classic work which invented postcolonial studies.
1980s
Media
Man of Iron Andrzej Wajda (Poland) 1980. Another take on the rise of Solidarity, this time told from the standpoint of a hack journalist.
Manila by Night [City After Dark] Ishmael Bernal (Philippines) 1980. Sprawling, stunning film about love, loss and the economic violence of neocolonialism in the Philippines. Watch closely at the end to see how Bernal outwitted the censors of the Marcos regime: the sunrise of East Asia!
Kagemusha Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1980. Kurosawa epic, set in medieval Japan, where a lowly servant is called upon to serve as the double of a slain lord.
The Shining Stanley Kubrick (US) 1980. Taut, tight, tingling thriller and a powerful anticipation of the nightmare of Thatcherism. Danny isn't here right now, Mrs. Torrance...
Diva J.J. Beineix (France) 1981. Stylish, taut thriller, with the inimitable Dominique Pinon.
The Road Warrior George Miller (Australia) 1981. Mel Gibson shines in the greatest auto apocalypse of them all, which also happens to be a stinging anti-neoconservative allegory. Watch for the crucial clues to Humongous' past.
The Atomic Café Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, Pierce Rafferty (US) 1982. Entertaining documentary on the madness of the Cold War.
Dimensions of Dialogue Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1982. After a lengthy hiatus imposed by state censorship, Svankmajer returns to form.
Sugar Cane Alley Euzhan Palcy (Martinique) 1983. One of the great Third World films, about a young boy growing up in colonial Martinique.
The Terminator James Cameron (US) 1984. Cameron's best film, which manages to transcend its neoconservative script. Schwarzenegger shines with a series of videoshock one-liners unequaled in any of his other movies.
Come and See Elem Klimov (Soviet Union/Ukraine) 1985. Searing WW II drama, told from view of a young boy growing up in a Ukrainian village.
Ran Akira Kurosawa (Japan) 1985. Kurosawa's adaption of Shakespeare's classic King Lear. Gorgeous, sprawling epic.
Aliens James Cameron (US) 1986. A sci-fi shoot 'em up spectacular. Visually inspired, despite the dismal xenophobia oozing beneath the surface.
A Better Tomorrow John Woo (Hong Kong) 1986. Woo's first classic, telling the tale of two brothers (one a cop, the other a gangster) on a collision course. Amazing action sequences combined with powerful postcolonial theater.
Peking Opera Blues Tsui Hark (Hong Kong) 1986. High-voltage thriller.
Laputa: Castle in the Sky Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) 1986. Entertaining thriller anime from Miyazaki. Gorgeous animation and above-average story.
Mirch Masala [Spices] Ketan Mehta (India) 1986. Scathing denunciation of Indian neocolonialism, and a richly allegorical farewell to the Nehruvian state. Watch for the startling ending.
A Chinese Ghost Story Siu-Tung Ching (Hong Kong) 1987. Part comedy, part horror film, part wuxia, and 100% entertainment.
Camp de Thiaroye Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1987. Stirring drama of Senegalese troops transformed by the experience of WW II, who begin the struggle for national liberation.
Red Sorghum Yimou Zhang (China) 1987. The breakthrough work of the Fifth Generation filmmakers. Remarkable sound-track, lush visuals and startling eroticism.
Wings of Honneamise Hiroyuki Yamaga (Japan) 1987. Intriguing alternative-history sci-fi anime from Gainax.
Alice Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1988. Brilliant and eerie tale, loosely based on Alice in Wonderland.
The Decalogue Kryzstof Kieslowski (Poland) 1988. Ten-part series, each of which sheds a sly, subversive and deeply humane light on a particular maxim of the Ten Commandments. Magnificent, towering achievement which almost single-handedly created the aesthetic forms of Eurovideo.
Dragonball Z Akira Toriyama (125-episode TV series, Japan) 1988-93. Visually stunning, well-plotted and enormously fun action drama, as cosmic keiretsu battle thermonuclear rentiers for the future of the Euroverse. Peaks with the Frieza episode.
Iron Man Shinya Tsukamoto (Japan) 1988. The marriage of meat and metal. Cyberpunk classic.
Judou Yimou Zhang (China) 1988. More restrained visuals, but glorious close-ups and a powerful feminist subtext.
Mortu Nega Flora Gomes (Guinea-Bissau) 1988. Classic of African cinema, commemorating the anti-colonial revolution of Guinea-Bissau.
My Neighbor Totoro Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) 1988. Delightful domestic anime from Miyazaki.
Repentance Tengiz Abuladze (Georgia) 1988. Allegory of the excavation of the crimes of Stalinism.
Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown Pedro Almovodar (Spain) 1988. Madcap Euro-comedy from Almovodar.
