De Gaulle, le géant aux pieds d'argile

A Word from the Director

March 2018 •English

Mike De Leon imagined Citizen Jake “as an indictment of the Duterte regime using its horrific forerunner [the Marcoses] as a template of authoritarian rule,” and he caused a stir, as usual, in posting this promotional short for the film on social media. This short is essentially a Director's Statement in video essay form, and has been screened at New York's MoMA in their Mike De Leon retrospective.

Scarlet Dawn

November 1932 •English

During the Russian Revolution, a young nobleman and his peasant maid flee from their homeland to Constantinople where they marry and begin a challenging new life.

Spin

October 1995 •English

Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contempt for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV out-takes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly-spun fabric of television—a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors, and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. riots and the floating TV talk-show called the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

La mémoire pour sépulture

January 2025 •French

Love Exists

February 1960 •French

An essay film critiquing post-war France's urban developments- Pialat states that modernity and suburban convenience have limited Parisian freedom and widened class gaps.

War Comes to America

June 1945 •English

The seventh and final film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight World War II propaganda film series. This entry attempts to describe the factors leading up to America's entry into the Second World War.

The Spirit of '45

March 2013 •English

How the spirit of unity, which buoyed Britain during the war years, carried through to create a vision of a fairer, united society.

Why We Fight: Divide and Conquer

January 1943 •English

The third film of Frank Capra's 'Why We Fight" propaganda film series, dealing with the Nazi conquest of Western Europe in 1940.

Goya in Bordeaux

September 1999 •Spanish

Francisco Goya (1746-1828), deaf and ill, lives the last years of his life in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, a Liberal protesting the oppressive rule of Ferdinand VII. He's living with his much younger wife Leocadia and their daughter Rosario. He continues to paint at night, and in flashbacks stirred by conversations with his daughter, by awful headaches, and by the befuddlement of age, he relives key times in his life.

Irresistible Force

May 1993 •English

A police sergeant is hoping for a few quiet weeks before his impending retirement, but his plans are scuppered when he is joined by an over-enthusiastic rookie partner who is assigned to him after failing her field test. To make matters worse, trouble looms when a group of white supremacists hold up a local shopping centre.

Father of the Kamikaze

September 1974 •Japanese

Vice Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi could see that Japan's defeat in WWII was inevitable. He came to realize that the only way to force a negotiated solution was to convince the Americans that invading Japan would cause massive casualties on both sides. The cold logic of suicide attacks, where one man and one plane could kill hundreds, seemed the only solution. In one of the cruel ironies of fate, Ohnishi actually succeeded; he convinced the Americans that invading Japan would be too costly in lives. But what he could not foresee was that America had another way of ending the war.

The Books He Didn't Burn

April 2023 •German

Explores how Hitler’s personal library provides a look into his mind and how it significantly informed his worldview.

Ashes in the Sky

April 2023 •Catalan

In 1945, at the end of World War II, Neus Català returns to France, where she recalls her life under the Nazi yoke.

The Road to Victory

May 1944 •English

Documentary short film intended to drum up support for the Fifth War Loan Campaign. It shows a happy family in the future of 1960 enjoying the prosperity and advantages made possible by the successful prosecution of the war, and how the sacrifices of 1944 have made the world a better place. Edited down from The Shining Future (1944).

Salinger

September 2013 •English

An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.

Ein weites Herz

April 2013 •German

When Isa provokes the Nazis with a satirical song at her graduation party, she is denied her degree despite passing her exams. She has to give up her plan to become a teacher and, against her mother Petra's wishes, manages to perform in a political cabaret. She enjoys stage success as a singer with an accordion and falls in love with the pianist Laurenz. During the Second World War, Isa's family gets caught up in the wheels of political power and is torn apart - until, after much turbulence, the Vermehrens regain their old cohesion and accompany Isa together as she enters a convent in Bonn.

Arkhé

May 2023 •Spanish

“Archeology” and “Archive” share the same roots. Both words come from “Arkhé”, the Greek word for “origin”. In the ruins of buildings, lost forever by earthquakes, as in the depth of the archives, we dig. What happened the morning of the big earthquake? The morning of September 19th 1985 is fading away in our memories. These recordings have never been seen. Unedited images of the catastrophe dug out by the archaeological adventure of an archivist that suffered with them. He dug and suffered until he could no longer see.

Anytown, USA

December 2005 •English

Three Candidates, Two blind Politicians, One Race. Anytown USA follows a tightly run race in the small town of Bogota, New Jersey and resonates as an all-too-familiar look at partisan politics in our increasingly polarized nation.

Finding the Funk

January 2014 •English

Finding the Funk is a road trip in search of the past, present and future of Funk music. Starting with Funk's roots in Jazz and the James Brown bands of the '60s we travel to the Bay Area to celebrate Sly & the Family Stone, then to Dayton the birthplace of so many of Funk's originators, then onto Detroit where from the ashes of Motown, P-Funk's Mothership arose, and then to LA where a new crop of musicians are creating their own Funk history. On our journey into Funk, we talk to legends Sly Stone, Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Nona Hendryx, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, and Steve Arrington and their descendants Mike D, D'Angelo, Sheila E, Shock G and Sade's Stuart Matthewman. Narrated by Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson of the Roots.

Teen Beach Movie

August 2013 •English

Life's a beach for surfers Brady and McKenzie – until a rogue wave magically transports them inside the classic '60s beach party flick, "Wet Side Story," where a full-blown rivalry between bikers and surfers threatens to erupt. There, amidst a sea of surfing, singing and dancing, Brady and Mack accidentally change the storyline, and the film’s dreamy hero and heroine fall for them instead of for each other!