Garden Friends and Foes

War and Peace of Mind explores what war does to the human mind and how both, the individuals and the nation as a whole, survive it psychologically. Finland and WWII, locally known as continuation war, is the backdrop of this documentary.

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Documentary using archival footage, newsreels and contemporary interviews with women of the WW2 Australian Women's Land Army.

Human torture. Factories of death. War atrocities. The crimes that haunt the pagse of history are chronicled in the piercing documentary Camps of Death. Following Hitler's murderous career, the film traces his rise to power, his ultimate demise, and the subsequent nuremberg trials that publicized the horrors of Hitler's regime. Concentration camp footage combines with chilling POW interviews to graphically create the nazi nightmare that few could hope to survive. A powerful look at the third reich adn the horrifying fate of its enemies.

An account of the troubled life of Richard Sorge (1895-1944), a Soviet spy of German origin who played a decisive role in the outcome of World War II.

A remarkable film that takes a special look at the first war to be truly reported and recorded by one of the more unsung heroes of World War II: the combat photographer. Through the unflinching eye of their camera's lenses, these courageous soldiers continually risked their lives in their brave attempts to capture history.

How could a German Wehrmacht soldier become a celebrated soccer idol of the Britons in the post-war period? The documentary by Radio Bremen shows the moving life story of the soccer star of the 1950s in a torn Europe and how an enemy became a friend. With his legendary appearance in the English Cup Final 1956, in which he played until the end despite a broken neck, Bert Trautmann set up a memorial for himself in the history of sport. Already in the same year, he is chosen as England’s footballer of the year, and by his club Manchester City even as best player of all times. Bernhard “Bert” Trautmann is one of the most popular and best-known soccer players in England.

Old resistance fighters Truus and Freddie look back on their life during wartime.

This remarkable documentary dedicates itself to an extraordinary chapter of the second World War – the psychological warfare of the USA. America’s trusted cartoon darlings from the studios of Warner Bros., Paramount, and the “big animals” of the Disney family were supposed to give courage to the people at the homefront, to educate them, but also to simultaneously entertain them. Out of this mixture grew a genre of its own kind – political cartoons. Insightful Interviews with the animators and producers from back then elucidate in an amusing and astonishing way under which bizarre circumstances these films partially came into existence.

In Iasi, Romania, from June 28 to July 6, 1941, nearly 15 000 Jews were murdered in the course of a horrifying pogrom. At the time, the programmed extermination of European Jews had not yet began. After the war, the successive communist governments did all they could to ensure the Iasi pogrom would be forgotten. It was not until November of 2004 that Romania recognized for the first time its direct responsibility in the pogrom. All that remains of this massacre are about a hundred photographs taken as souvenirs by german and romanian soldiers, and a few remaining survivors.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Documentary about the life and work of Mário Eloy, one of the greatest painters of the second generation of modernism in Portugal.

With the Fifth Panzer Army fighting its way towards the River Meuse, the cross roads town of Bastogne, vital for the success of Hitler's last attempt to check the Allies in the west, the Americans rushed reinforcements to hold it. 101st US Airborne Division was resting in reserve near Paris when the call for immediate deployment to the Ardennes came and reached Bastogne just before the German ring around the town closed. Wearing only normal uniforms, the 101st joined the other garrison troops in a siege where they fought not only the enemy's panzers but the freezing, snowy, cold to hold the vital road junction. Filmed on the ground we tell the story of the heroic defence of Bastogne.

Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny (1908-75) became famous for his participation in daring military actions during World War II. In 1947 he was judged and imprisoned, but he escaped less than a year later and found a safe haven in Spain, ruled with an iron hand by General Francisco Franco. What did he do during the many years he spent there?

A look at the Nazi "show camp" used to fool the world while they carried out their "Final Solution".

They raised children, baked cakes... and built world-class fighter planes. Sixty years ago, thousands of women from Thunder Bay and the Prairies donned trousers, packed lunch pails and took up rivet guns to participate in the greatest industrial war effort in Canadian history. Like many other factories across the country from 1939 to 1945, the shop floor at Fort William's Canadian Car and Foundry was transformed from an all-male workforce to one with forty percent female workers.

June 14, 1940. The German Army marches into Paris. France is an occupied country. Through exclusive amateur footage, personal stories, and popular songs from the time, this fi lm recounts life with the enemy during the occupation, as seen by the French... and the Germans! Despite the Nazis and the troubled war times, day-to-day life in occupied France went on. People learnt to live with the rationing, the cues, the curfew... Many try to forget the hard times, mainly thanks to the movies in which big stars provide a little dream and lead a privileged life. These stars don't actually collaborate, butadapt and give the impression of normal life during the war. After all, is it necessarily shameful to shake the hand of an enemy?

Hitler's Hidden City

Physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no idea what he'll be working on. When he learns the true nature of the weapon being designed, he fears the post-war risk of a nuclear holocaust and begins to pass significant information to the Soviet Union.

By combining actual footage with reenactments, this film offers both a documentary and fictional account of the life of Adolf Hitler, from his childhood in Vienna, through the rise of the Third Reich, to his final act of suicide in the waning days of WWII. The film also provides considerable, and often shocking, detail of the atrocities enacted by the Nazi regime under Hitler's command.