The British Fascisti

Ben Building: Mussolini, Monuments and Modernism

June 2016 •English

Having previously investigated the architecture of Hitler and Stalin's regimes, Jonathan Meades turns his attention to another notorious 20th-century European dictator, Mussolini. His travels take him to Rome, Milan, Genoa, the new town of Sabaudia and the vast military memorials of Redipuglia and Monte Grappa. When it comes to the buildings of the fascist era, Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, with Mussolini caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome. The result was a variety of styles that still influence architecture today. Along the way, Meades ponders on the nature of fascism, the influence of the Futurists, and Mussolini's love of a fancy uniform.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

April 2005 •German

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

CORRECTIV Unveils: Right-wing Extremist Secret Plan Against Germany

January 2024 •German

On January 10th, the investigative editorial team of CORRECTIV published research into a secret meeting of right-wing extremists, which no one was supposed to know about and which led to demonstrations and protests all over Germany. AfD politicians, CDU politicians, members of the WerteUnion, neo-Nazis and financially strong entrepreneurs came together in November 2023 in a hotel near Potsdam near the Villa on Wannsee, where the “final solution to the Jewish question” was once decided. They met to debate to expel millions of people from Germany, including non-German citizens with a migration background, as well as German citizens with a migration background and German citizens without a migration background who do not want to adapt to the ideological worldviews of those present. On January 17, 2024, the research premiered in the Berliner Ensemble as a staged reading with a political satirical character.

Will It Happen Again?

May 1948 •English

An account of Adolf Hitler's rise and fall, his relationship with Eva Braun and their days of leisure at the Berghof, their Bavarian residence.

The Decline of the Century: Testament L.Z.

February 1994 •Croatian

An epic documentary of rise and fall of Ustasha regime in Croatia.

I sette contadini

June 1958 •Italian

The Spanish Civil War

January 1983 •English

Documentary series which uses film and eyewitness accounts from both sides of the conflict that divided Spain in the years leading up to World War Two, also placing it in its international context.

Criminal Animals

January 1994 •English

In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.

Showdown in Seattle: Five Days That Shook the WTO

December 1999 •English

1999 documentary film, first broadcast in daily half-hour installments, about the November 1999 protests against the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington.

White Terror

August 2005 •German

A video about Neo-Nazis originating in Sweden provides the starting point of an investigation of extremists' networks in Europe, Russia, and North America. Their propaganda is a message of hatred, war, and segregation.

Margherita, The Woman Who Invented Mussolini

September 2014 •French

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.

Antifa: Rise of the Black Flags

October 2020 •English

The true history of the anti-government extremist terrorist group's century of violence. Focusing on the group which has caused nationwide rioting and violence, The film – which undermines the mainstream media’s depiction of the group as “just an idea” – has already been censored by YouTube and Vimeo.

Fascism in Colour

January 2006 •English

After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)

La mia bandiera - La resistenza al femminile

October 2011 •Italian

The Truth lies in Rostock

January 1993 •German

Fascism Inc.

April 2014 •Greek

Unknown short stories from the past, the present and the future of fascism and its relation to the economic interests of each era. We will travel from Mussolini’s Italy to Greece under the Nazi occupation, the civil war and the dictatorship; and from Hitler’s Germany to the modern European and Greek fascism.

L'occhio di vetro

June 2021 •English

April 26, 1945. Ferruccio Razzini, fifteen-year-old from Pisa, fights in defense of the Italian Social Republic without knowing that Mussolini is already dead and that Italy has just been liberated. In his diary he tells the story of his father, a fervent fascist, and that of his two sisters, one married to a fascist and the other to a communist partisan. After Hit the Road, grandmother, Duccio Chiarini, with a refined stylistic code able to keep the narrative in balance between comedy and tragedy, investigates another side of the history of his family starting from the pages written by his great uncle.

Words for an End of the World

November 2020 •Spanish

Spain, April 14, 1931. The Second Republic is born. From the beginning, the writer Miguel de Unamuno is considered one of the ethical pillars of the new regime. Five years later, on December 31, 1936, a few months after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Unamuno dies at his home in Salamanca, capital of the rebel side, led by General Francisco Franco, and main center of dissemination of its propaganda apparatus.

London's Trafalgar Square

January 1890 •

Moving picture of London's Trafalgar Square traffic, filmed with a kinesigraph.

Dicktatorship

June 2019 •Italian

A documentary in which Luca Ragazzi and Gustav Hofer research the origins of sexism in the west and in Italy, the land of Berlusconi, Mussolini and Casanova, a nation with 887 words to say "penis".