The Birth of New China

Short Working Day

January 1981 •Polish

A dramatisation of the workers' protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party. [Produced in 1981, but not commercially released until 1996.]

Arabikkatha

July 2007 •Malayalam

Against his wishes, 'Cuba' Mukundan goes to Dubai to make good his father's alleged misappropriation of funds from the local cooperative bank. It is there that he learns the true meaning of the term 'working class' and realizes the irrelevance of the Communist movement back home.

Man of Marble

February 1977 •Polish

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.

The Manchurian Candidate

October 1962 •English

Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.

Indochine

April 1992 •French

Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.

Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison

February 1977 •Italian

Antonio Gramsci, sentenced to twenty years in prison by the fascist tribunals, relives the stages of his political career and private life.

The Front

September 1976 •English

A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

The Red Detachment of Women

September 1971 •Chinese

A filmed 1970 performance of the China Central Ballet Troupe. Adapted from the film of the same title, The Red Detachment of Women was first staged in Beijing in 1964 and was one of the Eight Model Operas which dominated the national stage during the Cultural Revolution.

Prêtres interdits

November 1973 •French

1900

August 1976 •Italian

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

Vixen!

October 1968 •English

Vixen lives in a Canadian mountain resort with her naive pilot husband. While he's away flying in tourists, she gets it on with practically everybody including a husband and his wife, and even her biker brother. She is openly racist, and she makes it clear that she won't do the wild thing with her brother's biker friend, who is black.

La Chinoise

August 1967 •French

Paris, 1967. Disillusioned by their suburban lifestyles, a group of middle-class students, led by Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), form a small Maoist cell and plan to change the world by any means necessary. After studying the growth of communism in China, the students decide they must use terrorism and violence to ignite their own revolution. Director Jean-Luc Godard, whose advocacy of Maoism bordered on intoxication, infuriated many traditionalist critics with this swiftly paced satire.

The Motorcycle Diaries

February 2004 •Spanish

Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

September 2007 •English

The film follows Mr. Shi, a retired widower from Beijing. When his only daughter, Yilan, who lives in Spokane, Washington and works as a librarian, gets divorced, he decides to visit her to help her heal. However, Yilan is not interested. She tries keeping an emotional distance but when this finally fails she begins physically avoiding her father. He confronts her about an affair with a married Russian man and she, in turn, lets loose about all the gossip she'd heard as a young girl about his alleged affair with a female colleague back in China.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

January 1975 •German

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

September 2005 •English

The story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.

Untitled Gummadi Narsaiah Biopic

September 2024 •Telugu

A biography of Indian politician Gummadi Narsaiah, who was a leading member of the Communist Party of India New Democracy.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

August 2007 •Romanian

Two college roommates have 24 hours to make the ultimate choice as they finalize arrangements for a black market abortion.

Moscow 1996, Vote or Lose!

November 2021 •French

Moscow, January 1996. Boris Yeltsin gets ready to run for a second mandate of the presidency of the young Russian Federation. Polls are in the single digits. A painful economic transition, war in Chechnya, and the rise of criminal groups have left the majority of Russians dissatisfied with Yeltsin… and willing to vote for the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. Yet six months later, Yeltsin won the election with nearly 54% of the vote. How did that happen?

Living the Utopia

November 1997 •Spanish

A retrospective look at the anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-communist experience in Spain from 1930 until the end of the Civil War in 1939.