In February 1986 they received the call of a fatherland that no longer exists: four young GDR citizens on the verge of adulthood see themselves forced, like so many others in East and West Germany, to do their one and a half years of military service. What is special: Their service area is the border system, an anti-imperialist protective wall according to their superiors, death strips and prison bars for a population incapacitated in naked reality. Now, seventeen years later, there is a reunion with the comrades and the old post. This feature film, which was the first in reunified Germany to deal with the inner workings of the GDR border troops, tells of life on the fence, the associated contradictions and some hot phases in the Cold War.
Documentary movie about testing of the largest nuclear weapon in history, the Tsar Bomba. Declassified and made available to the public in 2020.
In the 1930’s, the workers of the underground, headed by brigades of writers, are in charge to write in real time "the history of the Moscow Metro". Based on their narratives, partially unpublished, the film recounts the first lines construction of the most beautifiul underground in the world, in the light of this "big literary Utopia", stoped by the purges of 1937-38.
"The Farewell Affair" is one of the greatest espionage stories of the Cold War that will result in the accelerated fall of the USSR. It involves Vladimir Vetrov, a KGB agent put in the closet, who decides to contact the DST and deliver several lists of technological and scientific agents and secrets, which the KGB has been stealing from the countries of the Western Blocs for decades.
These 2 one-hour specials will take a look back at Ronald Reagan from his ups and downs as a Hollywood movie star to a legendary force in American politics. HOLLYWOOD YEARS: will take a look at the actor as he goes from local sports broadcaster to respected leading an using film clips, interviews and rare footage. This one a kind documentary traces the ups and downs of his on-screen career, his marriages to Hane Wyman and Nancy Davis and his role as a "friendly witness" during the McCarthy hearings. PRESIDENTIAL YEARS: documents Ronald Reagan's extraordinary transformation from a Hollywood movie star to a legendary force in American politics. From political spokesman to Governor of California, Reagan's rapid rise in leadership carried him all the way to the White House where he would inscribe an indelible legacy into the pages of world history.
In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.
The "Great Communicator" -- the 40th U.S. president -- is the subject of this in-depth documentary that draws on the insights of Ronald Reagan's political allies and adversaries alike (Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush Sr. and Caspar Weinberger). Members of Reagan's family, including Nancy Reagan, Ron Reagan Jr. and Patti Davis, are also present to discuss his achievements and influence on the American political landscape.
It fought against international terrorism in South America and watched out for our allies abroad...but what else did it do?...What are the true secrets of the C.I.A.?
The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, bringing the reunification of Germany and an end to the Cold War. This documentary revisits the events surrounding the wall's historic collapse. Interviews with George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl offer insight into political maneuvering while firsthand accounts from Germans provide personal perspectives of this historic event that changed the world forever.
Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.
The film tells about the birth of a new wave in the USSR under a strict political regime and about the era of "perestroika", when musicians received freedom of expression.
Mosfilm, les chefs-d'oeuvre du cinéma russe
The 5th anniversary of the inner-German wall to West Germany and West Berlin is on the agenda. The necessity of erecting the border is illustrated by comparing the situation in 1939 and the situation in the summer of 1961 with regard to the "threat of intervention" by the Western powers. Berlin people and GDR border guards are interviewed.
A global television broadcast of the event in which former Pink Floyd leader singer and composer Roger Waters led an all-star cast in a mammoth benefit performance of his acclaimed concept album, The Wall. Set in Berlin, Germany less than a year after the destruction of the hated Berlin Wall, Waters was accompanied by disparate talents such as Cyndi Lauper, James Galway, Joni Mitchell and Albert Finney in the classic dark musical tale of a rock star's descent into madness and back.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.
“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.
Leon Trotsky is considered one of the most controversial revolutionary figures of his time. Was he a practical revolutionary or a naive idealist? On the practical side, he was the mastermind behind the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, and was totally ruthless during the ensuing Civil War. As an idealist, he was committed to the pursuit of international revolution, but created many political enemies. After Lenin's death, Trotsky lost in a power struggle with Stalin, and later was expelled from the Communist Party. Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, eventually finding refuge in Mexico. In 1940, Stalin ordered his assassination, and Trotsky died after being struck in the head with an ice-pick. History records that Trotsky was a master theoretician, a skillful propagandist and a brilliant orator.
This film examines Trotsky, the revolutionary; venerated and reviled, loved, hated, feared. Archive material compiled from all over the world, citations and new shoots create an electrifying proximity to the historical person and to the man Leo Trotsky. Stages in his life and eventual flight are carefully examined, from St. Petersburg, to Mexico City. This is the riveting political biography of the Revolution's onetime hero.
The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.
The film documents the conversion of young Greek Military Police (ESA) recruits into torturers and touches on the subject of the power of the institution to compel otherwise moral human beings to torture. The documentary examines the processes and methods of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.