^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Flags on movies

Hatay ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade")
Flags from "Star Trek"
INGSOC ("Nineteen Eighty Four")
Akaoneko ("Goodbye Japan")
Ragaan ("Embassy")
Unnamed state from "Power Play"
Zangara ("The Dogs of War")
Movies with flags in a great number

See also:

Hatay ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade")

The last part of the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" occurs in a (I guess) fictitious arabic State called HATAY. Its flag appears many times:

In the red device there are some Arabic writing but I cannot reproduce them. Is this flag related to any real-world one ?

Giuseppe Bottasini

Hatay was not fictitious. Sometimes referred to as Alexandretta, (I think), it was autonomous (probably not independent) at some time between WWI and WWII, probably under French suverainty. It's that little slither of Turkey that extends down towards Lebanon along the Eastern Mediterranean (or is that now a bit of Syria?). Although Hatay and Alexandretta aren't the same town - A is north of H - the district was known by both names, e.g. the region of Hatay or the region of Alexandretta (Iskenderun (sp?) in Turkish and was a French mandate until 1939, when it was taken over by Turkey.

Robert Czernkowski

Please see Ottfried Neubecker's Fahnen un Flaggen, Leipzig, 1939: On page 73 he presents a Hatay's flag which is very much like the turkish flag. The only difference is the star which is red with white border.

Joao Portugal

Flags from "Star Trek"

image by Zeljko Heimer 9-JUN-1996

The Star Trek Federation of Planets appears to use something closely based on the UN flag.

Stuart Notholt 15-NOV-1995

The gif I got originally had black background, but I changed it to 'deep blue' (but I am ready to correct it if I am wrong). We were discussing once that black flags might be expected when mankind start to colonize outer space, as analogon to blue flags connected with maritime countries. I must say that this flag with black background looks to me much more apropriate then blue one.

Zeljko Heimer 9-JUN-1996

A recent episode of Deep Space Nine showed a flag in a courtroom situation which included the words "United Federation of Planets" along the bottom. *Sigh* -- one would think that being one of the three major powers in this quadrant of the galaxy would keep them from feeling compelled to write their name on the flag as well... :-)

It's not a bad theory [black vs. blue], but given that Star Trek retains a lot of ties to naval concepts, I'm not so sure how much they'd change. Also, black flags seem to have an association with piracy or death -- I don't know if this prejudice might have disappeared in a couple of centuries. :-)

Also shown in that episode of DS9 was a yellow flag, of Starfleet, which is the semi-military organization of the Federation charged with the duty of defence, exploration, and assistance. As far as I could tell is had the Starfleet insignia in the middle on a yellow field, yes, with the words Starfleet along the bottom...*sigh*

Dipesh Navsaria 9-JUn-1996

Star Trek is easy, they even give you the colors and exact dimensions in the Star Fleet Technical Manual. Flags were given for several star systems, my favorite being the Star Empire of Epsilon Eridani...
Alexander Justice 14-NOV-1995

A fictional flag from the Star Trek Next Generation TV series was the 52 Star US flag. The set designers wanted a flag from the viewer's future, and was concerned that people with VCRs would stop and count the stars. What I noticed about the flag (without stoping the tape) was that the blue canton rested on a red stripe instead of a white one.

R. Nathan Bliss 09-FEB-1996

INGSOC ("Nineteen Eighty Four")

There is no description of the flag of Oceania in _Nineteen Eighty Four_. In the 1984 film of the book, a flag of the ruling Party, INGSOC (English Socialism) does appear, however. If memory serves me right it is black with a red 'V' for 'Victory'. Across the 'V' are two hands, one white, one black, clasped in solidarity. Across the bottom is the word 'INGSOC'.
Stuart Notholt 15-NOV-1995

The flag of Eurasia is also briefly depicted. It had a star in the upper left corner, and a thin horizontal stripe running across the flag. There may have been other devices; you never get a clear look at it.

I don't know the colors of either flag, because I believe you see them only in pictures on the omnipresent black-and-white "telescreens". The "V-with-clasped-hands" device, however, appears elsewhere (sort of like a coat of arms), and seems to contain black, white, and red.

I'm referring to the 1980s film, not the earlier (1950s?) version.

