For Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlic, a locked door in her mother's apartment in Belgrade provides the gateway to both her remarkable family history and her country's tumultuous political inheritance.
In Thailand, all males turning 21 must participate in the military draft lottery. Drawing a black card grants exemption. Drawing a red card results in two years of military service. This short film follows two girls, who were born as males, as they participate in the drafting process.
Akademija Republika shows a group of people gathered around the club from 1981 until 1995 and how it changed and influenced the cultural and night life around them.
A documentary about Goran Ivandic 'Ipe', the drummer of most popular Yugoslav rock band of all time, Sarajevo-based "Bijelo dugme" (White Button). Ivandic's fatal jump from the balcony of hotel Metropol in Belgrade in 1994 sparked much controversy around his fate.
This provocative documentary uncovers a lost chapter in Canadian military history: how the Armed Forces dealt with homosexual behaviour among soldiers, during and after World War II. More than 60 years later, a group of five veterans, barely adults when they enlisted, break the silence to talk about how homosexual behaviour "was even more unmentionable than cancer." Yet amidst the brutality of war, instances of sexual awakening among soldiers and officers were occuring. Initially, the Army overlooked it, but as the war advanced, they began to crack down: military tribunals, threats of imprisonment, discharge and public exposure. After the war, officers accused of homosexuality were discharged. Back home in Canada, reputations and careers were ruined. For the young men who had served their country with valour, this final chapter was often too much to bear. Based on the book Courting Homosexuals in the Military by Paul Jackson.
In 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited, for the first time, Romania. Its communist regime gave him, as present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: 'The Leafless Forest'. In the 60s, a young art critic, Radu Bogdan, decided to elaborate a monograph dedicated to the great painter, including reproduction of the painting given to Tito. After countless problems, he obtained the permission to photograph the painting. The moment they took the painting off the wall, they found - a microphone. Somebody was spying on Tito...
The most popular children's magazine in Yugoslavia was called Modra lasta (Blue Swallow). In 1969, it created Lastan. For hundreds of thousands of children Lastan was a mythical hero who helped unhappy and confused little souls. Each child imagined him differently and felt confident to share with him what they could not confess to anyone else: Dear Lastan, I kissed him, am I pregnant?; Dear Lastan, I fell in love with a boy from my class... For decades Lastan was a legend and the best kept secret in journalism. This film, for the first time after almost five decades, reveals his true identity.
Petar Peca Popović is one of the greatest, most famous, most authoritative and for sure, the best, connoisseur of Rock and Roll in the former Yugoslavia. He promoted Rock and Roll in those heroic times. We are going on a peculiar kind of trip with him, along an "emotional homeland", of ex-Yu, "searching for the lost times" and dear friends, the most significant representatives of this culture - rock'n'roll legends.
A documentary film-project by Dmytro Komarov. He was the first journalist to witness and film the horrors of the just-liberated towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel. He saw the first emotions of people immediately after the de-occupation of Kyiv region, Kharkiv region, and Kherson region. The documentary is the author's view of the war from angles that you won't see in the news. Unique, rare, exclusive comments from those whose hands and minds are shaping our future victory. The main heroes of documentary are both ordinary Ukrainians who heroically show their strength and power every day for a year and high-ranking officials such as Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov, Major General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk. Initially, "Year" was a series of journalistic reports, later they were edited into a two-part film.
Turkish democracy got over the 27th of May and the 12th of March and set off again, but the storm did not subside and the mutual reckoning was not over. On the contrary, new fronts were opened in the country and blood began to flow like a gutter. Finally, on September 12, there was a knock on the door again. Those who came that day changed everything, everything. Nothing would ever be the same again, nothing would be the same as before.
This documentary was inspired by the artistic life of Serbian actress Sonja Savić. Being a wonder child, a star of Yugoslavian cinematography, a sex symbol, and urban legend of the eighties generation, a fighter against establishment, Sonja Savić had always attracted attention. Simply put, she always looked, spoke and thought differently from others, she was entirely autonomous, an authentic phenomenon of Serbian culture. In the documentary SONJA, friends and colleagues of Sonja Savić testify on many aspects of her life and work, and a special emphasis is put on Sonja’s libertarian, rebellious, Don Quixote type of nature.
Between four walls of her apartment, a girl enjoys in intimate idleness and being her true self.
Filmed in Belgrade in 1962, Parade documents the city’s engagement with the annual May Day celebration by largely ignoring the formal procession. Instead, Dušan Makavejev records the informal moments surrounding it: workers, officials, wanderers, and organizers negotiating space, hierarchy, and appearance. Shot with a detached, humorous eye, the film assembles a mosaic of everyday behavior that reveals the contrast between official ceremony and lived social reality.
Hundreds of frozen and starved people floating on boats in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea fleeing from the war... Familiar scenes that we are used to seeing in recent times. But the year is 1944, and the refugees are travelling from Europe to Africa. After Italian capitulation,and before the arrival of German army, 28 000 Dalmatian Croats left their home villages and towns to live for two years under the tents in the middle of Egyptian desert, in a kind of a communist model village that was formed to show the Allies how the new Yugoslavia will look like when the war ends. This is a story about them.
Through the conversation with Yugoslav film authors and excerpts from their films, this documentary film tells a story of a film phenomenon and censorship, and its focus is, in fact, a painful epoch of Yugoslav film called “a Black Wave”, which was the most important and artistically strongest period of Yugoslav film industry, created in the sixties and buried in the early seventies by means of ideological and political decisions. The film tells a great “thriller” story of the ideological madness which characterised the totalitarian psychology having left multiple consequences felt up to our very days. It stresses similarities between totalitarian regimes defending their taboos on the example of the persecution of the most important Yugoslav film authors. Those film authors have, however, made world careers and inspired many later authors. The film is the beginning of a debt pay-off to the most significant Yugoslav film authors.
Film director Branko Belan follows the journey of fishermen as they set out to catch tuna around the Velebit Channel.
Maria Luiza da Silva is the first transgender in the history of the Brazilian Armed Forces. After 22 years of work in the military, she retired due to disability. The film explores the complex barriers she faced and her path of affirmation as a trans, military and Catholic woman.
While the government was in a deep sleep, the brain staff of the revolution was completing its final preparations at the Military Academy, there were only a few hours left for the revolution that had been prepared for six years. Despite six years of preparation, there was actually no serious plan at hand. An unplanned, unscheduled full night raid was to be organized. The management level of the army was pro-government. Therefore, it was impossible for the intervention to take place within the chain of command. This was to be a grassroots military operation. The army of the operation consisted of young cadets. Except for the Harbiye, there was no force at hand. It was even possible for units such as the Guards Regiment and the Central Command to resist. That's how the day of May 27 began with the unknown and risks. Major General Cemal Madanoğlu, the commander of the Revolution Headquarters, would have the last word...
We came to the end of the road. We told you the story of the establishment of a democracy throughout 9 episodes... We witnessed the collapse of a one-party regime. We witnessed the disappearance of the national chiefdom. Together we experienced the holding of the first free general elections and the raising of democracy in pain. And finally, we told you about the birth, rise and fall of a new power. Where we ended up was a military intervention. Whatever the reasons, the storm of revolution had blown once. Now the task of the officers who seized power on the morning of May 27 was to contain that storm. But it didn't. After a while, the storm started to drag the revolutionaries in front of it. The historical scenario was repeated. The Revolution ate some of their children. The revolution was now speaking its own language...