Social & External
Narrator (voice over)
Set during the early part of his reign, Ivan faces betrayal from the aristocracy and even his closest friends as he seeks to unite the Russian people. Sergei Eisenstein's final film, this is the first part of a three-part biopic of Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, which was never completed due to the producer's dissatisfaction with Eisenstein's attempts to use forbidden experimental filming techniques and excessive cost overruns. The second part was completed but not released for a decade after Eisenstein's death and a change of heart in the USSR government toward his work; the third part was only in its earliest stage of filming when shooting was stopped altogether.
Afghan documentary maker Najiba Noori offers not only a loving and intimate portrait of her mother Hawa, but also shows in detail how the arduous improvement of the position of women is undone by geopolitical violence. The film follows the fortunes of Noori’s family, who belong to the Hazaras, an ethnic group that has suffered greatly from discrimination and persecution.
Bertolt Brecht asked whether there would be singing in the dark times. In the throes of war, the United Ukrainian Ballet Company defiantly insists there will be dancing, too. Far from the land they call home, young dancers take quiet comfort from art. For a while, their work feels like the old days, except there is a new troupe member: a soldier learning to dance with prosthetic legs.
Sudan, Southern Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains in Africa. Scenes from the forgotten war that the fighters of the Nuba people have held since 2011 against the government of President Omar al-Bashir and the Sudanese army, which crudely show the hard daily life of Hannan, a brave woman fighting for the survival of her family; Jordania, a promising student; Mosquito, a reckless journalist; and Al-Bagir, a rebel leader.
A visual journey into the life and legacy of one of Australia's most celebrated artists, Brett Whiteley.
In July 1942, during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup of Jewish families in Paris, 13 year old Tauba Birenbaum and her parents, who are Polish Jews, find refuge in a tiny room for the next 765 days. Living conditions are tough and they fear being discovered at any moment. But while her parents sink further into despair, Tauba’s fighting spirit shines through. She finds joy in every little thing, from a piano drawn on the floor, to the views of Paris through an open window. Despite extreme circumstances, she will keep hope until the liberation of Paris, and take back control of her life.
Taking the form of a travel diary of a television journalist, this documentary tells about the life and work of the people of Yakutia: pilots, artists, drivers, and reindeer herders.
A disturbing chapter in Russian history is explored in this documentary. In 1933, Joseph Stalin sent 6000 "unwanted" citizens of Moscow and Leningrad to a desolate Siberian island - with no food or clothes to speak of. Decades later this documentary returns to the island.
In 1375, China was in chaos between Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. Coryo (an ancient kingdom of Korea then) sent a delegation of many diplomats, soldiers and a silent slave to make peace with the new Chinese government. However, this delegation got charged as spies and sent in exile to a remote desert.
In the heart of Paris, an entire palace has disappeared. It was the very first residence of the kings of France. Long before Versailles, long before the Louvre, the Palais de la Cité stood on the most prestigious island in Paris, the historic cradle of France, facing Notre-Dame. So majestic in the Middle Ages, this palace has become a ghost of history. Over the centuries, this architectural masterpiece has almost completely disappeared. A trio of experts will resurrect it in 3D. Using science and unprecedented excavations, they will track down the pieces of the puzzle to reconstruct it at its peak in the 14th century, and bring back to life those who inhabited it. From the Romans to the Vikings, from Saint Louis to the cursed kings, all have left clues of this 'Versailles of the Middle Ages'.
In a time of war and disease, a young officer gallantly tries to help a young woman find her husband.
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
A Stalinist assassin tracks exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky to Mexico in 1940.
Experimental short film that explores the rise and decline of the Soviet Union, from the revolutionary spark of 1917 to the challenges and sacrifices endured during World War II, until its dissolution in 1991.
During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia many soldiers were convinced to kill fellow citizens including friends and relatives in the name of patriotism. The Kolaborator follows the story of Goran, 24, a promising young soccer player who is forced to become a soldier. Goran goes from being a talented athlete to an executioner virtually overnight. Following orders, Goran lines up civilians, shoots them and drags them into mass graves. Justifying his role as a protector of his people, Goran becomes increasingly detached from the task until his soccer coach and life-long friend, Asim, is led in front of him. As a familiar face stands defeated before him, Goran must reconsider his actions and choose between his own life and that of his dear friend.
The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrospective exhibit in 1969. There were heated discussions on whether it would be prudent to screen the film during the exhibit. Portabella took the following stance: "either both films are screened or they don't screen any" and, finally, both Miro l'Altre and Aidez l'Espagne were shown. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre.
In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing - to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.
Produced and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes trial of Hermann Göring and twenty other Nazi leaders, this film consists primarily of dead and surviving prisoners and of facilities used to kill and torture during the World War II.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.
American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999), one of the greatest in history, but also one of the most reserved, gave few interviews throughout his long career, and none of them were filmed. A first-person journey through his life and work, based on a recorded conversation with French film critic Michel Climent.
Celebrate the legacy of Stan Lee as the co-creator of such legendary characters as Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, The Avengers, and hundreds more.
Documentary on the Shackleton Antartic expedition. A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance', which was trapped in the ice floes and frigid open ocean of the Antarctic in 1914. Shackleton decided, with many of his crew injured and weak from exposure and starvation, to take a team of his fittest men and attempt to find help. Setting out in appalling conditions with hopelessly inadequate equipment, they endured all weather and terrain and finally reached safety. Persuading a local team of his confidence that the abandoned team would still be alive, he set out again to find them. After almost 2 years trapped on the ice, all members of the crew were finally rescued.
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
Dick Proenneke retired at age 50 in 1967 and decided to build his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness.
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
