Culture Clash tonight at 8.30 on 18 Doughty Street

Tonight we’re going to be looking at two films in which politics of one sort or another play a major role. The Lives of Others, the German winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, explores the workings of the Stasi amongst the cultural community in 1980s East Germany. And Fast Food Nation, which is released this week, is a fictionalised adaptation of the expose of the fast food industry which bestseller for author Eric Schlosser.

With me to discuss these are the journalist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Social Affairs author Adam Smyth.

The debut feature by director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarsk, THE LIVES OF OTHERS centres on the surveillance of a George Dreyman, a playwright who, although apparently supportive of the socialist regime, is suspected of Western sympathies. He is watched round the clock by a seemingly robotic Stasi agent, who is aware too that a government minister has his eye on Dreyman’s girlfriend. Things become complicated when, moved by the suicide of a colleague, Dreyman writes an article criticising the state.

Now FAST FOOD NATION was a hit in the bestseller’s list for author Eric Schlosser when it was published a few years ago. Now, following on from the success of Morgan Spurlock’s SUPER SIZE ME, Hollywood has come up with an adaptation of Schlosser’s book– not, as you might expect, another Michael-Moore type documentary feature, but a fictionalised re-working by director Richard Linklater, centring on a group of Mexican immigrants working illegally in a meat-processing factory north of the border.

Peter's guests are Ruth Dudley Edwards, author and historian, Sean O'Callaghan, author and terrorism expert, Adam Smyth, writer, and journalist Franck Guillory.

Watch the show HERE