ABSTRACT
The author moves from the idea that to define the political genre, we should look into the functions of political films – what do political films aim to achieve? Drawing from Bertolt Brecht’s theory of political art, the author develops an historical account of political cinema and spells out what are the two typical functions of political cinema: the rhetorical and the explorational functions. These two functions are scrutinized, also thanks to the elaboration of a theoretical framework which facilitates the classification and assessment of political films. It is suggested that to classify and assess political films we ought to analyze three epistemic dimensions: (1) epistemic voice, (2) epistemic merit and (3) pedagogical method.
