Castro: The World's Most Watched Man

Ronald Reagan hosts and narrates this documentary about the Communist threat to the free world. Alexander Kerensky, the first premier of the provisional Russian Government in 1917, formally introduces the film. This documentary traces the development of the Communist movement from birth, the Lenin years, its struggle for direction, the Stalin years (featuring a response by Leon Trotsky attacking the Stalin purges) and the ascendancy of Nikita Krushchev.

Island of Dreams

An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel.

"This wonderful age in life where every thought strives toward an ideal, toward work, toward the future." Sahia Studios propaganda flick about how adults and their "those darn kids" attitudes affect adolescents.

Bortglömda

Dawn breaks in La Habana, and as the day advances we follow the simple lives of ten ordinary Cubans, with only sounds and images accompanied by music.

A documentary about former Major League Baseball player, Bill "The Spaceman" Lee. Lee was the ultimate gonzo player, a brilliant left handed pitcher who defied every manager or front office executive who tried to control him. The fans loved him and so did sportswriters who delighted in asking the usual baseball questions, only to get philosophical responses involving the relationship between existentialism and the curveball or the effects of karma on a pitcher's rotator cuff.

Unedited film of rural shore Havana, Cuba. Footage includes scenes of the old stone buildings and lighthouse along the ocean, mountain landscapes, people fishing and boating. Shot by Metro Movie Club member Ed Diller.

This film was shot in Cuba in 1994. The opportunity came when Russel Porter, an Australian documentary filmmaker, was invited to teach at the international film and television school (EICTV) located some forty kilometers from Havana. He took the opportunity to make a film about life in Cuba today. He examines how people are surviving the hardships caused initially by the "blockade" imposed by the USA over 30 years ago and increased by the more recent loss of trade with the countries of Eastern Europe. The goal was to faithfully and objectively portray the current atmosphere and character of this "little island in the Caribbean." Apart from Russel and producer Denise Patience, the film crew was Cuban: cinematographer Alejandro Perez, sound recordist Lenin de los Reyes, production manager Elaine Santos, and local liaison Alex Alday.

In Portugal, during the night of April 24-25, 1974, a peaceful uprising put an end to the last government of the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime established in 1933 by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), paving the way for full democracy: a chronicle of the Carnation Revolution.

March 9th, 1953, 5 million people attend Stalin’s funeral. A revolutionary lacking in both charisma and stature, Stalin came to power almost by chance, and his 30-year reign saw him become the most Machiavellian and bloodthirsty of dictators. The man who insisted on being called “The Father of the People” massacred his own countrymen, and was responsible for the death of some 20 million people. Soon forgetting his former ideological stance, he mercilessly crushed anyone who opposed him, in both word and deed. His camps for reform through hard labor – known as “gulags” – turned 18 million Russians into slaves. He not only murdered his opponents but his best friends too, and even sometimes members of his own family. His cruelty knew no bounds. Through colorized archive material rich in previously unseen footage, and many accounts from the period including some from Stalin himself, this documentary tells the story of a man who turned a dream into a nightmare.

How did the end of the Soviet Union change the way of thinking, the way of behaviour of militant French Communists ? For the first time and during several months meetings of a Communist Party cell in one of Paris' industrial suburbs were filmed by André Van In. Set against these meetings, the militants are filmed discussing their commitments, their dreams, their mistakes. Beyond questions about power or the political machinery, they share their faith in militancy and their hopes for a fairer society.

Between 1931 and 1933, 4 million Ukrainians were to die of hunger. This famine was not preceded by any cataclysmic weather event, nor by a war. This was an ideological crime: decided by Stalin and approved by the Politburo, with the aim of punishing Ukrainian peasants who refused the collectivization of the countryside, cultivated a strong form of nationalism and showed resistance to communist ideology. Drawing on previously unpublished material, on many Soviet films and on a number of particular points of view, including that of Welsh journalist and whistleblower Gareth Jones, this film retraces the story of that famine.

Demonstrations, confrontations, parties and divisions marked one of the most important university campaigns of the decade: the 1968 student elections.

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

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 recounting the story of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the young people of Cuba.

100 years after the Russian revolution, the film invites us to think about agroecology as an option and a necessity in the construction of food sovereignty, taking the experience of Cuba as a world reference and inviting us to think that another type of field is possible.

Written and directed by James Orr, the 53-minute video chronicles the entire process of Cuban cigar making, from planting to packaging, offering rare, never before seen footage of the facilities where these cigars are produced, and the people who make them. Suckling serves as host of the movie, guiding viewers through this journey across Cuba. Suckling has been traveling to Cuba regularly since the early 1990s, first as European Editor of Cigar Aficionado magazine, and now with his own website, www.jamessuckling.com. He has visited the tobacco plantations, sorting houses, factories, and cigar shops hundreds of times over two decades, but in “Cigars: The Heart And Soul Of Cuba,” he aims to discover why Cuban cigars are the best in the world – and he does. The documentary has already garnered much praise from premiering to select audiences in Cuba, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Canada, and China, and is now available for purchase online worldwide.

Documenting the hardships of three gifted Cuban rappers trying to survive in the harsh ghettos of Havana.