While the story of the Ako Clan's vendetta has been told countless times, never before has there been an array of major motion picture stars to bring new life to this timeless tale. Starting with the corrupt practices of Lord Kira and Yanagi-sawa, the Shogun's Secretary, which in essence led to the incident of Lord Asano's attacking Kira in the Pine Corridor of the Shogun's Palace, this is the definitive version. Asano Takumi no kami was a young lord with high scruples, who refused to join in the general corruption and bribery which ran rampant in the capital at that time. By not giving bribes, he angered Kira Kozuke no suke the elder lord in charge of protocol at the Palace. Refusing to teach the younger man, and giving him false instructions was only the beginning. Insults followed, and a man of honor had no choice but to draw his sword in anger. Forty seven masterless samurai are willing to give their lives to avenge their lord.
Robert Lachmann was a German-Jewish ethnomusicologist. In the 1930s, his radio show "Oriental Music" explored the musical traditions of Palestine and included regular live performances by musicians from different ethnic and religious groups. Inspired by Lachmann’s musicological studies, Palestinian artist Jumana Manna travels through Israel and the Palestinian territories of today with recordings from the programme. What do these songs sound like now when performed by Moroccan, Kurdish, or Yemenite Jews, by Samaritans, members of the urban and rural Palestinian communities, Bedouins and Coptic Christians?
The film is picturing the faith of the old Serbian warrior Milisav Janjic, who fought against the German occupation in the Second World War as a member of the "Ravnogorski pokret". The storyline narrates his memories of the past and the war events in the spring of 1941 interwoven with the contemporary moments, the author features the attack of fascist Germany, the April war and the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the misfortune placed upon the Serbian people, loss of freedom, birth of the freedom movement in Serbia and one Serbian soldier, who after 70 years of expatriation in America returns to his homeland.
An interracial couple faces social tensions in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The film follows the perspective of Harpreet, a young Sikh-American man, as he cautiously navigates a sudden climate of fear and dangerous assumptions.
Following the Battle of Jena in 1806 as the French armies commanded by Napoleon overrun Prussia, a small detachment of Prussian troops take up position in a windmill and resolve fight to the last man to hold them off for as long as possible. Meanwhile, the windmill owner's daughter chooses to stay and fight alongside them.
The simple actions of a young boy on the beach provide visual metaphors for the normally unseen world. The camera adds a profound dimension to what the boy has seen, giving us a deeper understanding of visual awareness.
The extraordinary story of the most disturbing witch trial in British history and the key role played in it by one nine-year-old girl. Jennet Device, a beggar-girl from Pendle in Lancashire, was the star witness in the trial in 1612 of her own mother, her brother, her sister and many of her neighbours and, thanks to her chilling testimony, they were all hanged.
Finally, 33 years later, the whole truth behind the attempted coup d'état that shook Spain on the afternoon of February 23, 1981, is revealed by those who lived through those dreadful hours; a deep look behind the heavy curtain which hides the real mastermind, waiting to be unmasked.
How was Adolf Hitler able to count on the German public even in the face of unspeakable suffering and impending doom? Evocative and previously unseen private archive footage, much of it in colour, shows life in Nazi Germany from 1933 onwards till the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. This documentary is a revealing portrait of the German people, how they lived and perceived the world, under Hitler.
In the motley final-year class 13e at Kepler School in Neukölln, children who have moved to the western part of the city legally as well as border crossers who live in East Berlin but commute to the West every day come together for lessons every day. After the school-leavers had completed their written exams in July 1961, they faced their oral exams after the summer vacation in September. But when the Berlin Wall was built in August, Berlin was divided and torn apart from one day to the next - including class 13e. The students from the eastern part of the city quickly have to make a difficult decision: should they attempt to cross the border or throw their dreams of the future to the wind?
As befits the telling of the story of perhaps the most universally beloved hero of modern-day Chinese history Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925), this lavishly produced biographical film uses techniques culled from Chinese Opera to dramatize the great man's political history. Concentrating on the period following his rise to political prominence in 1894 until his death in 1925, the movie is couched in terms of heroes who look heroic and villains who look villainous. Huge numbers of extras and vast battle scenes dot this production, and well-known Hong Kong and Taiwan-based movie stars appear in many cameos.
Episodic story of the resistance to the German invasion of Ukraine in 1918 during World War 1, and made as an example of the guerrilla warfare and fierce spirit in which Ukrainian peasants were again resisting Teuton onslaughts in 1939. Highlights a small band of guerrillas and their battles using scythes, shotguns and, often, just clubs against the Kaiser's army in the Ukrainian forests.
Eternamente Pagu is a biographical film about Patrícia Galvão, best known as Pagu, a Brazilian political, literary and artistic activist. An important figure of the Brazilian Modernism, Pagu was also a militant for the Brazilian Communist Party after she married writer Oswald de Andrade. She broke up with Andrade and, as a journalist was arrested by the Dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. After she left prison, she abandoned Communism in favor of Trotskyist Socialism, married Geraldo Ferraz, and started a career as theatre director.
Love & Sex under Nazi Occupation questions the burning mystery of intimate heterosexual and homosexual relations in times of war... and shows how being close to death reinforces the yearning for passion, for pleasure, for transgression, for desire as a last burst of freedom, as an ultimate call to life. Nearly two hundred thousands children are thought to be born of the union of French women with German soldiers. Women weren't the Germans' only conquests; indeed, occupied Paris swarms with all kinds of homosexuals—from Genet to Cocteau—who treated with the occupier. The fate of those women who were shaved at the end of the war for fraternizing with Germans is the punishment of a France that lied down and slept with the enemy.