The Atlantic Community: NATO’s First Documentaries (1949-1957)
- Autores: João Mascarenhas Mateus, Carlos Vargas
- Localización: War and propaganda in the XXth Century / María Fernanda Rollo (ed. lit.), Ana Paula Pires (ed. lit.), Noémia Malva Novais (ed. lit.), 2013, ISBN 978-989-98388-1-9, págs. 294-302
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
At the end of World War II, the new world order was conditioned by the creation of two opposing geopolitical and defence blocks that confronted each other in the so-called Cold War. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949 in opposition to the Soviet sphere of influence in order to secure the defence of Western Europe in alliance with Canada and the United States of America.
At the beginning of this new war, which was often experienced in a non-explicit way, propaganda mechanisms served to construct the idea of the Atlantic Community founded on four main pillars: liberty, democracy, development and defence. Cinema and television were important media in spreading the message of Western military cohesion in association with the Marshall Plan, bringing new patterns and language codes for national development according to North America.
The Atlantic Community documentary series, produced for NATO during the 1950s, dedicates one episode to each country member of the Alliance. The series strongly reflects Western European reconstruction efforts under the Pax Americana rule, an attempt to amalgamate nations that sometimes had very different and antagonistic origins and historical trajectories.
