Tiempo de Audacia

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.

This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d’état against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili‘uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as an "act of war."

In the early 1980s, at the beginning of what would become a 12-year-long civil war, El Salvador's talented football team was one national institution upon which both the left and the right could agree. When the team pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset against Mexico and qualified to compete in the 1982 World Cup, it was a high point for the tiny country's national pride. Unfortunately, the team's Cinderella story devolved into a nightmarish farce.

The essay by René Vautier, "Déjà le sang de Mai ensemençait Novembre", starts with the recapitulation of the representations of Algeria throughout the history of visual arts in France in an effort to explore the causes for the quest for independence.

Since its adoption in June 1955 by the Congress movement, the Freedom Charter has been the key political document that acted as a beacon and source of inspiration in the liberation struggle against Apartheid. It was reputedly the main source that informed democratic South Africa’s liberal constitution and a constant reference point for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and rival political parties that it spawned since 1994, all claiming the Freedom Charter’s legacy. Freedom Isn’t Free assesses the history and role of the charter, especially in relation to key political and socio-economic aspects of developments in South Africa up to the present period. It includes rare archival footage with interviews of a cross-section of outspoken influential South Africans.

Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

For nine months in 1930, seven Bretons, lobster fishermen, were "forgotten" on a volcanic island by their employers, Normans from Le Havre, heirs of the last French whalers. Four employees would die on the spot. Their descendants today revive the memory of this human tragedy which also struck 42 Madagascans. Starting from a sordid social conflict, the documentary shows that the “Forgotten Saint Paul” mark the end of an era of “colonization”, a term rarely used for the French Southern Territories, but nevertheless close to reality. This is the story of the Third World, as its discoverer, Yves de Kerguelen, named it.

In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.

Beyond the Frontlines: Resistance and Resilience in Palestine

Les Enfants de la Patrie

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

This film travels over open books, looted objects and postcards to look for the imperial foundations of the world in which we live. Within this wide landscape the film focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world that existed in North Africa, making it imaginable and inhabitable again. Narrated in the first person, by an Algerian Jew and a Palestinian Jew, the film refuses imperial histories of those places. Objects held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the visible tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa. The film explores the substantial wealth accumulated through the extraction of raw materials, labour, knowledge and skills, including the “visual wealth” attained by putting people in front of the colonisers’ cameras.

A Luta Continua explains the military struggle of the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) against the Portuguese. Produced and narrated by American activists Robert Van Lierop, it details the relationship of the liberation to the wider regional and continental demands for self-determination against minority rule. It notes the complicit roles of foreign governments and companies in supporting Portugal against the African nationalists. Footage from the front lines of the struggle helps contextualize FRELIMO's African socialist ideology, specifically the role of the military in building the new nation, a commitment to education, demands for sexual equality, the introduction of medical aid into the countryside, and the role of culture in creating a single national identity.

In the months and years following the end of the World War Two, Allied forces faced a series of bombings and attacks in occupied Germany. Nazi loyalists attempted to derail the rebuilding process by killing any Germans collaborating with the enemy. And the mysterious SS-Werewolves underground organization boasted of the coming rebirth of the Party.

A crew of filmmakers shoot undercover on the streets of Hong Kong with hidden microphones and no permits. The city becomes a giant set as mounting tension and ego clashes push tempers to breaking point.

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

In the Bernese Alps, the Agassizhorn peak memorialises Louis Agassiz – a controversial 19th-century scientist, who not only named the mountain after himself, but who claimed he had discovered the Ice Age and went on to become one of the century's most virulent, most influential racists.

Palestro, Algérie : Histoires d'une embuscade

Reflects a depressing and hopeless reality by following some of the members of "la dieciocho", the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.

A documentary that explores the myth behind the truth. Different people around the globe reinterpret the legend of Che Guevara at will: from the rebel living in Hong Kong fighting Chinese domination, to the German neonazi preaching revolution and the Castro-hating Cuban. Their testimonies prove that the Argentinian revolutionary's historical impact reverberates still. But like with all legends, each sees what he will, in often contradictory perspectives.