Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.
It’s the last dictatorship of Europe, caught in a Soviet time-warp, where the secret police is still called the KGB and the president rules by fear. Disappearances, political assassinations, waves of repression and mass arrests are all regular occurances. But while half of Belarus moves closer to Russia, the other half is trying to resist…
Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.
During the aggression on Ukraine, Russian soldiers killed more than 400 Ukrainian athletes. Russians destroyed hundreds of stadiums, sports centers, gyms, and pools. Thousands of young athletes and children fled war to foreign countries.
Ljudmila Ignatenko tells the story of her and her husband Vasilij, a firefighter who was one of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
Viktor, who was born deaf, worships the figure of the samurai warrior. When bombs start falling on his countryside home in Kharkiv, his quasi-romantic obsession with war is put to the test.
Hitler's invasion of Russia was one of the landmark events of World War II. This documentary reveals the lead-up to the offensive, its impact on the war and the brinksmanship that resulted from the battle for Moscow. Rare footage from both German and Russian archives and detailed maps illustrate the conflict, while award-winning historian and author John Erickson provides insight into the pivotal maneuvers on the eastern front.
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 band OK Go gives viewers a look at the behind-the-scenes work -- and 21 flights -- that went into filming their famous zero-gravity music video.
Children beyond the war
With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life. A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to. (Storyville)
Anything can happen on Russian roads and is precisely shot by the dashboard camera. Super-objective video registration grows into the strong image of Russian national character – with its permanent awaiting for the miracle and habitual approach to real dramas. A forest on fire as a symbol of Russian hell, a military tank at a car wash and car chase in the vicinity of Kremlin shot with a dashboard cam at the same time when Boris Nemtsov, the leader of political opposition, was shot dead near Kremlin. Dashboard cam depicts life in it’s purity as an unbiased observer.
Filmmakers Laura Mulvey and Mark Lewis use rare archival footage and interviews with artists, art historians, and museum directors to examine the fate of Soviet-era monuments during successive political regimes, from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of communism. Mulvey and Lewis highlight both the social relevance of these relics and the cyclical nature of history. Broadcast on Channel Four as part of the 'Global Image' series (1992-1994).
A Japanese-American director digs deep into the controversial 'comfort women' issue to settle the debate on whether the women were paid prostitutes or sex slaves, and reveals the motivations and intentions of the main actors pushing to revise history in Japan.
While serving with the African Union, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle documents the brutal ethnic cleansing occuring in Darfur. Determined that the Western public should know about the atrocities he is witnessing, Steidle contacts New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, who publishes some of Steidle's photographic evidence.
Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, gains unprecedented access to follow a Russian Army battalion in Ukraine. Without any official clearance or permits, she earns the trust of foot soldiers and embeds herself over the span of a year with one battalion as it makes its way across Eastern Ukraine. What she discovers is far from the propaganda and labels pushed by the East or West: an army in disarray, soldiers disillusioned and often struggling to understand what they are fighting for.
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.
The actor Gøril Mauseth goes on a 11.000 kilometer travel with the Trans-Siberian to play Anna Karenina in a new language in Leo Tolstoj's Russia, discovering the language, and the reasons Tolstoj wrote what he wrote, changing her forever.
Against the backdrop of historical events, from the time of Kyivan Rus' until the arrival of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine, the film deals with the history of the construction, flourishing, destruction and revival of the Mykhailivskyi Golden-Domed Monastery over 900 years, as well as the difficult history of the struggle for independence of Ukraine. the church that continues to this day.
The artists Zhanna Kadyrova and Denys Ruban spent two weeks in the basement of their house, fleeing from the rocket attacks and sabotage groups of the occupiers that were flooding the outskirts of Kyiv at the time, and then decided to evacuate to western Ukraine. Local residents of one of the Zakarpattia villages sheltered them in a picturesque house on a hillside, next to a river. Doing what you know and love for the benefit of Ukraine is the best thing an artist can do in times of war. This is how the Palianytsia project was born - a series of objects made of stones cut by a mountain river. Zhanna sells them to patrons and galleries and uses the proceeds to buy bulletproof vests, radios, thermal imagers and other things our soldiers need. Before she sends her ‘loaves’ to Venice for the Biennale, Zhanna holds an exhibition in the village where she now lives, so that the people who have taken her in can be the first to see her art.