Freeze Die Come to Life Vitaly Kanevsky (Russia) 1989. The trials and tribulations of a child growing up in a society which is slowly losing its moorings.
The Killer John Woo (Hong Kong) 1989. Woo's next great epic, combining eye-popping action with postcolonial tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.
Raise the Red Lantern Yimou Zhang (China) 1989. The most austere and gloomy of Zhang's 1980s trilogy, and in many ways the female version of the excellent Farewell, My Concubine; scintillating nonetheless.
Music
Power, Ice-T (US) 1987. Classic hip hop which invented the crime rhyme.
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy (US) 1988. The breakthrough hip hop album of the 1980s, outstanding lyrics ("The rhythm, the rebel") plus gorgeous samples.
Texts
Quartet Heiner Müller (Germany), 1980. Dense, devious, epochal drama.
The Salt Eaters Toni Cade Bambara (US) 1980.
Aké Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) 1981. Achingly beautiful account of Soyinka's childhood, and a rousing remembrance of the heyday of Nigeria's anti-colonial movement.
Despoiled Shore, Heiner Müller (Germany), 1982. Paging the eco-resistance.
Yellow Mud Street Can Xue (China) 1983. Incandescent. China's first great multinational novel.
Baltasar and Blimunda Jose Saramago (Portugal) 1982. Wise and wonderful fable from Saramago.
I, Rigoberto Menchu Rigoberto Menchu (Guatemala) 1984. Classic testimonio.
Neuromancer William Gibson (US) 1984. The text which invented cyberspace, and one of the touchstones of multinational culture.
Napthalene Alia Mamdouh (Iraq) 1986. Scorching, lyrical and harrowing tale of a girl growing up in 1950s Baghdad.
Beloved Toni Morrison (US) 1987. One of the greatest novels of the late 20th century, which reaches back to slavery's past to communicate with Heiner Müller's ghosts-from-the-future.
Wolokamsker Chaussee I-V [Road to Wolokamsk], Heiner Müller (Germany), 1987. Five epic mini-dramas, chronicling the Europroletariat's long march to the Eurostate.
Soul Mountain Gao Xingjian. (China) 1989. Sprawling tale which reinvents a late modernism for post-Maoist China.
Theory
The Political Unconscious. Fredric Jameson (US) 1981. Jameson leverages a theory of the 19th century Western European novel to create one of the first great theories of multinational aesthetics.
Toyota Production System. Yasuhiro Monden (Japan) 1983. Essential text on East Asia's kanban, just-in-time, and small-lot/high-volume production strategies.
Homo Academicus Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1984.
In Other Worlds Gayatri Spivak (India) 1987.
1990s
Media
The Civil War Ken Burns (US) 1990. Epic documentary of the US Civil War.
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1990. Fifty years of Czech history compressed into five minutes and subversive to the very end.
Swordsman Siu-Tung Ching (Hong Kong) 1990. High-flying action, and the best of the Swordsman trilogy.
Daughters of the Dust Julie Dash (US) 1991. Powerful, complex narrative of the African American diaspora in the Gullah Islands.
Delicatessen Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France-Belgium) 1991. Stylish, pulse-pounding thriller.
Once Upon a Time in China Tsui Hark (Hong Kong) 1991. The classic Jet Li wuxia, based on that evergreen of the Hong Kong cinema, the Wong Fei-Hung tale.
Food Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1992
Guelwaar Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1992. Stinging, visionary satire from Sembene, about a family burial gone awry -- and a funeral which reveals more than just family secrets.
Hyenas Djibril Diop Mambety (Senegal) 1992. Savage, stunning postcolonial satire.
Iron Man 2: Body Hammer Shinya Tsukamoto (Japan) 1992. Worthy sequel to the original.
The Oak Lucien Pintilie (Romania) 1992. Scathing tale about the last days of the godawful Caucescu regime in Romania.
Hardboiled John Woo (Hong Kong) 1992. The single greatest action thriller of the 1990s, starring Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat. The literal Chinese title of the film is "Hot-handed God of Cops." Need we say more?
Iron Monkey Woo-ping Yuen (Hong Kong) 1993.
Seventh Horse of the Sun Shyam Benegal (India) 1993. Power-packed tale from Benegal, about the gender discontents of the postcolonial nation-state.
Sonatine Takeshi Kitano (Japan) 1993. Stark yakuza drama from Kitano.
The Three Colors Trilogy, Krystof Kieslowski (Poland) 1993-94. Astonishing tour de force by Kieslowski, which takes the forms of The Decalogue and endows them with multinational content. In Blue (1993) the operative code-word is liberty. The issue in White (1994) is equality, as Eastern Europe goes to the market. Red (1994) reinvents a European-wide fraternity (watch for the familiar faces in the conclusion).
