War

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Documentary filmmaker Emil DeAntonio’s In the Year of the Pig was financed by New York society matron Mrs. Orville Schell; her fund-raising dinners earned her an executive producer credit on the completed film. An extremely radicalized view of the still-raging war in Vietnam, Pig was so unabashedly provocative that it earned DeAntonio the tireless scrutiny of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (whose file on the filmmaker inspired yet another DeAntonio production of 1990, Mr. Hoover and I). The film’s highlight is an interview with the late general George S. Patton, adroitly re-edited to make it seem as though Patton (who died in 1945) is characterizing the boys in Nam as “a bloody good bunch of killers.” Bracketed between his Rush to Judgment (based on the highly suspect findings of JFK-conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison ) and his America is Hard to See (a chronicle of the Eugene McCarthy Presidential campaign), DeAntonio’s In the Year of the Pig is an amalgam of the best and worst elements of those two offerings. The film says what needs to be said, but it often ends up preaching only to the converted.Read More »

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A war drama showing the functioning of Hitler’s “racial purity” law, forbidding foreign workers from any contact with Germany. Foreigners on forced labor in Nazi Germany. Death, imprisonment or stigmatization awaited both sides for closer contacts with the Germans. A Pole, Władysław, and a widow and her daughter Linda, another Pole for an affair with a German girl, two American prisoners of war and a German woman who gave birth to a child to one of them, a German soldier who met his dream girl in a foreigner, Marice.Read More »

Belorussia, summer 1942. The war has moved on, far off to the east. The life of a small town where the German authorities of the region have set themselves up is getting back to “normal”. The Germans study Russian, flirt with the local girls, the women wash their clothes and feed them. They have to carry on somehow… But suddenly the teenage son of the film’s heroine decides to run away to the partisans and blows up a German train so that they could accept him. He gets caught and the Germans have to execute him in order “to teach others a lesson”. That’s the order and it can’t be disobeyed. The Germans know that this execution will bring an end to their peaceful lives. The local commandant understands this better than anyone as he is already involved in a close relationship with the boy’s mother. But he can’t ignore an order from his commanders …Read More »

In May 1978, the mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Belgian Congo) is under attack from a group of communist guerillas coming from nearby Angola. The Europeans who work for the Belgian mining company and the Blacks who live in the town are taken as hostages by the invaders, who start a blood bath, shooting Europeans as well as Africans. Many of the Europeans being French, the French decide to organize a counter-attack, and to send a Regiment of Paratroopers from the Foreign Legion. The movie follows the stories of Delbart, a former non-commissioned officer, who was about to go back to France with his African wife and his child, Damrémont, who was Delbart’s replacement, Bia, a Zairian doctor, and Annie, an American married to a Belgian engineer as well as Non com Legion officer Federico and the French Ambassador and the Military Attaché.Read More »

In June of 1942 Germans and their collaborators decide to get rid of partisans and their stronghold in the woods of Mount Kozara in Northern Bosnia. They encircle the mountain and begin the mop up operation. Out gunned and outnumbered the partisans must not only take care of themselves but try to protect thousands of refugees too.Read More »

Poland, during the World War. Lotna is a magnificent specimen of Arabian horse, the
pride of her owner, too old to actually ride her but to whom she remains faithful
nevertheless. The Polish cavalry army is also proud of their land, and loyal to rules, and
custom. The German army is leading an overwhelming speed attack with tanks, an
almost unheard of weapon, and bringing a way of life to an end. It’s the last battle
between Lotna (speed horse) and Blitzkriega (speed war).Read More »

A Bavarian mother loses three sons in World War I and goes to America to join the fourth.Read More »

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Pride of the Marines is a stirring, powerful, hard-hitting World War II drama. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say it’s a post-War drama, as the real meat of the picture concerns a wounded soldier’s return to civilian life. While Pride is undeniably patriotic, it also is not afraid to ask some serious, hard questions or to present war as less than a grand adventure. It really features only one battle sequence, which lasts some ten minutes; it’s an amazing, gripping sequence, but it doesn’t glorify battle as many similar films do. The men involved are fighting for their lives, and they react exactly as people really do react in such a situation. Similarly, the discussion about what life will be like when they return home dares to present the possibility that things will not be all roses, a rather bold suggestion for a 1945 film. Finally, the anguish, torment, and bitterness that the lead character experiences is striking and affecting. Read More »

Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp.Read More »