When Edward Abbey died in 1989 at the age of sixty-two, the American West lost one of its most eloquent and passionate advocates. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and The Fool's Progress. His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself.
Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.
It’s a model story, an extraordinary adventure, a tale of revolutionary practice and tension, among anarchy and irony, simplicity, curiosity and vitality throughout the whole of Europe, its wars and the social struggles of the 1900s. A tale on how to live all in one breath, responsibly, diving into contradictions, "getting one's hands dirty", and still keeping one's balance between theory and practice.˝
An exploration of the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on glam metal. It features concert footage and interviews of legendary heavy metal and hard rock bands and artists such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Megadeth, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P..
The birth of the radical environmental movement is captured in this short, poetic film on the legendary direct action at Glen Canyon Dam in March of 1981. The film contains one of the only interviews ever given by the late, great author Edward Abbey along with his classic speech from the back of a pick-up truck.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Second World War (1939-1945), around three thousand people managed to elude their pursuers, and probably also avoided being killed, thanks to the heroic and very efficient efforts of the Ponzán Team, a brave group of people — mountain guides, forgers, safe house keepers and many others —, led by Francisco Ponzán Vidal, who managed to save their lives, both on one side and the other of the border between Spain and France.
Casas Viejas: el grito del sur
A documentary about Who's Emma, a collective of punks and anarchists that existed in Toronto's Kensington Market from 1996 to 2000.
There are plenty of anarchists in the world. Many have committed robbery or smuggling for their cause. Fewer have discussed strategies with Che Guevara or saved the skin of Eldridge Cleaver, the leader of the Black Panthers. There is only one who has done all that, and also brought to its knees the most powerful bank on the planet by forging travellers cheques, without missing a single day of work in his construction job. He is Lucio Urtubia, from a tiny village in Navarra in North of Spain. Lucio, 75, now lives in Paris, still raising anarchist hell.
We follow the build-up and training of two opposite Belgian political parties. We see their leaders during meetings, during voting and after when the results of the elections are published.
How to Fix the World? is a comprehensive and informative documentary about direct action in the 1990s and 2000s, directed by Jouko Aaltonen. In the documentary, anarchists, climate activists, and squatters openly describe their experiences and link them to mainstream phenomena in society. A wide range of archive material sheds a light on the history of direct action and activism in the Finnish society.
In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented the sexual behavior of the Italians. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the hardships of the most impoverished Italian population suffering from the boot of state power. After these three trips, he came to the conclusion that Italian society had changed drastically for the worse over the years.
Cançons d'amor i Anarquia
The true story of Austria's Empress Elisabeth, whose assassination by an Italian anarchist in 1898 shocked the world and triggered historic unrest.
The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.
A retrospective look at the anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist experience in Spain from 1930 until the end of the Civil War in 1939.
This timely, bold set of one-on-one interviews presents two of the most venerable figures from the American Left—renowned historian Howard Zinn and linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky—each reflecting upon his own life and political beliefs. At the age of 88, Howard Zinn reflects upon the Civil Rights and anti–Vietnam War movements, political empires, history, art, activism, and his political stance. Setting forth his personal views, Noam Chomsky explains the evolution of his libertarian socialist ideals, his vision for a future postcapitalist society, the Enlightenment, the state and empire, and the future of the planet.
After a wave of arrests in 1969, Italian anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli allegedly falls out of a police building window while being interrogated. The circumstances leading to his death are re-enacted in three hypothetical versions in this attempt at counter-investigation. Released together with Nelo Risi's 'Giuseppe Pinelli', as 'Documenti su Giuseppe Pinelli'.
With breathless pace, Hélène Chatelain ("the woman" in "La Jetée") reconstructs the life of Nestor Makhno from his writings, Soviet propaganda films, reactions of workers today and the memory he has left in the hearts & minds of his people in Gouliaïpolié, in the east of the Ukraine.
On September 16, 1920, as hundreds of Wall Street workers headed out for lunch, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in front of Morgan Bank — the world’s most powerful banking institution. The blast turned the nation’s financial center into a bloody war zone and left 38 dead and hundreds more seriously injured. As financial institutions around the country went on high alert, many wondered if this was the strike against American capitalism that radical agitators had threatened for so long.