The final oral exam in history and social studies at one of Warsaw's high schools. The film illustrates the theatre of social life in Soviet Poland where one says different things on the stage and another behind the scenes.
A documentary about Kim Philby, a British member of MI6 who was in reality a spy and defected to the U.S.S.R.
A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
The story of Marshal Vasily Konstantinovich, a dedicated Red Army commander who was killed in Stalin's "purges." The film attempts to study the fate of the country through his biography, and unlock the riddle of the show trials of the thirties.
January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.
1972, the height of the cold war era, Canada vs USSR. 8 games of hard fought Hockey that would go onto change how Hockey is seen and played the world over. This made for TV documentary follows the 'Summit Series', an international Hockey event that would not only engulf the nations involved, but the entire world.
Through unique and candid interviews the film tells the compelling and tragic stories of the six women – last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression and terror that devastated the Soviet population during the regime of Stalin.
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 life and death of socialist architectural monsters. An epic fairy-tale in five chapters.
Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.
The film tells about the birth of a new wave in the USSR under a strict political regime and about the era of "perestroika", when musicians received freedom of expression.
Mosfilm, les chefs-d'oeuvre du cinéma russe
With breathless pace, Hélène Chatelain ("the woman" in "La Jetée") reconstructs the life of Nestor Makhno from his writings, Soviet propaganda films, reactions of workers today and the memory he has left in the hearts & minds of his people in Gouliaïpolié, in the east of the Ukraine.
Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.
The story of what daily life was like in Poland under communism: private conversations, cruel interrogations, recruitment attempts, recorded and filmed with hidden devices; of how the secret services spied on every activity of ordinary citizens: nothing escaped the brutal system of control developed by the Soviets in the name of freedom.
Documentary on the USSR
Geheimes Russland: Moskaus Unterwelten
This film discusses conditions in the Soviet Union, including party activity and influence, the shortage of consumer goods, the roles of children and women, the status of religion, and the purpose of Soviet realist art.
The 1972 Olympic men's basketball final, in which Team USA was accorded their first ever loss since the sport was adopted in competition, was one of the most controversial events in history the history of the Games.