Around the world, cinephiles say ‘meh’ to Hollywood’s Oscar nominees

Film critics last year were practically clambering over one another to heap praise on Oppenheimer, Hollywood’s blockbuster treatment of the man known as the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to show the world – principally the Soviet Union – what happens when you go up against the United States.” The demonstration of shock and awe at Hiroshima and Nagasaki “was central to NATO’s mission and the military-industrial complex that the United States depends on to do business with the rest of the world”, Zuberi said. “The last thing you want is a film that says that the military-industrial complex introduced a new process for settler colonialism and that is based on white supremacy.” ‘The most important of the arts’ Sunday night’s Academy Awards is the marquis night for Hollywood’s film industry. “They are wired to produce movies that placate, that comfort, that make people feel good.” Film historians generally attribute the world’s divergent cinematic oeuvres to the defining political tension of the 20th century, that of capitalism versus communism. Adisa Alkebulan, professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University and a film scholar, told Al Jazeera: “They are only looking for these interesting stories that they think an audience might respond to and not so much a story that might necessarily raise the consciousness of a particular group of people.” Since 29 African and Asian nations met in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, Africa’s film industry has largely sought to narrate the continent’s independence struggle in intimate and innovative ways.