The Ghosts of Hollywood's Past Haunt Us Still Ehsan Khoshbakht, the curator of the Red & Black: Hollywood Left and the Blacklist retrospective at this year's Locarno Film Festival, has a daunting task ahead of him.
As he prepares to screen some of the most shameful episodes in Hollywood's history – including the work of directors, writers, and stars who were blacklisted for their perceived left wing sympathies – he's compelled to ask: what can we learn from this painful period?
The Blacklist was a plague that ravaged the lives of hundreds of artists, causing serious health problems, tearing families apart, driving people to suicide, and preventing some potentially great films from ever being made.