Social & External
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
Surviving against all odds. In 1940, Benjamin Orenstein, just a teenager, was sent to his first concentration camp in Poland. It was the beginning of a journey that would mark him for life. After years of silence, he now bears witness to one of the darkest chapters in history.
This documentary shows the enormous media impact that the abduction story has had over the years. It analyzes the media's handling of the story and shows how victims of abduction can find their way back to a normal life after their liberation...
Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.
The Holocaust began with the indiscriminate mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen in the bloodlands of Eastern Europe and was perfected in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. “Bullets And Blueberries” explores the motives, methods and madness of the perpetrators, using never-before-seen images captured by the killers themselves — images that fully capture the banality of evil.
The film follows Michael Moskowitz’s work with a New York-based therapist named Kirkland Vaughns, one of the few African-American Freudian therapists in the United States, while the director reveals her own family’s devastating trauma.
Journalist Renée Nyberg meets showjumper Ulrika Bidegård, who in 1993 was kidnapped and kept locked up for five days while the police launched an extensive search operation. Now she and her family are talking about the terrible days and life afterwards.
The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, a girl who was kidnapped outside a school bus stop and found alive eighteen years later.
This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.
A group of teenagers from Flint, Michigan filmed themselves kidnapping and terrorizing a new acquaintance, before taking her out to a woods and dumping her in a shallow grave. They then taunted their terrified and blindfolded victim asking if she had any last requests before they cut her throat. But was the kidnap real or just a game? Three days later the tape was in the hands of the police and the 5 teenager friends were in custody facing life imprisonment. This program talks to the people at the heart of this story - including two of the defendants - in an attempt to understand what really happened in the woods around Flint last year. It also screens the video of the 'abduction'. What is revealed is an extraordinary and disturbing record of a night when something went terribly, terribly wrong.
A damning documentary exposing the reactionary ideology and practices of Zionism and the State of Israel.
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
"This 20 minute documentary sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. Triggered by a Hasidic man running a red light and accidentally hitting and killing a young black child, the riot led to attacks on Jews. Stores and police cars were burned and a Hasidic man was killed. David Dinkins, New York’s mayor at the time, allowed the riot to go on for three full days, while the media downplayed the antisemitism at the heart of the violence. The film’s interviews include Rev. Al Sharpton and then-Deputy Police Chief Ray Kelly as well as WSJ Opinion writer Elliot Kaufman. The current wave of antisemitism makes these events newly relevant and worthy of reconsideration" (The Wall Street Journal).
Based on testimony by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs are arrested by the FBI. The couple is accused of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the USSR. Though the Rosenbergs maintain their innocence from the start, the media and public opinion seem to have condemned them from day one. The trial does nothing to change this and ends in a death sentence. On Friday June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair. Julius first, then Ethel. 30 years later, the truth finally comes out. Declassified FBI archives reveal that Ethel was not guilty of being a spy; she was merely married to one. Julius did indeed commit espionage for the Soviet Union, though primarily as a recruiter, nothing at all like the fictional James Bond. This documentary, made entirely of archival footage and animated illustrations, offers a tale of espionage as well as a complex family tragedy.
A documentary recounting the kidnappings of British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec Vice-Premier & Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte by the FLQ on October 5, 1970 in Quebec.
Ghostly images of Colombia’s jungle landscapes are set to radio transmissions sent by family members to their kidnapped loved ones—heartrending messages of grief, support, and, against all odds, hope.
“Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred,” directed by Canadian-Israeli filmmaker Raphael Shore, interweaves historical analysis with contemporary events through the voices of clerics, historians, sociologists, and cultural commentators, including the late British Chief Rabbi Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, author Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel’s antisemitism envoy Michal Cotler-Wunsh, and journalists Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray. It argues that antisemitism stems not from a perception of Jewish inferiority, but rather from resentment of Jewish excellence and moral leadership.
In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.
Documentary about the twin sister Jutta and Gisela Schmidt. In the late sixties the two women rebelled against middle class society as if they gave vent to a new kind of art. They became active in the underground communist party KPD and showed a heart-felt interest in the colour red, the aesthetics of the revolution. Soon, though, the twins quit their experiments in Germany. They left their husbands and went to Rome, where they met the fabulously wealthy Paul Getty III, and soon things got really out of hand.
Penetrating the insular world of New York's Hasidic community, focusing on three individuals driven to break away despite threats of retaliation.
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
The film is based on interviews with 2,000 women from 50 countries, and covers the status of women all over the world. The topics covered include forced marriages, sexual assault, female genital mutilation, acid attacks, motherhood, sexuality, menstruation, education and the professional success of women.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
In the early-morning hours of July 23, 2007, in Cheshire, Conn., ex-convicts Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the family home of William Petit, his wife, Jennifer, and their daughters, Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17. Dr. Petit was beaten and tied to a pole in the basement. The three women were bound in their bedrooms while the men ransacked the house. The brutal ordeal continued throughout the morning, ending with rape, arson and a horrific triple homicide.
Impersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.
Angelic and demonic serpentine dance from dawn of cinema. Hand-colored frame by frame. