Arts & International Affairs: Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2018 | Page 21

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
withdrawn because it considered it as not representative, as untrue to its country’s ideas
or way of life” (Holmes 1959). These requests were respected and, as a result, some films
which otherwise might have been included were left out. For the National Commissions
then, the catalogue apparently functioned as a platform for national image building.
Without deeper thought, it would be easy to address UNESCO as a purely political
product, an instrument for the nation states. However, it is questionable whether a direct
parallel can or should be drawn between the National Commissions and the nation
states they represent. One of the key points that needs to be taken into account in this
assessment is the fact that the Commissions consist of individual people, whose interests
cannot be assumed to be confined by the state borders�let alone their identities. While
the network of National Commissions mainly acts for the purpose of associating their
governmental and non-governmental bodies with the organisation and pursues tasks set
by their governments, they also function to provide a network of intellectual communities
across borders and link the organisation to civil society (UNESCO 2002).
Interestingly, even though the primary actors within the UNESCO system are its Member
States, international society in the UNESCO sense is not merely the traditional understanding
of a society of nation states. UNESCO presses us to place focus on the role
that culture and shared moral ideas play in the construction of an international society.
More importantly, it sets focus on the fact that international society as a functional concept
presupposes elements of a world society. As the role of actors beyond the states
level needs to be taken into account, the idea of international society in the UNESCO
context needs to be understood in a wider and more diverse sense�encompassing actors
beyond the state. Thus, UNESCO, as a framework for an international society, can
be understood in terms of Barry Buzan’s (2004) conception of the idea: An international
society indicating situations in which the basic political frame of the international social
structure is set by the states-system, while individuals and transnational actors are given
rights by states within the order defined by international society in the traditional sense.
To summarise, we can distinguish three major motives at play in the introduction to the
catalogue: First, it functioned as a platform for national image building for the Member
States; second, it was to promote the art of film; and third, it was to promote UNESCO’s
objectives to build the foundations of peace in the minds of men through providing information
and educating, and to influence opinions accordingly. UNESCO, then, comes
across as both a political actor and a platform for political action. The sometimes contradicting
aims actually brought about a change in the direction the catalogue was steered
towards:
It is true that in the beginning we made the stipulation that films should
be chosen for, or shown at, a festival. This was because our understanding
was that the Survey was to be highly selective and only films of the
best quality included in it. [ ... ] When we realised that a rather wider
frame of reference was conceived by UNESCO, follow-up letters to all
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