Jesus Was a Commie presents modern society with questions and leads the audience on a dialectical journey. The film challenges the viewer to seek their own answers and personal truths.
In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.
On June 5, 1989, one day after Chinese troops expelled thousands of demonstrators from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a solitary, unarmed protester stood his ground before a column of tanks advancing down the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured by Western photographers watching nearby, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the fight for freedom around the world. FRONTLINE investigates the mystery of the tank man — his identity, his fate, and his significance for the Chinese leadership.
Between 1947 and 1951, more than 80 000 Greek men, women and children were deported to the isle of Makronissos (Greece) in reeducation camps created to ‘fight the spread of Communism’. Among those exiles were a number of writers and poets, including Yannis Ritsos and Tassos Livaditis. Despite the deprivation and torture, they managed to write poems which describe the struggle for survival in this world of internment. These texts, some of them buried in the camps, were later found. «Like Lions of stone at the gateway of night» blends these poetic writings with the reeducation propaganda speeches constantly piped through the camps’ loudspeakers. Long tracking shots take us on a trance-like journey through the camp ruins, interrupted along the way by segments from photographic archives. A cinematic essay, which revives the memory of forgotten ruins and a battle lost.
Filmed on the 60th anniversary of the republic, this dark-humor documentary delves on the highs and lows of living in North Korea.
Nazi propaganda film about the Condor Legion, a unit of German "volunteers" who fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of eventual dictator Francisco Franco against the elected government of Spain.
The impact of Marx on the 20th century has been all-pervasive and world-wide. This program looks at the man, at the roots of his philosophy, at the causes and explanations of his philosophical development, and at its most direct outcome: the failed Soviet Union.
An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.
Paul Robeson was a celebrated African-American Actor, Athlete, Singer, Writer, and Civil Rights Activist. Robeson's many achievements are chronicled in this program, ranging from playing with the NFL to graduating from Columbia Law School, performing on Broadway and in Hollywood films to founding the American Crusade against Lynching as well as Council on African Affairs. Robeson was one of the most talented performers of his time and a dedicated humanitarian who ultimately sacrificed fame and fortune for what he believed in. His association with Leftist Politics during the era of the Cold War, and frequent denouncing of American political parties led to his eventual blacklisting with other prominent writers and artists during the McCarthy Era. His talents in all areas are remarkable, and his dedication to attaining a peaceful coexistence between all the people of the world is truly admirable.
Bosnian Croat writer Miljenko Jergović and Serbian writer Marko Vidojković replace one another by the steering wheel of Yugo, a symbol of their common past while driving on the Brotherhood and Unity Highway that stretched across five of six republics of Yugoslavia.
Fabiana, Carlo, Claudio and Vincenzo… I met them in 1982 in Mercatale, their village in Tuscany, near Florence. They were aged between 25 and 45 and were cheerful militants in the Italian Communist Party, that strange party which has made its mark on history and which was both a school and a family for them. I have filmed in Mercatale every two or three years for over 20 years (1982/2004). The fi lm takes the “long view” of their political and personal development against the backdrop of village life. Stories with both human and political interest spanning over a quarter of a century with relevance for present day issues: what has become of the plans to change the world in Berlusconi’s Italy? From a more global perspective: what else can politics do? When the time comes to take stock the paths of their rich and varied personal lives cross once more with all their doubts and allegiances.
Documentary about Spain's 1968 victory in the Eurovision Song Contest and the suspicions of foul play by the Franco regime.
Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.
"A Home On The Range" tells the little-known story of Jews who fled the pogroms and hardships of Eastern Europe and traveled to California to become chicken ranchers. Even in the sweatshops of New York they heard about Petaluma where the Jews were not the shopkeepers and the professionals, they were the farmers. Meet this fractious, idealistic, intrepid group of Eastern European Jews and their descendants as they confront obstacles of language and culture on their journey towards becoming Americans. Jack London, California vigilantes, McCarthyism, the Cold War and agribusiness all come to life in this quintessentially American story of how a group of immigrants found their new home, a home on the range.
Ben Stewart, the bright young musician and philosopher who brought us the sleeper hit "Esoteric Agenda", unveils his new work, Kymatica!. Kymatica will venture into the realm of Cymatics and Shamanic practices. It will offer insight into the human psyche and discuss matters of spirituality, altered states of consciousness and much more! Not to be missed!
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is remembered as the instigator of the October Revolution of 1917 and, therefore, as one of the men who changed the shape of the world at that time and forever, but perhaps the actual events happened in a way different from that narrated in the history books…
Fidel Castro employed a vast spy network that helped him remain in power.
Franco on Trial is the new film by Dietmar Post and Lucía Palacios. After the success of Franco's Settlers, their first encounter with Franco's dictatorship, they are now setting their sights on one of the darkest chapters of European history: the presumed organized extermination that took place during the coup, the war, and the subsequent dictatorship led by Franco, as well as Argentina's current effort, by invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute Francoists accused of committing crimes against humanity. The film is also a sore reminder of an issue that still stands today: the clear-cut accountability held by Germany, Italy, and Portugal. The film accomplishes to give both sides a voice - those against whom the killing has been directed; and the side of the perpetrators.
The history of Bruguera, the most important comic publisher in Spain between the 1940s and the 1980s. How the characters created by great writers and pencilers became Spanish archetypes and how their strips persist nowadays as a portrait of Spain and its people. The daily life of the creators and the founding family, the Brugueras. The world in which hundreds of vivid colorful paper beings lived and still live, in the memory of millions, in the smile of everyone.
Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.