Two ex-friends from East Germany meet up after many years. One was a dissident, the other spied on him for the Stasi. One went to prison. One did not. A unsettling story of how a dictatorship spun so strong it could completely control its population.
In October 1987, the documentary film collective Amber Films from Newcastle became the first British film crew ever allowed to shoot in East Germany. They filmed the workers of the state-owned fishing concern in Warnemünde and a brigade of crane operators at the state Warnow dockyards. Just two years later, East Germany was history, including most of the jobs it once provided. Twenty-five years later, in 2014, the filmmakers returned to an utterly different Rostock. They visited the people they had filmed in 1987. Together, documentarians and subjects look at excerpts from the earlier film, and talk about the enormous changes the men and women experienced, how they dealt with them, and how they feel today.
Filmmaker Jan Nemec and his crew risked their lives to create this historic documentary account of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The award-winning work is the only filmed record of the invasion. Oratorio for Prague began as a study of the liberalization of Czechoslovakia and then continued when the Russian forces moved in. The gripping footage was broadcast by television, providing the first report of the event. In addition to the news footage, the film features never-before-viewed scenes taken prior to the invasion that crushed Prague's anti-Communist movement.
Under the control of the Stasi East Germany was the most repressive police state in the history of the world. Yet it managed to convince the West that it was being progressive. Here is the story of how the Stasi gained control over the lives of the East German people and the methods it used.
Between 1944–1953, courageous resistance movement took place in the Baltic region of Europe, uniting the partisan troops for struggle against the Soviet Union. “The Invisible Front was a coded name used by the Soviet Interior forces to describe the resistance movement in Lithuania. Film depicts the story of the fighters through the words and experience of the partisan leader, Juozas Luksa, and interviews with eyewitnesses of those events - both the partisans and the Soviet fighters. Tales of horror, torture and courage are told in the rare archival footage that has never been screened before, and interviews with the surviving members of the resistance movement.
In 1959, in Romania, six former members of the nomenklatura and the secret police organize a hold up of the National Bank. After their arrest, the state forces them to play themselves in a film which reconstitutes the crime and the investigation. At the end of their trial, filmed live, they are sentenced to death and executed. A month later, the film Reconstitution was released and became a sensation throughout the country. - Written by giolgaudaniel
The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The collage of personal memories, staged scenes and archives of collective memory compares the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution and shows the exposure, conflict, crisis, and catharsis of the post-communist society.
Focuses on the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) and its 'collective spirit' in cinema. The purpose of film as a cultural tool is examined. Based on celebrated sociologist Siegfried Kracauer's seminal book 'From Caligari to Hitler' (1947).
Florian Hartung and Dirk Pohlmann have reconstructed a previously unknown dimension of the collaboration between Nazis and the CIA in the Cold War. Drawing upon recently released documents, the film exposes for the first time a perfidious, worldwide net that reaches deep into the power structures of the Federal Republic of Germany. Lending their authority to the fact-finders’ mission are high-ranking statesmen, journalists and historians.
Yellowstone National Park is home to a vast array of landscapes and a huge diversity of animals, united in a fascinating ecosystem, one that is currently in severe trouble. The area once contained over 19,000 elk, but its numbers have plummeted by 80% in the last two decades. The mysterious decline has sparked many questions, and researchers are in a race to provide answers. Join them as they investigate a series of theories and suspects, from wolves to bears to trees to trout, in an attempt to solve this alarming puzzle.
Orania is a remote village in the barren centre of South Africa, an \intentional community\ where only white Afrikaans people live - a culturally homogeneous place in a multicultural country. What lies beneath this peculiar societal experiment? A feature-length documentary about cultural identity and the thin line between self-determination and discrimination.
Offering rare insight into the tough world of soccer agents, this documentary follows industry veteran Jörg Neblung as he manages clients and contracts.
