Fascism on Film brings together two longtime friends and devoted cinephiles, Teal Minton and James Kent, to explore the ways cinema has reflected, resisted, and even helped shape authoritarian movements.
Over decades of friendship, countless screenings, and ongoing conversations about history and art, they’ve developed a shared conviction: movies are never just entertainment. On the podcast, Teal and James combine sharp analysis, lived filmgoing experience, and a mutual love of cinema to examine how fascism emerges, seduces, and survives—on screen and beyond.
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Player.fmQ&A
Which episode should I start with?
Teal: I’d actually start with our Intro episode. It sets up what we mean by fascism, why cinema matters, and what the show is trying to do. After that, go to The Mortal Storm. It’s the one that’s resonated most with listeners so far, and for good reason: it’s a heartbreaking, clear-eyed look at how fascism fractures everyday life. If you’d rather start with something more familiar, Cabaret is another great entry point, same themes, different tone.
Why make a show about fascism and film?
James: Because movies aren’t just entertainment. They’re part of how we remember and sometimes how we forget. When we look back at the films made before, during, and after the rise of fascist movements, we can see how ideology was sold, normalized, and sometimes resisted.
Teal: Fascism isn’t just a historical phenomenon; it’s a recurring temptation and threat in all democracies. Visual storytelling isn’t neutral. It can seduce, obscure, or warn. We wanted to explore how those forces meet on screen, and what that can tell us about the world we live in now.
What do you mean by “fascism”?
Teal: We define it broadly on the show to include films that explore aspects of the myths, spectacle, and violence that combine to create fascism. It’s a movement and an ideology that promises order and belonging, but that comes at the cost of someone else’s humanity. It isn’t easy to reduce to a sound bite, but it’s a form of exclusionary nationalism, and it’s a “mass popular enthusiasm,” not just an imposed authoritarian order.
James: It’s not just something that happened “over there.” When you watch films like Black Legion or Birth of a Nation, you see how those same impulses, scapegoating, grievance, the pull of strongman politics, have been present here too. Those are where fascism begins; then it takes root and becomes systemic.
Why use films to talk about something so serious?
James: Film was the mass medium of the 20th century. It shaped how people saw themselves and their countries. These weren’t just movies, they were tools for creating myths of power and identity.
Teal: And because film is beautiful and immersive, it can make dangerous ideas feel safe, even appealing. Triumph of the Will is gorgeous, but that beauty is in service of obedience. That’s worth unpacking.
What can listeners expect from the podcast?
Teal: Each episode focuses on one or two films. We break down how they look and feel, what they’re saying about power and belonging, and how those images echo today.
James: We mix analysis, history, and our own filmgoing experiences. You’ll hear us wrestle with big questions, and sometimes just stop to marvel or shudder at what a film is doing.
Why start with pre‑war fascism in Season 1?
James: Because that’s where the patterns are easiest to see. You can watch the normalization happen almost in real time.
Teal: These films show how fascism takes root quietly, socially, before the boots and banners. If we can recognize those early stages, maybe we can recognize them in our own time.
Teal Minton
Teal is a writer by trade and inclination who worked on and off in the film industry as an editor, camera operator, director, and screenwriter. He co‑wrote the feature film Clive Barker’s The Plague and his fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, 5Chapters, and Zyzzyva among others. For over a decade, Teal has taught screenwriting, fiction, and film studies at the college level, and he currently teaches in an MFA program.
An autodidact as well as an academic, Teal has been seriously interested in how fascisms emerge within democracies for over a decade. On the podcast, he notes, “Fascism isn’t just uniforms and shouting. It’s silence, it’s complicity, it’s people looking away.” That insight shapes his approach, examining how cinema captures not just the spectacle of power, but the everyday choices that allow it to take root. Combining that sustained study with a lifelong knowledge of film was a natural union of two enduring passions, and it informs every episode of the show.
Teal received his BA in Political Science from Antioch University and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
James Kent
James is a writer by day, a film podcaster by night—with a lifelong passion for the cinematic experience. He’s spent decades making the trek to theaters that show 35 mm and 70 mm prints, believing that large‑format projection is essential to understanding how film shapes us.
James is a journalist for The Mountain Times, covering local stories and honing a clear‑eyed approach to storytelling. That background—an appreciation for place, complexity, and lived reality—shapes the way he analyzes films. As he said on Fascism on Film: “Movies aren’t just entertainment—they’re part of how we remember, and sometimes how we forget.”
James earned a BA in Film & Television Production from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MBA from Northeastern University. He brings academic rigor, cinematic curiosity, and editorial discipline to every episode of Fascism on Film.