Karenina & I

In 2012 two members of anarchistic female band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a Mordovian labor camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Russian film collective Gogol’s Wives follow each step of the feminist punk band’s battle against Putin including their first disruptive performances on a trolley bus, shooting a video about transparent elections, a controversial performance in a Red Square cathedral, and footage shot in a jail cell. Support comes from many corners including Madonna who painted the words "Pussy Riot" on her back and wore a balaclava during her Moscow show. The documentary portrays the grim state of present-day Russia, a country starkly divided between conservatism and anarchy. Pussy Riot believes that art has to be free and they're willing to take it to extremes. "Pussycat made a mess in the house," they say, and the house is Russia. The filmmakers do not seek to moralize, they simply edit events and leave viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Previously a central part of communal life, the movie palaces of New York’s Chinatown are now extinct. This documentary short takes us inside the title theater located on the Bowery, as it’s about to close its doors, with its caretakers ruefully looking back at the life that once was. Eric Lin’s poignant first film serves as a glimpse into the usually private—and, according to the Music Palace’s projectionist, “lonely”—operations of a theater, and mourns the loss of a once-vital movie-going locale.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is remembered as the instigator of the October Revolution of 1917 and, therefore, as one of the men who changed the shape of the world at that time and forever, but perhaps the actual events happened in a way different from that narrated in the history books…

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

Astrophysicist Jean Surdej brings a small group of teenage pupils on a trip to the Lofoten islands in northern Norway, for a very special class on the solar system. Using the geography of the archipelago to illustrate the distances between the planets, they journey through space by car and ferry, with the picturesque landscapes standing in for the black emptiness that surround the heavenly bodies. A masterstroke of both pedagogy and filmmaking, Children of Stars is a captivating documentary about humanity's place in the grand scheme of things.

Divadlo v Řeznické

Vi som solgte landet

Svalbard is a norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean where the world's northernmost city is situated. It is a place where the underground, terrestrial and spatial universes blend into each other starting from a coal mine up to Venus.

For months, the FBI have been investigating Russian interference in the American presidential elections. ZEMBLA is investigating another explosive dossier concerning Trump’s involvement with the Russians: Trump’s business and personal ties to oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. Powerful billionaires suspected of money laundering and fraud, and of having contacts in Moscow and with the mafia. What do these relationships say about Trump and why does he deny them? How compromising are these dubious business relationships for the 45th president of the United States? And are there connections with the Netherlands? ZEMBLA meets with one of Trump’s controversial cronies and speaks with a former CIA agent, fraud investigators, attorneys, and an American senator among others.

Follows the young people of Selma, Alabama's RATCo (Random Acts of Theatre Company) as they journey to New York City to share their story of hope, resilience, and overcoming.

This short documentary depicts the search, discovery and authentication of the only known Norse settlement in North America - Vinland the Good. Mentioned in Icelandic manuscripts and speculated about for over two centuries, Vinland is known as "the place where the wild grapes grow" and was thought to be on the eastern coast between Virginia and Newfoundland. In 1960 a curious group of house mounds was uncovered at l'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland by Drs. Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad of Norway. Added to the United Nations World Heritage List, l'Anse aux Meadows is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.

A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.

A blend of fact and fiction, based on the actual lives of the actors, the film depicts a troupe of actors and dancers struggling to practice their art in the burned-out shell of Cambodia's former national theater, the Preah Suramarit National Theater in Phnom Penh.

A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.

Documentary about the ten days the director spent in Moscow, during the 1986 Moscow Youth Festival, as kind of a gay delegate.

The documentary follows the life of Farroukh, a young Tajik immigrant who lives in Moscow outskirts with his family and does odd jobs in dreams of becoming an actor.

The documentary follows Oleg, Andrey, and other long-distance truck drivers from all over Russia, who turned their outrage against the 2015 bill that required truckers to pay taxes when driving on federal roads into a 9 month long protest.

This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' performance space to national cultural institution.

This profile of homeless young people in St. Petersburg, Russia, uses subtitles and narration to tell their tales, many of which focus on drugs, neglect and abuse.

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