Sonntag der 13.

An educational film about power sources that’s rendered as a lyrical meditation on heat and vapor, The Four Elements is a poetic and avant-garde documentary Curtis Harrington made for the United States Information Agency.

During World War II, the propaganda engine of the U.S. government made a pivotal decision with unforeseeable results: they tapped John Huston to shoot war documentaries with an expressly patriotic spin. Few could guess the degree to which Huston's documentaries would depict the sheer brutality and horror of modern warfare - particularly his Let There Be Light and The Battle of San Pietro. The films served (by default) as cinematic protests, even as they graced new and brilliant heights within the scope of American documentary. (Indeed, Light was banned by the government for 35 years). Midge Mackenzie's 1998 documentary John Huston: War Stories explores this little known facet of Huston's career, intercutting clips from the various documentaries with a Huston interview shot just prior to his death.

Tommy Robinson goes on the offensive by documenting how his own “hit piece” on his character was being constructed by the taxpayer-funded BBC for their popular investigative news special “Panorama.” In the film he manages to capture footage of the blackmailing of his former employees to invent stories, along with an organization—known as “Hope not Hate”—on set with the BBC, intimidating ex-employees of Robinson during interviews. The host of “Panorama” at the time of filming is caught on camera casually using racist and homophobic slurs during a £220 champagne lunch with the same ex-employee they had planned to coach for a fake interview in which the BBC would possibly edit in which to make it appear as, “a gender, a sexual thing against Tommy Robinson,” according to the host. Within 24 hours of releasing the film, social media giant Facebook made a public statement of their own and removed Tommy Robinson’s accounts permanently.

Commissioned to prepare Allied troops for the liberation of Europe, the film uses a blend of staged narratives and historical footage to promote solidarity and dispel the myth that France was a nation of willing collaborators.

Anti-Congress propaganda film made by a District Officer in India.

See how alt-right icon Steve Bannon’s years as a documentary filmmaker catapulted him to Breitbart News and the Trump White House.

This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.

Last bastion of freedom of expression or playground for extremists and criminals? Opinions are divided on the messaging service Telegram. Just like on its mysterious founder, tech billionaire Pavel Durov. Is this man an uncompromising advocate of radical freedom or an accomplice of criminals of all kinds? Author Aleksandr Urzhanov searches for answers.

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

A Nazi propaganda film made to promote anti-Semitism among the German people. Newly-shot footage of Jewish neighborhoods in recently-conquered Poland is combined with preexisting film clips and stills to defame the religion and advance Hitler's slurs that its adherents were plotting to undermine European civilization.

North Korean propaganda film about orchards that yield bigger crops after Kim Il-sung visits. The films was presented as a gift to friendly-minded countries in the world. And expected by the North Korean Culture Ministry to be displayed publicly. Sweden was one of the countries honored by receiving a copy of "Gwasu-ui nara / Country of Orchards".

A shocking political exposé, and an intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for survival, dignity, and justice after decades of top-secret human radiation experiments conducted on them by the U.S. government.

How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.

Le Parti du cinéma

After the defeat of 1940, and faced with the unexpected collapse of French power, all eyes turned to a horizon of both hope and uncertainty: the colonies. France had suddenly become an empire without a metropolis, reduced to two-thirds of its former size. Pétain saw the colonies as a "consoling myth" after the defeat, while de Gaulle considered them essential strategic locations for the Resistance. The two clashed in a propaganda war.

Compilation short film about the Communist Revolution and Soviet Union.

2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.

Contrasting radical mobs, anarchy, and 1960s counterculture with footage of American manufacturing and innovation, this film celebrates the concept of American exceptionalism and argues that anti-Vietnam War protesters were influenced by communism, atheism, and immorality. Set mostly in a university library, this political debate between a medical student, his 1770s ancestor, and a history professor is a sequel to the 1972 National Education Program film, Brink of Disaster! Two additional characters appear in this drama: a 19th-century steamboat captain, and the student’s grandfather - an early 20th-century automobile worker. The National Education Program at Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas created a variety of widely-distributed anti-communism films from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.

A student is held up in the library while a riot rages outside. As SDS protesters head to burn the library down, he has to fend them off with his baseball bat. This film opens with actual footage of civil disturbances in the 1960s, and moves on to images of historical American figures.

A different history of the Cold War: how Estonians under Soviet tyranny began to feel the breeze of freedom when a group of anonymous dreamers successfully used improbable methods to capture the Finnish television signal, a window into Western popular culture, brave but harmless warriors who helped change the fate of an entire nation.