Forty years can be a very long time. I make this observation as the 2008 edition of The Cannes Film Festival begins. Forty years ago, in the wild and wooly year of 1968, Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffault led a movement of French fimmakers to try and shut down the Cannes festival as a show of solidarity with the striking students and workers who were battling riot police on the streets of Paris. Can any of us begin to imagine a similar attempt to shut Sundance or Tribeca today?

I ask this because I think it begs the bigger question of how politics and films can co-exist and perhaps mix in today's society. American audiences have made very clear their rejection of any film having to do with the war in Iraq. Whether it was a well crafted drama like "In the Valley Of Elah," one dimensional agit prop like "Lions Into Lambs," or heartfelt character studies like "Stop Loss," Americans just weren't buying. Quality had little to do with it. They just didn't want to hear about it.

That being said, I think the people who made these films, and just as importantly, the people who paid for them, deserve a lot of credit. My company was a small player in this area too when we released "The Blood Of My Brother," a very powerful documentary about Iraqi civilian casualties. The reviews were great and no one came.

What is a little disturbing to me is the lack of independent films with a political bent. I'm not one for an endless parade of didactic self righteousness, but in a time when our government is probably analyzing this very post, the planet is over-heating and third world food riots are becomming a common occurrence, I am not seeing a single indie film address any of these issues either directly or even stylistically. Please correct me, but pretty much every political film of the past few years, excluding the docs, have been produced by the studios or their "independent" subsidiaries. What happened to the creative and intellectual energy that fed so many great independent films of the past? It's easy to recall them and celebrate them, but what about our films today?

So here in the Spring of 2008, with Cannes beginning and the primary season winding down, where do folks think politics fits in today's indie scene? There is a huge opening for a thoughtful edgy exploration of our current political themes. Done well it might even make some money, But who's making them?

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