Anniversary of the Revolution

The Russian Revolution

June 2017 •English

Starting in 1881 this film shows the personal battle between Lenin's Ulyanov family and the royal Romanovs that eventually led to the Russian revolution.

I Invite You to My Execution

October 2019 •French

As Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) thinks it is impossible that his novel Doctor Zhivago is published in the Soviet Union, because it supposedly shows a critical view of the October Revolution, he decides to smuggle several copies of the manuscript out of the country. It is first published in 1957 in Italia and the author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which has consequences.

Gulag

February 2006 •French

This excellent and breathtaking documentary is the result of a long study on the Gulag to try to understand why more than 60 million Soviet citizens were sent to the camps from 1918 to 1956, how such a massive confinement could take place during two generations. From the Solovki in the north-west to the Kolima in Siberia, from Lenine to Kroutchev, a polar geography is erected into the Gulag system. One does not escape from camps. After ten years of imprisonment, one dies. Some survived, some left traces; they witness: organisation, work and discipline, but also resistance, repression and revolt.

Atrocity Inc.

October 2024 •English

In an exclusive new documentary, Max Blumenthal rips the cover off the media deceptions and atrocity hoaxes Israel pushed after October 7 to create political space for its gruesome assault on the Gaza Strip. Blumenthal exposes the US mainstream media's role as a megaphone for the Israeli government, introducing new lies even after their initial ones were debunked. Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel's army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing.

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

January 2009 •English

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory started as an investigation of the link between politics and chocolate, at the Karl Marx Confectionary Factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Since access to the factory was denied, the project had to be re-considered, re-invented or re-enacted. Mostly made of archival footage and re-enacted performances based on the company's website, the film merges what was left of the initial idea with what has been collected and realized instead. It borrows from the genres of video art, 'Man on the street' interview, direct address, corporate film, essay, and music video, without legitimately belonging to any of them. The film unravels as a reflection on its own failure, and yet keeps on investigating what has always been at stake: the shift from public to private property (and from analog to digital technology), dialectics of permanence and change, language as a mirror of ideology, and post-Soviet oligarchy culture.

Rich Hall's Red Menace

November 2019 •English

2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.

The Birth of a Nation

February 1915 •English

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

The Killing Fields

November 1984 •English

New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.

Golgotha

December 1966 •English

Six widows demand compensation for the death of their husbands, who were killed during a worker's strike. The women are arrested and taken to the police quarters, where the authorities try to make them retract their statements, but it turns out they're not so easily intimidated.

The Man Who Was Too Free

February 2017 •Russian

A documentary about Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure of Russian political opposition and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was murdered in Moscow in February of 2015.

Mirror

March 1975 •Russian

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Anna and the King

December 1999 •English

The story of the romance between the King of Siam (now Thailand) and the widowed British school teacher Anna Leonowens during the 1860s. Anna teaches the children and becomes romanced by the King. She convinces him that a man can be loved by just one woman.

Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution

February 2008 •German

The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.

Shooting Dogs

March 2006 •English

Two westerners, a priest and a teacher find themselves in the middle of the Rwandan genocide and face a moral dilemna. Do they place themselves in danger and protect the refugees, or escape the country with their lives? Based on a true story.

K-19: The Widowmaker

July 2002 •English

When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

September 2007 •English

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

The Russian German War

January 1995 •English

This is a rare look at one of the worst horror stories in the long infamous history of warfare. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before. For decades the Cold War prevented us from looking closely at what really happened between the Russians and the Germans on the Eastern Front during World War II. More than a struggle between nations, it pitted maniacal tyrant against maniacal tyrant, evil ideology against evil ideology. The lives of tens of millions of human beings were consumed by its raging hatreds and appalling indignities. One in every ten Russians died. One in every four Poles died. Whole divisions of Italians, Romanians, Hungarians disappeared with barely a trace. An average of 17,800 people died on every single day and this, the war on the Russian German Front, lasted for 1,400 days. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before.

Prêtres interdits

November 1973 •French

Lenin in Paris

November 1981 •Russian

1911. Lenin organizes the first Bolshevik party school near Paris, in the small town of Longjumeau. Through a chain of historical parallels and associations, this time is intertwined with the events of the Paris Commune, the October Revolution and the political struggles of the post-revolutionary years.

Savior

June 1998 •Hungarian

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.