A documentary on the volunteer Estonian Army's defense against the Soviet Army in 1944 with an emphasis on its last stand in the region known as the Blue Hills of Estonia.
This documentary retraces the life of Jacques Maritain (1882 - 1973), French Christian philosopher. In evoking his life, it paints a portrait of the 20th century: the scientism of the Sorbonne, the rise of Nazism, the Resistance, Free France, Christian Democracy in South America, but also art, freedom, peace and love for the human person. Jacques Maritain, in the torments of the 20th century, of it's murderous madness and it's hope for peace, holds a secret: his ineffable and faithful love for his wife Raïssa, the inspiration for his political commitments and his philosophical thought.
Made famous by the 1957 Hollywood movie, the bridges of the River Kwai emblematize one of the most misunderstood events in history. Contrary to the romanticized film version, the structures represent a period of terror, desperation, and death for over 16,000 POWs and 100,00 local slaves. The Thailand - Burma Railway was the vision of the Japanese Imperial Army: a 250-mile track cut through dense jungle that would connect Bangkok and Rangoon. To accomplish this nearly impossible feat, the fanatical and ruthless Japanese engineers used POWs and local slaves as manpower. Candid interviews with men who lived through the atrocity - including Dutch, Australian, British, and American POWs - illuminate the violence and horror of their three-and-a-half-year internment. From Britain's surrender of Singapore the enduring force of friendship, The True Story Of The Bridge On The River Kwai narrates a moving and unforgettable account of a period in history that must be remembered.
Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?
Docudrama about the Soviet occupation of a Finnish village in the fall before the Winter War.
Das radikal Böse is a German-Austrian documentary that attempted to explore psychological processes and individual decision latitude "normal young men" in the German Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, which in 1941 during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust two million Jewish civilians shot dead in Eastern Europe.
Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?
Den Norske Motstand
This is the story of an incredible rise to power, the most comprehensive documentary on Hermann Goering ever made. He was a man of many faces: vain, ambitious, more brutal than any other of Hitler's minions, yet the most popular Nazi official of all, at times even more popular than Hitler himself. He embodied the jovial side of the Third Reich. Yet the same man who organised dissolute bacchanals also founded the Gestapo, set up the first concentration camps, and had his own comrades murdered in the purge of 1934. These unique personal records form the largest and most important single film find from the Nazi era in past years.
Portugal managed to get through all of World War II without firing a single shot. Caught in a vise between the Axis and the Allies, Antonio Salazar, the country’s strongman, used every trick in the book to get his country through unscathed. In this war of nerves in which anything went, the Portuguese dictator took brilliant advantage of the only weapon available to maintain his country’s independence: neutrality.
This documentary is a captivating account of the defense of Wake Island by a small contingent of United States Marines and civilian contractors. From December 8th until December 23rd, 1941 the defenders thwarted an aerial attack and an attempted amphibious landing from a naval task force before finally being overwhelmed by the third attempt by the Japanese Imperial Navy.
Based on the book of the same title by best-selling author Henry Buckton, this film is enhanced by a fascinating series of interviews with a wide variety of people who played a vital role in Britain’s ‘finest hour’. Included are the captivating accounts of six fighter pilots who risked their lives day after day to combat the Luftwaffe, which was at that time greatly more experienced in aerial warfare. Their memories are enhanced by the recollections of a gunner, two members of the 400,000-strong ground crew who kept as many aircraft flying as possible, a barrage balloon operator and men who helped to build Spitfires.
Tells the story of probably the world's greatest pilot through an extensive and in-depth interview: Capt Eric "Winkle" Brown CBE, DSC, AFC. From his flight with WW1 German fighter ace Ernst Udet in 1936 through to commanding a squadron of Buccaneers at the height of the Cold War, we hear how "Winkle" Brown experienced the rise and fall of Nazism; how he flew the most dangerous, uncontrollable aircraft, how he cheated death countless times.
On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).
This FitzPatrick Miniature visits the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the largest geographically unbroken political unit in the world, covering one-sixth of the world's land mass.
The film shows the period just after the liberation of camp Westerbork and the Netherlands. The remaining Jews were ordered to guard new prisoners: NSB members and other collaborators. Several of those 'wrong' Dutchmen had been partly responsible for the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. This documentary is about those first four months in camp Westerbork, when almost a hundred prisoners suspected of collaboration died.
A documentary examining possible historical and modern conspiracies surrounding Christianity, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Federal Reserve bank.
This 2005 documentary film chronicles the life of Daniel Johnston, a manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist, from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his mental illness and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obsession.
Inspired by the complexity of the entire film-footage captured by Eva Braun, while in the inner most circle of Adolf Hitler and his private world, these observations challenge the viewer's perception of what is fact and to a greater extent what is unperceived. History teaches us the horrors of manipulation, unaccountability and ignorance. Historical moments that mirror all aspects of today’s society and humanity.
At the start of World War II, Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were faced with the threat of forced removal and incarceration in concentration camps. A small number took their fate in their own hands, fleeing to interior states, becoming refugees in their own country, on a forced migration into the unknown. Before They Take Us Away is the first feature documentary to chronicle the untold stories of the “self-evacuees” who spent the war years outside the camps, as they struggled to rebuild their lives and overcome poverty, isolation, hostility and racial violence.