Chungking Express Wong Kar-Wai (Hong Kong) 1994. Slow to accelerate, but then it's all California dreaming in the newest financial powerhouse of East Asia.
Burnt By the Sun Nikita Mikhalkov (Russia) 1994. Somber, powerful drama, as Russia confronts the ghosts of its past.
Faust Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1994. Faust goes to market. Stinging satire of Eastern Europe's disastrous experiment with neoliberalism.
Between Marx and a Naked Woman Camilo Muzuriaga (Ecuador) 1995. Moving and subtle melodrama of the fall of the Old Left (and the potential birth of the new) in Ecuador. And yes, Karl makes a cameo appearance.
The City of Lost Children Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France-Belgium) 1995. Stylish, state-of-the-art Eurothriller from Caro and Jeunet.
Cyclo Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam) 1995. Riveting post-colonial drama of a young boy in 1990s Vietnam trying to earn a living as a cyclo cabbie.
Flame Ingrid Sinclair (Zimbabwe) 1995. A stirring retelling of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, from a postcolonial and feminist perspective.
Neon Genesis: Evangelion Hideaki Anno (26-part TV series, Japan) 1995. Stupendous anime series from Anno and the artists of Gainax Studios (http://www.gainax.co.jp/hills/anno/index-e.html). Be sure not to confuse the TV series with the two spin-off movies Gainax later made -- the TV series is the real deal.
Underground Emir Kusturica (Serbia) 1995. Scathing, outrageous tragi-comedy, charting the rise, stagnation and eventual implosion of Yugoslavia.
The White Balloon Jahar Panahi (Iran) 1995. Immensely charming, subtle drama. Panahi draws magnificent performances from the child actors, while Abbas Kiarostami's screenplay builds to the allegorical conclusion.
A Summer in La Goulette Férid Boughedir (Tunisia) 1996. Delightful coming-of-age comedy, set in a late 1960s resort town of Tunisia.
Conspirators of Pleasure Jan Svankmajer (Czech Republic) 1996. Svankmajer takes aim at Euroconsumerism.
Kolya Jan Sverak (Czech Republic) 1996. One of the most charming movies you'll ever see, about a confirmed bachelor who ends up taking in a young Russian boy abandoned by his mother during the last days of the Cold War.
Nightjohn Charles Burnett (US) 1996. The single greatest film about US slavery ever made, about how slaves taught themselves the ABCs of resistance. Brilliant performances and script.
Brother Aleksei Balabanov (Russia) 1997. John Woo crashes into Tarkovsky, in this post-Soviet crime drama . Terrific performances and outstanding sound-track. Watch for the geopolitical clues to Russia's Putin-era renaissance.
Fireworks [Hana-Bi] Takeshi Kitano (Japan) 1997. A romance/crime thriller with a twist.
Taste of Cherry Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) 1997. Kiarostami's masterpiece, about the global semi-periphery waiting for all its video tomorrows.
Face/Off John Woo (Hong Kong) 1997. After a series of misfires with other US films, Woo finally hits the bulls-eye.
Princess Mononoke Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) 1997. Another masterpiece from Miyazaki and the extraordinary talents at Studio Ghibli, which did for East Asian film what Anno's Evangelion did for East Asian TV.
Half-Life Valve Software (US) 1998 (http://www.valve.com). The greatest PC game of the late 1990s, featuring a gripping post-Cold War storyline from Marc Laidlaw, superb voice acting from Hal Robins, ground-breaking textures and superior gameplay. Wisely done, Mr. Freeman!
His and Her Circumstances Hideaki Anno (Japan) 1998. Anno marks his return to the media biz with this light but freshly-conceived high-school romance anime series. Playful animation, great comic timing and strong female characters.
Love and Pop Hideaki Anno (Japan) 1998. Anno's first live-action film, and a stinging critique of Japanese consumerism. Starts slow, but stick with it until the shocking end.
The Thin Red Line Terrence Malick (US) 1998. Magnificent WW II drama from Malick, proving the old adage that the best war films are, without exception, anti-war films.
Faat Kiné Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) 1999. Wise and wonderful film from Sembene, about women's struggle for self-definition in postcolonial Senegal.
Fight Club David Fincher (US) 1999. Superb micropolitical thriller.
Kikujiro Takeshi Kitano (Japan) 1999. Delightful, offbeat comedy from Kitano.
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun Djibril Diop Mambety (Senegal) 1999. Mambety's final film, a delightful parable of an Africa beginning to fight against the neoliberal beast.