Bruce Tindall 10-FEB-1996

Akaoneko ("Goodbye Japan")

I saw a poster for a Japanese movie that seems to contain a fictitious flag. The film is called, in English, "Goodbye Japan" (the Japanese title, written all in hiragana, appears to be "Sayonara Jippon," with the second word apparently being a phonetic transcription of the English word "Japan", in place of the Japanese Kanji normally used for the name of the country).

The film seems to be about a man who moves to a small Japanese island, southwest of Okinawa, near Taiwan, and becomes the ruler of his own tiny country.

The poster shows a map with a flag flying over the little island. The flag (drawn in outline only, so no colors are shown) contains an eight-pointed sun that looks very much like the Chinese Nationalist (Taiwan) sun, and a crescent moon underneath it (points pointing upward). I have no idea whether the "sun" device has anything to do with the island's proximity to Taiwan, or whether the "crescent" has any Muslim connection, or whether the flag is even explained in the film.
Bruce Tindall 19-FEB-1996

Last night I saw the Japanese movie "Farewell, Japan," about which I had posted briefly a few days ago.

In the movie, a small island in the Ryukyus, called Akaoneko, declares its independence from Japan.

The new country's flag is red, with a gold sun and crescent moon device in the center. The sun is similar to the sun on the Taiwan flag; the points of the moon point upwards. The sun-moon device also appears on some cars and buildings and police uniforms, sometimes in gold, sometimes in green.

The flags are of various shapes -- one is a rectangle approximately 2:3, one approx. 1:2, one an isosceles triangle, one a right triangle (the bottom edge is perpendicular to the hoist), and one an irregular shape reminiscent of that of Nepal, especially considering that it's emblazoned with a sun and a moon.

But it's not surprising that the flag wasn't standardized; the island only has a few hundred inhabitants, and they had only just declared independence and hadn't had time to enlist the help of the experts from the FLAGS list to design a proper flag!

I don't have a very good map of Japan, but I could not find an island named Akaoneko, and I assume the island is fictitious. In the film, it's supposed to be in the Okinawa prefecture.

Although the film is a comedy, it apparently has some basis in fact. A professor of Japanese from a local university gave a little talk before the film; he said that the Ryukyus (which are closer to Taiwan than any other Japanese islands) had been part of Japan for a relatively short time, formerly spoke a different language, and still feel like a "different" people. The people there, he said, often feel neglected by the central government and resent being treated as second-class citizens. (In the film, the proximate cause of the island's secession was that they didn't get help quickly after a damaging typhoon.)

Bruce Tindall 27-FEB-1996

Ragaan ("Embassy")

The programme, an Australian soap-drama set in and around the Australian embassy of a small fictional country in South-East Asia (presumably somewhere near Thailand or Malaysia). The country, I think, was called Ragaan, and the programme is simply called "Embassy".

The fictional flag, the national flag of the Asian country, is white, with three thin horizontal green stripes (thus comparable to the old South Vietnamese flag), with a green crescent (possibly with star) in the upper hoist corner.

A fairly realistic flag for a country in that part of the world, IMHO.

James Dignan 09-FEB-1996

Unnamed state from "Power Play"

Back in the 70s there was a very interesting UK/Canada co-production called "Power Play", about the planning and execution of a military coup in a fictional and un-named possibly European country (it was filmed in Yugoslavia IIRC). It was inspired by Edawrk Luttwak's "Coup D'Etat: A Practical Handbook".

Anyway, in the film the country used a vertical tricolour of blue, yellow and green. It was used very consistently throughout, with it appearing on all the military vehicles - and the designers also worked out an air force roundel (concentric green-yellow-blue) and Presidential Standard (the flag with a coat of arms on the yellow stripe).

Roy Stiling 10-FEB-1996

Zangara ("The Dogs of War")

The film version of Frederick Forsyth's "The Dogs of War" had a flag for the fictional Republic of Zangara in Africa. Black with some kind of red rising sun emblem. Sorry I cannot be more specific. It was a long time since I saw the film and IIRC it was a rotten adaptation anyway.

Stuart Notholt 11-FEB-1996

Movies with flags in a great number

Of movies in which flags figure not only symbolically, but in great numbers as well, one may mention a film about Genghis Khan (starring Omar Sharif, I think) which made use of the Mongol form of vexilloids quite a bit.

Alexander Justice 24-NOV-1995