Love Stories of the Pale Night

In 1945, as Stalin sets his hands over Poland, famous painter Wladislaw Strzeminski refuses to compromise on his art with the doctrines of social realism. Persecuted, expelled from his chair at the University, he's eventually erased from the museums' walls. With the help of some of his students, he starts fighting against the Party and becomes the symbol of an artistic resistance against intellectual tyranny.

Based on true events of the late 60s in Italy, poet, playwright and myrmecologist Aldo Braibanti is prosecuted and sentenced to prison for the love he shares with his barely-of-age pupil and friend, Ettore. Amidst a chorus of voices of accusers, supporters and a largely hypocritical public, a single committed journalist takes on the task of piecing together the truth, between secrecy and desire, facing suspicion and censorship in the process.

Close-up to the man who censored films during the military dictatorship in Argentina, slightly inspired by the infamous Miguel Paulino Tato.

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

Italy, 1970. An increasing legion of harmless warriors begins a peaceful struggle for sexual freedom through pornography, shaking and shocking religious authorities and conservative political institutions. They are ironic, happy, crazy. They are dreamers, defenders of definitive communion between body and soul. But they were censored and humiliated. They were mistreated and arrested for demanding loud a new cultural renaissance.

On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.

The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.

The unconventional life of Dr. William Marston, the Harvard psychologist and inventor who helped invent the modern lie detector test and created Wonder Woman in 1941.

Günter Walcher, 40-years-old, is a hardworking, apolitical West German businessman caught in a moral conflict. He is offered a promotion to become the head of a division—on the condition that he find a reason to fire Zacharias, a communist and the work council chairman.

In pre-war Japan, a government censor tries to make the writer for a theater troupe alter his comedic script. As they work with and against each other, the script ends up developing in unexpected ways.

A man tries to speak, but his mouth is covered. He then undresses and gestures with his hands, but they are tied. Next, he tries to dance a tango, but his feet are tied. He attempts to communicate by shaking his genitals, but they are held against his leg. Finally, he moves his nostrils, but they are pinned shut. Thus, he dies. Only surviving short from the National Film Meeting against censorship held in the Santa Fe Railway Union in November 1970.

In a world where a totalitarian government has banned color, a dissatisfied Artist struggles to find the missing element that would give life to his work. In the process he discovers that the answer to his problem lies within the repressed memories of his own past.

Moscow, 1930s. A prominent writer's works are suddenly censored by the Soviet state and the premiere of his theatrical play about Pontius Pilate is canceled. He's kicked out of the Soviet Writer's Union, and quickly turns into an outcast with no means to survive. Inspired by Margarita - his lover, he begins working on a new novel in which all the characters are satirically reinterpreted from his life. The novel's central character is Woland - a mystical dark force who visits Moscow to revenge all those who caused the writer's downfall. As the Master sinks himself deeper and deeper into his novel, adding himself and Margarita as characters, he gradually stops noticing as the border between reality and his imagination fades away.

Between 1933 and 1945 roughly 1200 films were made in Germany, of which 300 were banned by the Allied forces. Today, around 40 films, called "Vorbehaltsfilme", are locked away from the public with an uncertain future. Should they be re-released, destroyed, or continue to be neglected? Verbotene Filme takes a closer look at some of these forbidden films.

Absolute blackness... the color that artists will see sooner than all the people on earth, because the artist is the color of his world, his writings and creations, is an expression of hanging the artist by censoring his art by the unworthy.

In the 1970s, Director Kim is obsessed by the desire to re-shoot the ending of his completed film Cobweb, but chaos and turmoil grip the set with interference from the censorship authorities, and the complaints of actors and producers who can't understand the re-written ending. Will Kim be able to find a way through this chaos to fulfill his artistic ambitions and complete his masterpiece?

A detailed reconstruction of the censorship case against the landmark Weimar-era communist film, Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World? (1932). Directed by Slatan Dudow, the crew and cast included left-wing luminaries, such as playwright Bertolt Brecht, composer Hanns Eisler and balladeer Ernst Busch. The film was the subject of vehement disputes and was banned twice for revolutionary and communist tendencies that were perceived to threaten the state. About 230 meters of the original film fell victim to the censor’s shears. This historic censorship case was argued over the course of three sessions. Censored: Kuhle Wampe re-enacts the censorship hearings, based on original minutes and documents, as well as personal records of the case. In addition to footage from the original film, this docudrama includes original clips of Berlin in the 1920s and '30s and short testimonies, filmed in the 1970s, with some of the actors involved in the original Kuhle Wampe film production.

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic drive…

It is a sex education film of sorts dedicated to all forms of human sexuality.

Germany is in uproar; the new government has adopted a law which enables a government-controlled censorship. Media and cultural facilities are being inspected. The theatre house of Jan Reeberger is one of the inspected institutions. During the inspection two different world views collide, on the one side, there’s Jan with his idealistic and cosmopolitan worldview, on the other side, there’s Micky who is standing up for the new political system.