SpongeBob SquarePants Stephen Hillenburg (US) 1999-present. A cartoon for big kids, which offers hilarity for all ages.
Iron Chef Hanako Aso (Japan) 1993-1999. Kungfu kitchen from Fuji TV. Terrific cast, and Chairman Kaga's ever-changing outfits all but steal the show.
The Matrix Andy and Larry Wachowski (US) 1999. The little Red Pill which ignited the insurrection of the billion-ticket audience against the hegemony of the billionaires. Don't bother with the sequels, this is The One.
Not One Less Yimou Zhang (China) 1999. Winning tale of the children in China's countryside left behind by the coastal boom.
The Road Home Yimou Zhang (China) 1999. The most pictorial of Zhang's works.
USS Darkstar, Neil Manke (Canada), 1999. Neil Manke's first great add-on for Half Life, which took the single-player shooter into a whole new dimension (http://www.planethalflife.com/manke).
Music
Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em Eric B. and Rakim (US) 1990. The moment when the crime rhyme joined the global underground.
Geto Boys Geto Boys (1990). The Geto Boys' first and best album. Ferocious lyrics and inspired sampling from Houston's Fifth Ward.
Nevermind Nirvana (US) 1991. Message in a Northwest bottle to the Pacific Rim. Cobain is the indispensable lyricist of the early 1990s.
Cypress Hill Cypress Hill (US) 1991. The greatest hip hop album of early 1990s. Backed by DJ Muggs' inspired sampling, B-Real transforms the crime rhyme into the hacker subsonic.
Qui Sème Le Vent Rècolte Le Tempo [Who Blows the Note Reaps the Beat] MC Solaar (France) 1991. Senegalese-French rapper Solaar single-handedly invents French rap. Scoping rhymes and lyrics.
Black Reign Queen Latifah (US) 1993. Best rap album of 1993, proving that the sisters can throw down.
Incontrolâble [Uncontrollable] A.S. (France) 1994. Superb Francophone rap from Nicholas Nocchi and Laurent Proneur. Check out the Italian rap interlude.
Dr. Octagon Kool Keith (US) 1996. The single greatest hip hop album of the late 1990s. Kool Keith, as Dr. Octagon, moves rap on to the Year 3000.
The Slim Shady LP Eminem (US) 1999. Post-industrial Detroit's shotgun blast to the dome.
Texts
Inner Courtyard Edited by Lakshmi Holmstrom (India) 1990. Superb collection of 20th century Indian short stories by women.
Virtual Light William Gibson (US) 1993. After the planetary earthquake of Neuromancer and the lesser (though still entertaining) Sprawl novels, Gibson moves in a new direction.
Blindness Jose Saramago (Portugal) 1995. Scathing fable of neoliberalism and the Resistance thereto.
Bone Black Bell Hooks (US) 1996. Powerful, moving autobiography.
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy (India) 1997. Soaring postcolonial drama.
All Tomorrow's Parties William Gibson (US) 1998. Culmination of Gibson's Bridge novels. 21st century story-telling from the greatest sci-fi writer of our day.
The Dirty Havana Trilogy Pedro Juan Gutierrez (Cuba) 1998. Power-packed novel, which reinvents the Third World novel.
Tropical Animal Pedro Juan Gutierrez (Cuba) 1998. Pedro Juan lands in Sweden, of all places. Wise, witty and insightful.
Theory
A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism Roberto Schwarz (Brazil) 1990. Brilliant analysis of Brazil's great 19th century novelist, Machado de Assis.
In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures Aijaz Ahmad (India) 1992. Fine critique of Third Worldism and postmodern nationalism.
The Rules of Art. Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1992. Wide-ranging analysis of the structure of the French literary habitus and field in the era of Flaubert.
Moving the Center Ngugi Thiongo (Kenya) 1993. Reflections and essays on postcolonial culture and resistance.
The Black Atlantic Paul Gilroy (UK) 1993. History of the radical Atlantic diaspora.
Nobility of the State. Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1994. Analysis of the postmodern French power-elites, and one of the first great theories of the Eurostate.
Wall Street Doug Henwood (US) 1997. The best single critique of the Wall Street Bubble and the economics of neoliberalism.
Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams. Ngugi Thiongo (Kenya) 1998. Reflections on the role of postcolonial theory vis-Ã -vis the realm of global activism.
Acts of Resistance. Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1998. Classic set of essays analyzing neoliberalism, which galvanized the Euroleft.
Pascalian Meditations Pierre Bourdieu (France) 1998. Bourdieu's last theoretical excursus, which sets his accumulated lifework in motion towards a progressive Europolitics.
Critique of Postcolonial Reason Gayatri Spivak (India) 1999. Spivak takes aim at postcolonial discourse.