Film Rights: Conservatives Set out to Win the Culture Through Cinema. Instead, They Made Campaign Ads (Culture) (American Film Renaissance‪)‬

THE AMERICAN FILM RENAISSANCE, held in Washington D.C. the first week of October, billed itself as "the only film festival in the world devoted to celebrating America's timeless traditional values like freedom, rugged individualism, and the triumph of the human spirit." In shorthand, AFR is a conservative film festival. During its first wine-and-cheese afterparty, one Washington lawyer aptly reinterpreted AFR's mission statement, saying he hoped the festival "will get Hollywood to go back to the pro-American films that they used to have. Like the ones John Wayne used to be in." He's not alone. Figures on the Right from William F. Buckley Jr. to Tom Wolfe have lamented that conservatives have focused on electoral politics to the exclusion of cultural endeavors. Think tanks, magazines, and activist groups can accomplish political tasks, they say, but culture-makers shape our prejudices and ideals in a subtle though more profound way than any policy paper or election. Liberals may lose at the ballot box, but through the box office, they are winning America's hearts and minds.