In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.
Over three pivotal years in party politics, activists in the safest Labour seat in the country campaign for change under the banner of Jeremy Corbyn's 'For The Many' manifesto.
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.
A rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.
In 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, a veteran Polish journalist, embarked on a seemingly suicidal road trip into the heart of the Angola's civil war. There, he witnessed once again the dirty reality of war and discovered a sense of helplessness previously unknown to him. Angola changed him forever: it was a reporter who left Poland, but it was a writer who returned…
Cuba, 1961: 250,000 volunteers taught 700,000 people to read and write in one year. 100,000 of the teachers were under 18 years old. Over half were women. MAESTRA explores this story through the personal testimonies of the young women who went out to teach literacy in rural communities across the island - and found themselves deeply transformed in the process.
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.
Documentary recounting the story of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the young people of Cuba.
This film was shot in Cuba in 1994. The opportunity came when Russel Porter, an Australian documentary filmmaker, was invited to teach at the international film and television school (EICTV) located some forty kilometers from Havana. He took the opportunity to make a film about life in Cuba today. He examines how people are surviving the hardships caused initially by the "blockade" imposed by the USA over 30 years ago and increased by the more recent loss of trade with the countries of Eastern Europe. The goal was to faithfully and objectively portray the current atmosphere and character of this "little island in the Caribbean." Apart from Russel and producer Denise Patience, the film crew was Cuban: cinematographer Alejandro Perez, sound recordist Lenin de los Reyes, production manager Elaine Santos, and local liaison Alex Alday.
Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
Will Cubans be able to safeguard their heritage of pristine Nature and preserved ecological treasures under this new era, as they are facing the combined pressure of money and tourism? What policies can be implemented to maintain the island’s spectacular wilderness?
A feature length, lively - montage style - documentary, capturing the essence of what life was like in socialist Hungary - dubbed the "The most cheerful barrack" back then - using contemporary music, interviews, adverts and news footages.
A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.
Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.
Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.
Habana Shakes takes us on a rhythm-filled odyssey spanning ten vibrant days in Havana, a pulsating island city teetering on the edge of transformation. Infused with a lyrical heart, this is not just an homage to Cuba's spirited culture but also provides an intimate window into the dynamic worlds of Cuban youth. Through the eyes of a skater, a tattoo artist, an actor, a ballerina and an electronica DJ, we find ourselves asking: What aspirations do these young Cubans hold for their nation and future, and how might these differ from or echo the dreams and hopes of their parent’s generation?
This program examines Cuban exile terrorists living in Miami. These terrorists were secretly trained and employed by the U.S. government in the early 1960s to fight Fidel Castro. Now, without U.S. support, terrorist activities continue in Miami and Latin America. The program reviews secret U.S. policies toward Cuba in the 1960s and includes interviews with Castro and former top CIA officials. Members of this group, formerly secretly trained and employed by U.S. Government until 1967, have been active in Watergate crimes and anti-Castro terrorism including bomb explosion on Cuban Airline killing seventy-three. Includes interviews with Castro, E. Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, and Rolando Martinez.' - The Paley Center For Media
The First Year tells the inside story of Jamie Driscoll’s first 12 months as the new North of Tyne Mayor.
Acclaimed Florida novelist Randy Wayne White travels to Cuba with former pitchers Bill "Spaceman" Lee (Boston Red Sox) and Jon Warden (Detroit Tigers), and a band of baseball enthusiasts to find and revive the children's baseball league founded by American writer Ernest Hemingway in the days before Fidel Castro came to power.