War

Synopsis from IMDb: An absorbing and chilling documentary about the National Socialist aesthetic, and how attempts to create the Aryan Ideal caused the extermination of millions. Aspects covered include: Hitler’s epiphany while viewing Wagner’s opera ‘Rienzi’, the rise of the homo-erotic Grecian/Nordic ideal, the parallels drawn between the ‘degenerate’ art of the cubists and dadaists and the mentally ill/physically deformed, the Nazi obsession with purity and cleanliness, and, finally, the descent of the Jewish people to the level of a virus/vermin.
(by IMDb)Read More »

“Shetlandsgjengen”, which translates as “the Shetland-gang”, relates the true story of the illegal traffic across the North Sea from German occupied Norway to Shetland during World War II. A small group of Norwegian sailors loosely connected to the British navy take refugees from Norway to Shetland in small fishing-boats, equipped only with low-caliber weapons to protect themselves from German airplanes and patrol-boats. The film is closely based on real events, and many of the members of the gang, including the leader, called “Shetlands-Larsen” play themselves.Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This secret Nazi film – unforgettable documentary of a vanquished world – was photographed just before the Ghetto’s total destruction and either never completed or not intended for public release. For once, the Nazis – albeit unintentionally – revealed the truth about an event, though it was a truth distorted by their presence; the only Jews who did not know that they were being photographed were the dead; the others, depending on degree of desperation, indifference, or nearness of death, attempted to smile or otherwise co-operate with the photographer/director (representative of unlimited power over life or death), an obscene spectacle difficult to bear. Read More »

Young Heini Volker has a problem. His unemployed father demands he joins Berlin’s young communists. But his heart belongs to the Hitler Youth. As violence escalates between these camps, Heini’s quandary deepens. How he finds his way to National Socialism is the story of Hitlerjunge Quex. Produced in 1933, just after Hitler’s ascension to power, this movie draws from the real-life story of Herbert Norkus, a Hitler Youth killed by communists in 1932. With its vivid recreations of Depression-era misery, it offers a fascinating portrait of Berlin’s working-class life viewed through the transformative lens of Nazi ideology. An immediate box office success, the film became a Nazi propaganda staple, viewed by 20 million by 1945.Read More »

Two brothers compete for the love of a woman while the impending war threatens to separate them from both sides of the border. Based on the novel “La Débâcle” by Émile Zola.Read More »

Quote:
The film is made according to a real event. At the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, the Bulgarian occupiers intensify the oppression and torture of the civilians in order to prevent the spreading of the Revolution for the liberation of Bitola’s environs. After the treachery of the peasant Dime Paftar, who informed the occupiers of the presence of partisans in the village of Lavci, among whom is the legendary partisan Todor Angelov – the Teacher, for whom a warrant has been issued, the Bulgarian chief of the police staff and the major of the Bulgarian soldiers in Bitola organize a joint action to attack the village. Read More »

Quote:
Les Camisards brings events to the screen from the period in French history in which King Louis XIV ordered all Protestants to convert to Catholicism. The film begins just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1598-1685), a proclamation that had granted official toleration to Protestants. Rather than being a sweeping epic, this film examines the fight of a small group of Protestants for survival in the mountainous Cevennes region. Some of the story is told using excerpts from the diary kept by an actual participant in the conflict.Read More »

During the Korean War, a newly commissioned lieutenant find that they are trapped when the enemy surrounds their position. He uses ancient tactics he remembers from his history books to try…Read More »

The story of the investigation to unravel the mysterious death of a beautiful young woman in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. She is not Krystyna Holzer, as stated in her kennkarte (German-issued identity document), but a Jewess kept hidden by a Pole – a polonized Saxon – attorney Karol Karlzer. Before the outbreak of war, the woman was his student as well as the object of his unrequited love. The case is assigned to Detective Chief Inspector Rafal Król, an officer of the so- -called Blue Police under the control of the German occupiers, but also a soldier of the Polish underground, sworn to execute his orders. It is a suspenseful story set in the faithfully-recreated reality of occupied Warsaw and Zakopane.Read More »