Drawing from the recent book, Reagan: The Life by best-selling biographer H.W. Brands, this Ronald Reagan biography dives deep into the pivotal events that shaped his life. Dramatic recreations reveal the untold, behind-the-scenes moments that shaped the trajectory of his career. Interviews and rare archival material illustrate his life through the Great Depression, WWII, Hollywood’s Golden Age, The Cold War, an assassination attempt (not unlike Bill O’Reilly’s book and recent Nat Geo movie, Killing Reagan), and public and personal heartache.
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.
Red Terror documents the soviet occupation of Lithuania and the resistance movements that sprang up in opposition to the brutal tactics used by the communists from 1941 up to 1991. Stories of deportation, life in the Gulag, exile to Siberia, KGB prison torture, confiscation of land are told by living survivors. Resistance fighters and those who aided them also share their stories for the first time to an American audience. Rare historical photos and moving images are used to bring these stories to life.
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
The history of the peplum genre, known as sword-and-sandal cinema, set in Antiquity, from the silent film era to the present day.
Both a visit to a very peculiar exhibition at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, as well as an unprejudiced look at the artistic depiction of violence throughout history and the ways in which that depiction has been gendered.
An account of the last two centuries of the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. How human beings have progressed so much in such a short time through war and the selfish interests of a few, belligerent politicians and captains of industry, damaging the welfare of the majority of mankind, impoverishing the weakest, greedily devouring the limited resources of the Earth.
A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.
The wish was father to the thought: instead of asking Mr. Reagan conventionally worded questions about his candidacy, as he had done Messrs. A discussion full of substance-on topics ranging from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, to the way government bonds should be issued, to the still-ongoing energy crisis, to the still-high unemployment-but also a delicious dress rehearsal.
In the mid-1980s, the U.S. is poised on the brink of nuclear war. This shadow looms over the residents of a small town in Kansas as they continue their daily lives. Dr. Russell Oakes maintains his busy schedule at the hospital, Denise Dahlberg prepares for her upcoming wedding, and Stephen Klein is deep in his graduate studies. When the unthinkable happens and the bombs come down, the town's residents are thrust into the horrors of nuclear winter.
An album of odd and humorous stories on small places exclusively dedicated to idleness, which are empty in winter and crowded in summer: the spa towns. Cities under water, luxury hotels, mermaids, sea animals, sand castles, people who worship water, praying for health.
This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.
Stephen Poliakoff's parody of the spy-thriller genre. A Russian diplomat becomes convinced that he is at the centre of a Foreign Office plot.
A terrorist drives a car to Hamburg's Rathausmarkt and unloads an unknown device that he claims can cause radioactive contamination. A special unit tries to subdue the man, but this reveals that the only way to prevent the explosion is to constantly readjust a transmitter, so they have to let him go.
A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. The common factor is death by some means.
Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin accuses prominent people of Communist sympathies in order to give him a national power base when he later planned to run for President.
In August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called the Beatles. He arranged their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world. Twenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how the Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life. (Storyville)
Documentary portrait of Karel Köcher, supposedly the most important communist agent to infiltrate the CIA.
From 1990 to 1994, ground zero for the all-ages, alt-rock scene in Portland was the X-Ray Cafe. Brought to life and operated as a flight of fancy by Benjamin Arthur Ellis and Tres Shannon, the X-Ray was both a critical venue for emerging local and touring bands and hang-out for an amazing array of outcasts, street kids and creative eccentrics of all stripes. When band such as Crackerbash, Sprinkler, Poison Idea, Hell Cows, Smegma, Dead Moon, Hitting Birth, Beat Happenings, Cake, Hole, Green Day or the Spinanes were not on stage, anything from poetry to Spanish lessons to a sewing circle might have connected and entertained the customers. Whether shelter, social or information hub, or music mecca, the X-Ray represented and remains, in age-old fashion, a key chapter in many Portlander's coming of age. Ellis's film, loaded with interviews and performance clips, is a spirited valentine to the craziness and glory of days gone by and to the many who called the X-Ray home.
Documentary about the Intervision Song Contest in general and the 1980 edition in particular. Focuses on Finland's participation and the shipyard strikes in Gdansk at the time.