From Caligari to Hitler

Documentary on the massacres commited in the Dersim region in Turkey in 1937/38.

Boundary-pushing Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein selects renowned French composer Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro.

A look at the life of legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world.

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

Spain, 1937. Ramón Mercader, a young communist combatant, is recruited and trained by the Soviet intelligence service to participate in a top secret mission ordered by the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin: the assassination of his former political rival, Leon Trotsky, who is living in exile in Mexico.

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.

Les équilibristes, a film by Nico Papatakis with Michel Piccoli, inspired by Jean Genet, was broadcast in two parts on October 11 and 18, 1991, on the Sept. It was on this occasion that Philippe Grandrieux directed this short film for the Seven antenna, consisting of an interview with Nico Papatakis and the reading of excerpts from Jean Genet's text, “The Tightrope walker”, read by the actress Ann-Gisel Glass.

Dix Jours dans la guerre d'Espagne

The fascinating story of the rise to power of dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy in 1922 and how fascism marked the fate of the entire world in the dark years to come.

This Traveltalks short showcases the Paris International Exposition of 1937. It features a tour of the pavillions of several nations, as well as the spectacular water and light displays.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

Ladies of good families and social standing come to have their afternoon tea with their daughters who will someday follow in the same tradition. A charming portrait of a time that is slowly disappearing.

Spain, 1932. Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel travels to the region of Las Hurdes, in Extremadura, where he shoots his third film, a very critical and later controversial documentary about the living conditions of the poor peasants, abandoned and forgotten by the national authorities.

Set during the period of growing influence of the Indian independence movement in the British Raj, the story begins with the arrival in India of a British woman, Miss Adela Quested, who is joining her fiancé, a city magistrate named Ronny Heaslop. She and Ronny's mother, Mrs. Moore, befriend an Indian doctor, Aziz H. Ahmed.

A journey through different places in 1930s Mallorca, the coast, the countryside, the city, in the company of the evocative music of Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909), to whom homage is paid.

The film is set on September 1th, 1923 , when a huge earthquake hits Tokyo . The quake caused buildings to collapse, and the city was reduced to ashes by fire. The Great Kanto Earthquake killed more than 105,000 people. 100-year-old films recording this catastrophe have been found all over the country.But who filmed the turmoil of Tokyo, chased by raging fires?After investigating, I come across three cameramen. They turned the hand-cranked camera in a trance without being ordered by anyone.