Palimpsests of Power: UNESCO-“Sponsored” Film Production and the Construction of a “Global Village,” 1948–1953

This article maps the development of UNESCO’s sponsored film programs. Funded simultaneously by religious organizations, philanthropic foundations, and corporate and governmental interests, early UNESCO educational films were particularly adept at utilizing diverse resources to bring diffuse networks of institutions and individuals together to produce films that promoted a specific form of participatory democracy and civil society. Via UNESCO’s Communication Programme, these films served to advance not only UNESCO’s humanitarian goals but also larger political and economic goals. By understanding the circulation and distribution of these productions, a clearer picture emerges of NGO- and state-sponsored visual information campaigns that utilized film to advocate for a particular form of neoliberal state building during the height of the Cold War.