An account of the childhood and youth of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, and how the hard experiences he lived during these formative years led him to write and publish his first major work when he was only 26 years old.
Documentary about the merging of the Communist Party of Germany and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the Soviet occupation zone, a merger that would lead to the creation of the Socialist Unity Party that would rule the soon-to-be-created East Germany until 1989.
An archival documentary about the U.S. military’s response to the political and racial injustices of the late 1960s: take a military base, build a mock inner-city set, cast soldiers to play rioters, burn the place down, and film it all.
Adopce: Konkurz na rodiče
A research-based essay film, but also a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into a few democratic nation states.
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Taking stock of the extraordinary adventure of "Pif Gadget", a French publishing phenomenon of the 1970s-80s and even of the whole history of children's press. For the comic-strip magazine with the iconic dog, created in 1969 by the French Communist Party, often reached a million copies. With editions available for all of Europe (including Germany, under the title Yps), and on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Procreation is the social duty of all fertile women, was the political thinking during the 1960s and 1970s in Romania. In 1966, Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, in which he forbade abortion for all women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children. All forms of contraception were totally banned. The New Romanian Man was born. By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Romanian society was rapidly changing. By using very interesting archival footage and excerpts from old fiction films and by interviewing famous personalities from that time – gynecologists or mothers who were part of the new society - the director revives this period of tremendous oppression of personal freedom. Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters, and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them.
Florida, Man is a "mostly real" faux documentary exploring filmmaker Evan Jordan's haunted past and future possibilities - shot on location in his hometown and featuring a roster of extended family, friends, and other colorful characters from the American South.
The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the May events in France, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the Prague Spring, the Chicago riots, the Mexico Summer Olympics, the presidential election of Richard Nixon, the Apollo 8 space mission, the hippies and the Yippies, Bullitt and the living dead. Once upon a time the year 1968.
This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.
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.
This film, directed by Dominique GAUTIER, takes the viewer on a worldwide excursion into the history and structure of the Esperanto language, introducing its present-day speakers. The words of these users of the language are reflective of a variety of activities and viewpoints, and in the film they are interwoven so as to reveal bit by bit how the utopia of its initiator, Ludwig ZAMENHOF, is concretised every day.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
A documentary on the road that tracks the journey by Georgina, an elderly transgender woman forced to cross the sandy peninsula Guajira, on foot, to obtain the thing she has desired for almost half a century: a document that will hand her the right to be what she has always felt she was, and will allow her, at long last, to vote.
Can a secret change who you are? Mysterious events unfold and reveal how Martha, a Polish holocaust survivor, managed to lead a double life in Australia. The vivacious Jewish artist and doting mother, died without ever revealing her secret. The film follows Martha’s daughter Eve, over a decade, as she unlocks the mystery behind the streets named Eve and Martha. Clues are found in old recordings and Martha’s home movies revealing a mystery man gazing into the lens. Eve’s investigation leads her to the Sobieski castle in the Ukraine, the site of a massacre where her grandmother died, and the Eichmann trial as she explores her parents’ holocaust survival and her father’s heroic escape from a concentration camp. When a ‘doppelgänger’ contacts Eve, her life is forever altered, as she uncovers lies, tracks down her mother’s young lover and reveals the family secret that led her to rewrite her entire life.
How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
In 2016, DEFA celebrates its 70th anniversary: the film embarks on a journey into the exciting film history of the GDR. In a comprehensive kaleidoscope, the importance of DEFA productions is illuminated, the relevance of the films as propaganda productions for the GDR, which socio-political themes were in the foreground, but also which heroes DEFA brought to the screen and celebrated as people from the people.
An intimate portrait of the lives of Delvys and Carlos, siblings who live alone with their elderly mother in a rural part of a small Cuban town. The film portrays a family engulfed in their inner worlds. Between the sacrifices they make out of love for those who are present, and their longing for things that are absent, they struggle to find meaning as they reflect, contemplate, and carry the weight of existence, trying together, to move forward.