Experiment Stuka

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice

August 2016 •English

In 1936, 18 African American athletes dubbed the "black auxiliary" by Hitler defied Nazi Aryan Supremacy and Jim Crow Racism to win hearts and medals at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. The world remembers Jesse Owens. But, Olympic Pride American Prejudice shows how all 18 are a seminal precursor to the modern Civil Rights Movement.

The Tin Drum

May 1979 •German

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

April 1938 •German

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

Olympia: Part Two – Festival of Beauty

June 1938 •German

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.

The Last Emperor

October 1987 •English

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

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.

Dark Fellowships: The Vril

September 2008 •English

Dark Fellowships attempts to uncover the truth about a bizarre occult group, whose members allegedly included many leaders of the Nazi Party, even Hitler himself.

Ordered to Love

January 1961 •German

Das Dorf der Freundschaft

August 2001 •German

A German Documentary about the “village of friendship” that was created by American Veteran George Mizo to help the Vietnamese kids suffering from the Vietnam War.

Night and Fog

April 1959 •French

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Judgment at Nuremberg

December 1961 •English

In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.

Enemy at the Gates

February 2001 •English

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.

Memoirs of a Geisha

December 2005 •English

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Death Mills

July 1945 •English

Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts of the economic aspects of the camps' operation, the interrogation of captured camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity in the Nazi crimes - one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war records.

Cardelinas

February 2020 •Spanish

August 1936. After being separated from her family by the Falangists, Concha Monrás spends her last days in a prison cell. With her young cellmate Adela, she reconstructs her relationship with Ramón Acín and remembers his life as an artist, a pedagogue and a man.

Le Christ dans la cité

January 1962 •French

Processions during a holy week in Valladolid.

Charles Manson, The Church of Satan, The Universal Order & The Process Church of Final Judgment

June 2012 •English

Out of the spiritual chaos of the 1960s, more strange cults and unorthodox messiahs have emerged than ever. Charles Manson is seen as the annoying result of libertarianism of the 1960s - the Cain who murdered the Abel from The Love Generation. Or in the words of one commentator; "the Elvis of alienation."

Me and Orson Welles

September 2008 •English

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

Amen.

February 2002 •French

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is horrified by what he sees in the death camps. he is then shocked to learn that the process he used to purify water for his troops by using Zyklon-B, is now used to kill people in gas chambers.

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary

February 2002 •German

Documentarians Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer turn their camera on 81-year-old Traudl Junge, who served as Adolf Hitler's secretary from 1942 to 1945, and allow her to speak about her experiences. Junge sheds light on life in the Third Reich and the days leading up to Hitler's death in the famed bunker, where Junge recorded Hitler's last will and testament. Her gripping account is nothing short of mesmerizing.