Café Nagler

Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau

November 2002 •Spanish

Among Wild Birds

November 1927 •

Finland’s first nature documentary. The filmmakers’ expedition leads them all the way to the Åland Islands and the Karelian Isthmus.

Monica in the South Seas

November 2023 •Finnish

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

Man with a Movie Camera

May 1929 •Russian

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Censored!

December 1999 •English

A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.

Triumph of the Will

March 1935 •German

A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party

December 2020 •French

From Caligari to Hitler

May 2015 •German

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1919, when the Republic of Weimar is born, to 1933, when the Nazis come into power. (Followed by Hitler's Hollywood, 2017.)

As You Are

January 2023 •English

A glimpse into a visual representation of memory; A Christmas-time series of meals, coffees, and movies, with friends, lovers, and housemates. Faced with the compounding of faces and places, each moment begins to collide with one another: voices are muddled, and faces are broken. How is memory created? How are they separated from one another?

Riefenstahl

August 2024 •German

Explores Leni Riefenstahl's artistic legacy and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her self-portrayal with evidence suggesting awareness of the regime's atrocities.

Hidden Scars: The Great Kanto Earthquake Korean Massacre, A Documentary

October 2005 •Japanese

In the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923), which killed nearly 100,000 people, more than 6,500 Koreans were murdered by the military, the police and civilians. This film uses evidence and testimony to examine the history behind this massacre.

The Man with the Lantern

January 2018 •Italian

To discover the truth behind the mysterious objects her uncle brought back from the Far East during her childhood, filmmaker Francesca Lixi embarks on a journey to those places through archival footage.

House of the Wickedest Man in the World

March 2023 •English

House of the Wickedest Man in the World is the story of a ruined building near the city of Cefalú in Sicily. In the early 1920s, Aleister Crowley, the most famous occultist of his time, lived in the building, practicing magical rituals. In the summer of 1955, Kenneth Anger, considered one of the pioneers of experimental cinema, traveled with sexologist Alfred Kinsey to Sicily to find Aleister Crowley’s temple to shoot a film about the occultist’s time in Cefalú. The Thelema Abbey film was never released.

Hitler: A Career

July 1977 •German

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.

Women He's Undressed

June 2015 •English

Hollywood stars, historical footage and stylized reenactments tell the story of costume designer Orry-Kelly, who ruled Tinseltown fashion for decades.

The Eagle and the Lion: Hitler vs Churchill

September 2017 •French

Winston Churchill, one of the most revered men of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler, one of the most hated leaders in contemporary history. Between 1940 and 1945, these two enormously contradictory personalities faced each other in both politics and war. A clash of giants whose story begins in the trenches of the World War I and ends with the debacle of the World War II.

London's Free Shows

January 1924 •English

A round-up of free events in London, including street entertainers, a puppet show, pavement artists, road menders, a daring demonstration by the fire brigade, an abduction staged by a film company and a military parade.

Moana

January 1926 •English

Robert J. Flaherty’s follow-up to Nanook of the North shifts from the Arctic to the South Seas, portraying Samoan village life with a painterly eye. Blending ethnographic detail with a romanticized “Gauguin idyll,” the film celebrates daily rituals, communal traditions, and the passage into adulthood, suffused with what Flaherty called “pride of beauty, pride of strength.”

Propaganda: Engineering Consent

May 2018 •French

How can the masses be controlled? Apparently, the American publicist Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995), a pioneer in the field of propaganda and public relations, knew the answer to such a key question. The amazing story of the master of manipulation and the creation of the engineering of consent; a frightening true story about advertising, lies and charlatans.

The Irish Revolution

April 2019 •English

The extraordinary story of the Irish War of Independence (1919-22): from the failed insurrection of 1916, the detailed account of how pro-independence Ireland rebuilt a movement whose efforts would eventually lead to the creation of a new nation. (Documentary film based on the miniseries of the same title.)