Aufrecht gehen. Rudi Dutschke - Spuren

Babylon

July 2012 •Arabic

After the insurrection erupted in Libya in the spring of 2012, more than a million people flocked to neighboring Tunisia in search of a safe haven from the escalating violence. When a massive refugee camp was hastily constructed near the Ras Jdir border checkpoint in Tunisia, a trio of filmmakers carried their cameras in and began filming with no agenda. This on-the-fly chronicle of the camp's installation, operation, and dismantling captures a postmodern Babel complete with a multinational population of displaced folk, a regime of humanitarian aid workers, and international media that broadcasts its “image” to the world. Visually stunning and refreshingly undogmatic, Babylon reveals a rarely seen aspect of the Arab Spring.

Le Clan Chirac

February 2013 •French

Underground

May 1976 •English

Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, founded as a militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests of the time. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen. (Wikipedia)

All the President's Men Revisited

April 2013 •English

The Watergate case was the original game changer of America politics. How has Watergate changed the Presidency? What effect has the scandal had on our political leaders? And has hope and optimism forever been replaced in our national dialogue by doubt and cynicism? In 1973, Watergate's most pivotal year, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doggedly investigated the scandal exposing the long, twisted trail of cover-ups and lies.

Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther

August 1970 •English

The portrait of Eldridge Cleaver, the "Minister of Information" for the Black Panthers movement, in exile in Algiers.

My Socialist Home

September 2021 •Romanian

"My Socialist Home" is a documentary film exploring the significance of gender in the constitution of domestic space in the socialist and postsocialist state.

A Thousand Words

January 2003 •English

A Thousand Words explores a daughter's relationship with her stroke-stricken father through still pictures and 8mm footage he shot while serving in Vietnam.

Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

September 1971 •Japanese

On their way back from the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, filmmakers Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao visited Lebanon to meet Japan's Red Army faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to shoot a newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance. Conceived as a ‘declaration of world war’ that implicates us all, the directors capture the everyday banality of military training and preparation exercises for imminent battle.

14 Women

July 2007 •English

Documentary that explores the lives of 14 female U.S. senators and the uniquely feminine challenges they face, including the sometimes difficult balance between their roles as public servants and wives and mothers.

François Mitterrand, à bout portant : 1993-1996

May 2011 •French

"What could be more unsettling than a man close to death whose profound arrogance drives him relentlessly to hang onto both his power and his writing, to the bitter end?" In the twilight of his second seven-year term, François Mitterrand was alone. Ravaged by illness and abandoned by a large majority of the Socialist Party, who would not forgive him for the disastrous outcome of the March 1993 elections, the Head of State was preparing to tackle a second round of cohabitation with the right wing. However a series of unexpected tragedies and revelations would arise, casting a shadow over the end of his reign…

L’enfer de Matignon

October 2008 •French

In a series of long interviews, 12 prime ministers talk about their experience in the upper echelons of power. The function of prime minister, torn between the president and the parliament, appointed without necessarily being elected but responsible for everything, is at the center of debate. With the exception of Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988), deliberately left out because of his image as French President, those who governed France for the past 35 years agreed to discuss the exercise of power, as seen through archive footage, but also how they experienced it personally. Filmed in the same studio and sitting in the same chair, 12 French prime ministers talk freely about their time in office, from their appointment until their resignation.

Ministre ou rien

June 2014 •French

This is the unlikely story of 21 ministers and prime ministers who have crossed or are crossing the french Fifth Republic today. Twenty-one politicians who, from one day to the next, find themselves at the head of a ministry by the grace of a President of the Republic and his Prime Minister. The formation of the government, conflicts of attribution, reshuffles, rumours of appointments, evictions, casting errors: it is all the capricious backstage of the games of power examined here under the angle of confidence and which sheds light on the prestigious but unknown function of minister. An original and instructive political saga on the reality of those who hold or have held this prestigious position.

Five Steps to Tyranny

February 2001 •English

A look by Sheena McDonald at how ordinary people come to do horrible things. This is a politics lesson based on history and psychology.

The Martyred Presidents

October 1901 •English

This film is difficult to classify. It opens on a scene showing a mourner with bowed head sitting in front of what appears to be a tombstone. Shortly afterwards, the face of Abraham Lincoln and then of two other presidents, Garfield and McKinley, can be seen on the monument and then they disappear. There is a figure huddled at the foot of a statue of Justice, as if asking forgiveness.

Pierre Péan - Edwy Plenel : Les Chevaliers du journalisme français

April 2015 •French

The duel between Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel revisits some of the great moments of French political life and tells the story of more than 30 years of journalism in France. From distrust to attack, from revenge to caricature, the two icons of French journalism, Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel, have always been at war. Everything opposes them: their working methods, their vision of the profession and even their way of being. Pierre Péan has always worked alone, in secret, while Edwy Plenel was looking for his place in the collective, heading for the upper echelons of the media... In the 1980s, both men became stars of journalism. In the 1990s, with his best-selling investigations, Péan invented his own independent business model, while Plenel became editor of Le Monde. Their exceptional careers have changed the way news is reported in France

8 Presidentes 1 Juramento: A História de um Tempo Presente

November 2021 •Portuguese

The movie is a collage and comentary of varied third party footage on news relating to each and every one of the eight Presidents of Brazil who took office since the end of the military government, from José Sarney to Jair Bolsonaro.

Strange Fruit

May 2002 •English

In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billy holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic. Written by Excerpted from Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Update

A Sense of Loss

January 1973 •English

Shot over six weeks in December 1971, and January 1972, the film consisted of interviews with Protestants, Catholics, politicians, and some soldiers, combined with TV news clips of bombings and violence. The deaths of four individuals formed the central focus of the film, which Ophüls described as ‘an old, middle-aged, humanistic, social-democratic attempt to give people an idea that life after all is not that cheap’. The BBC refused to transmit the completed film on the grounds that it was ‘too pro-Irish’ (Sunday Times, 5 Nov. 1972). (via http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/docs/freespeech.htm)

Purgatorio: A Journey Into the Heart of the Border

March 2013 •Spanish

A deeply human portrait of the chaotic reality of the US - Mexico border. Full of stunnig images and crafted like a classic city-symphony where the sum of the pieces add up to a larger whole, Purgatorio, a Journey Into the Heart of the Border brings together a universe of small stories to create a compelling and visceral cinematic experience that takes audiences into the very soul of life on the border.

Goldman Sachs: The Bank That Runs the World

April 2012 •French

This documentary is a case study of the multinational tentacles of the world's biggest bank, how it started and what its power means to everyone.