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On 20 May 1968, the workers of the Citroën factory in Nanterre decided not to go back to work. The “cops” of the factory were chased away… Chronicle of a strike in a factory which hadn’t had one for 20 years, symbol of capitalism where the boss is the only master after God.Read More »
The fight for the freedom of Loyalist Spain during the 1936-39 civil war pitted an International Brigade of 35,000 civilian soldiers from more than 50 nations against the well-equipped insurgents of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Aid to Franco came via Italian fighter planes from Mussolini and from the Nazi Condor Legion of Junker bombers sent by Hitler, who wanted to try out his new weaponry in anticipation of the larger war to come. Spurred by their government s failure to aid Spanish democracy, 2,800 American volunteers fought with distinction in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade within the international volunteer army. Read More »
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“Fatma of the Forest”, documentary,reflects life, longings and a major “fear” in the subconscious of a 12-years old “woodcutter” girl living under very hard conditions in the forest of Toros Mountains at an altitude of approximately 2000 m. The documentary, aiming to symbolize a little-known but common practice of child labour, accomplishes a dramatic portrayal of laborers who work for Ministery of Forestry totally deprived of social security.Read More »
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Staged in Algiers, the first Pan-African Cultural Festival was a momentous event, bringing together musicians and dancers from throughout the continent with many first-worlders joining in the jams. It was a moment of great postcolonial jubilation as representatives of national liberation movements converged on an Algeria that had gained its independence just seven years earlier. This energetic doc includes such luminaries of the moment as Amilcar Cabral, a writer who led the struggle in Guinea-Bissau; Miriam Makeba, the great African singer who was then married to Stokely Carmichael; Houari Boumédienne, Algeria’s military dictator; Stanislas Adotevi, the Benin philosopher who penned Negritude and Negrologists; and Eldridge Cleaver, who was living in Algiers, overseeing the Black Panther contingent at the festival. Klein’s coverage captures the astounding cultural mix, but also the militant resolve that permeated the gathering, making agit-appropriate correlations to the United States and its own colonial misadventure, the Vietnam War.Read More »
In 1992, when the Olympics and the Expo at last presented Spain as an emerging new democracy, the de-industrialisation policies were met with riots in the southern town of Cartagena. The locals remember those days.Read More »
Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. According to a legend, she returned to Earth as a ghost and has roamed the streets of Moscow ever since. Following her trace, and filmed from a dog’s perspective, SPACE DOGS accompanies the adventures of her descendants: two street dogs living in today’s Moscow. Their story is one of intimate fellowship but also relentless brutality, and is interwoven with unseen archive material from the Soviet cosmic era. A magical tale of voyagers scouting for unknown spaces.Read More »
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A massive natural disaster nearly destroys a city in Italy, while corruption and political double-dealing may well finish the job in this documentary from filmmaker Sabina Guzzanti. In April 2009, the city of L’Aquila in Central Italy was hit by an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the MMS scale; over three hundred people lost their lives, nearly 1,500 were injured and approximately 65,000 lost their homes, while many of the city’s most historic buildings and artwork were turned to rubble in the disaster. Swift and decisive action was needed from the Italian government, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, hoping to win back the good will of the people following a number of embarrassing scandals, used the L’Aquila earthquake as an opportunity to burnish his reputation. Read More »
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The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is a brilliant exploration of memory and war guilt, a subject often ignored in modern Japan. In this controversial documentary, Kazuo Hara follows Kenzo Okuzaki in his real-life struggle against Emperor Hirohito. He proudly declares that he shot BBs at the Royal Palace, distributed pornographic images of the Emperor, and once killed a man for the sake of his strange crusade. As the film progresses, Okuzaki reveals a gruesome mystery: why were some Japanese officers killing their own soldiers during WWII? What happened to their bodies? Okuzaki begs, cajoles, and occasionally beats the story out of elderly veterans.Read More »
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Director Heinrich Breloer mixes drama with documentary in his marathon TV biopic of radical playwright and leftist icon Bertolt Brecht.
Interweaving glossy dramatic scenes with interview clips featuring former Brecht associates, some specially shot and others dredged from the archives, Breloer provides a wealth of material but never quite breathes life into his charismatic, contradictory subject. The blend of fictionalized and documentary elements is often deftly done, with interlaced scenes that rhyme and chime like music. Read More »