This week’s selection is two documentaries made for the Hidden Persuaders research project at Birkbeck College, University of London. Both explore the idea of brainwashing during the Korean War. This week’s Cold War Spaces guest, Daniel Pick, is a Senior Investigator in the project.

Every Man Has His Breaking Point: Reagan, Brainwashing, and the Movies tells the story of Hollywood’s attempt to capture the realities of North Korean indoctrination techniques in the almost-forgotten movie Prisoner of War (1954), featuring future President Ronald Reagan. The midcentury movie’s fate illuminates the evolving meaning of “brainwashing” in Cold War America, as well as the power of film to shape our collective memory.

David Hawkins: A Battle of the Mind, dir. Nasheed Faruqi, 2017, United Kingdom, 24 min.

Combining archival footage with new oral history interviews, the film brings to life Hawkins’ remarkable experiences during this crucial period in the history of ‘mind control.’ It considers the ambiguities of autobiography, using the various, intertwined versions of Hawkins’s story to shed light both on Cold War politics and the changing ways in which we interpret and pathologize personal trauma.

Watch both films for free on the Hidden Persuaders website.

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Virtual Film Picks are inspired by the in-person Friday Night Films at the Wende program series. This selection is part of a curated list of weekly movie suggestions that can be watched at home, in conjunction with #WendeOnline.