Under the Radar: Burma

Documentary about a political episode during the Brazilian military dictatorship, which resulted in the issue of the Institutional Act #5 (AI-5), abolishing freedom of opinion in Brazil, and marking the transition to the toughest period of violation of human rights in the country. The episode was the Congress Assembly on December 12th, 1968, in which its members denied permission to punish congressman Márcio Moreira Alves, as was the Government's wish.

Galeria F

In 1968, Orlando Lovecchio was made victim of a guerilla's bomb terrorist attack, which main objective was to fight against the Military Regime. Orlando lost one leg after the world-reckoned attack against the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo.

A look back over nine years of the Syrian Civil War, an inextricable conflict, like a black box, due to the competing interests of the many factions in presence and those of the foreign powers.

During the first days after the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, the political leadership of the Popular Unity government was arrested and transferred to Dawson Island, Magallanes Region, extreme south of Chile and the mainland. The wives of the then political prisoners began an incessant effort to find out the whereabouts of their husbands and then try to return them alive. In these circumstances, they meet and spontaneously organize into a group they call the “Dawsonianas.”

Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini's lover and advisor, was a woman who exerted a great influence on the Duce and on Italian cultural life. Through archival documents, autobiographical texts and love letters, the documentary paints a portrait of the woman who helped create the myth of the Duce.

For the first time, traditional Burmese singers Khing Zin Shwe and Shwe Shwe Khaing are recording an album that introduces people around the world to the Maha Gita (Great Songs), which have been sung in South Asia for 700 years. They also introduce viewers to life in Myanmar, a Buddhist country of great beauty.

Fists of Pride follows Little Tiger and his fellow fighters as their Thai coaches prepare them for the annual Water Festival competition. In a boxing camp on the Thai-Burmese border the children of mostly illegal migrant workers fleeing Burma live and train for prize fights. In a region where combat sports have always been a matter of honor and money, the film reveals their daily struggles. Bets are open and as the hope of prize money rizes, the young boxers contemplate what it could mean for them and their families

La Fascination des femmes pour Hitler

Documentary that shows the events that culminated in the deposition of President João Goulart, on March 31, 1964, and the implementation of the military dictatorship in Brazil. Around 40 characters reveal behind the scenes and comment in detail on this important moment in Brazilian political history.

Una carta de Leticia

Amid the civil-military dictatorship implanted with the 1964 coup, Sergio Muniz had the idea of making a documentary about the action of the Death Squad. At the time, the press still had some freedom to disseminate the work of these death squads formed by police officers of various ranks, and that he acted on the outskirts of cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The victims of police repression (as today) were men, poor and black, and this condition is supposed criminals.

Inês Etienne Romeu was an opponent to the Brazilian's dictatorship. She was kidnapped, tortured and raped in jail, where she stayed for almost 100 days. She was later sentenced to life imprisonment. She stayed ten years in prison, from 1971 to 1979. Delphine Seyrig directed this film in 1974, when Inês was still in prison, protesting against this imprisonment and in support to Inês.

Argentina, 1973. The return of democracy marks the beginning of a new countdown to the next coup d'état: on March 24, 1976, the worst dictatorship in Argentine history is installed, the bitter fruit of a plot carefully hatched for months.

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.

In this special Clarkson, Hammond and May don’t just buy three knackered old lorries and drive miles through the beautiful landscapes of Burma. Oh dear no. They actually have to use their lorries to do something useful. They have to build a real, use able bridge over the River Kwai. On their way to the river they almost bring down Burma’s power supply, encounter the world’s least relaxing truck stop, race around the streets of a deserted capital, saddle up a trio of unhelpful horses and attend a completely deranged party.

Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.

Lissette's favorite aunt Adriana, who lives in Australia, is arrested in 2007 while visiting her family in Chile and accused of having worked for dictator Pinochet's notorious secret police, the DINA, and of having participated in the commission of state crimes. When Adriana denies these accusations, Lissette begins to investigate her story in order to film a documentary about her.

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…

Faced with a lack of prosecution of those accused of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s military dictatorship, family members and descendants of the country’s estimated 30,000 disappeared took action. In the mid-1990s, they began gathering outside of accused perpetrators’ homes and workplaces to publicly shame them and raise awareness about the government’s systematic and brutal targeting of its people — and how it had gone unpunished. The human rights group HIJOS (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetfulness and Silence) led and labeled this direct-action style of protest “escrache,” or exposure.