After a stormy night on the sea, a group of Estonian fishermen end up in a small coastal Finnish town. As they await the Soviet authorities to take them back home, some of the fishermen contemplate leaving their former lives in a Soviet era Estonia behind.
Most people think that World War II started on September 1st, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, and then spread to Asia on September 7th 1941, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. However, World War II actually started ten years earlier, when Manchuria was invaded by a now-forgotten Japanese general: Kanji Ishiwara. This is the little known truth about the most famous war in history.
Americans are preoccupied with the news, but need an escape from many of the events reported in the news. These escapes in the past have included dime store novels. The most accessible of these escapes is what are known as the funny papers, the set of serialized comic strips that are included within many newspapers. They appeal to all socio-economic classes, and all ages. Some of the earliest known from the late 19th century include the Yellow Kid, Little Nemo, Happy Hooligan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt & Jeff, and Bringing Up Father. Many cartoonists are seen in action. Some originated their characters, while others have taken over following the passing of the originator. The joy of many comic strips are the absurd and the fantastical, which are limited only by the imagination of the cartoonist. Others are grounded in reality, which add to their poignancy within the public mindset.
Annita Malavasi was just 22 when the Germans occupied Italy, their former allies, in 1943. As a partisan in the Italian resistance named “Laila”, she moved throughout the Apennines with and between fighting units, delivering information, transporting weapons, and taking part in battles. She spent over a year in the Apennines, fighting against the German occupation. At the same time, she had to assert herself against the men of the mountain villages. By the end of the war, Laila had risen among the ranks to become one of the few female commanders in the Italian resistance. This film chronicles the story of a lifelong struggle for emancipation that began with the battle for Italy’s liberation from fascism. Laila and her two comrades, Gina “Sonia” Moncigoli and Pierina “Iva” Bonilauri talk about their time in the Resistenza and what it meant to them and many other women.
A 101-hour long reflection on the construction of Europe, its cultural identity and its foundations through the complete adaptation of the texts ‘Conversations with Goethe’ by J. P. Eckermann, ‘Hitler’s Table Talks’ and ‘Fassbinder über Fassbinder: Die ungekürzten Interviews’ (a compilation of interviews with the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, which is used as a counterpoint to the first two books). The texts are read, page by page, by non-professional actors.
The heart of the Dallas Arts District--Booker T Washington High School. A haven for creative budding artists, inspirational instructors, and unlikely criminal delinquents. Four theatre students are faced with the challenge of traversing the country in an attempt to save their recently-jailed friend amidst a hectic schedule of submitting a film to a nationally recognized film festival, attending a bogus talent-search audition, and "breaking up with all [their] girlfriends." Shot on-location on the road from Dallas, to the Grand Canyon, to Las Vegas, to Los Angeles, these four friends band together to face the challenges ahead of them. From deadly chases and police encounters to casino crashing and drug dealers, this semi-documentary tells an epic coming-of-age story that is sure to speak to your inner "artistic troublemaker." —Charles Wallace
Melvyn Bragg explores the dramatic story of William Tyndale and his mission to translate the Bible into English, which made him a threat to the authority of the church and state.
Henry Hills’s Emma’s Dilemma reinvents the portrait for the age of digital reproduction. In a set of tour-de-force probes into the images and essences of such downtown luminaries as Richard Foreman, Ken Jacobs, and Carolee Schneemann, Hills’s cinematic inventions literally turn the screen upside down and inside out. In this epic journey into the picaresque, we follow Emma Bee Bernstein, our intrepid protagonist, from her pre-teen innocence to her late teen-attitude, as she learns about the downtown art scene firsthand. In the process, Hills reimagines the art of video in a style that achieves the density, complexity, and visual richness of his greatest films.
Accounts on the emptiness left by a now closed and ruined mining industry, in which we met a series of participants and testimonies that address the social inequities, the laboral violence, the accidents at work and the daily life that evolved in this particular mining community of the northern inland of Portugal at a time in which extreme poverty was real.
The daring raid is undoubtedly one of the most famous in the history of the Second World War, the subject of a great British blockbuster and countless books. But what did the elite fliers of No 617 Squadron RAF, otherwise known as the Dambusters, do after Operation Chastise? This new documentary provides a wealth of insight into the spectacular missions undertaken by the squadron after the deployment of the famous bouncing bombs in 1943.
Documentary covering the current state of both the theoretical and practical development of the various scientific basic principles that served, as per Gene Roddenberry's dictum, as a believable basis at the time for The Original Series. Several real-world scientists are interviewed, not a few of them unabashedly admitting they went into their chosen field of profession because of Star Trek: The Original Series.
Looking at the marriage of Charles Dickens through the eyes of his wife Catherine, Sue Perkins exposes the lesser-known reality of the Dickens family Christmas.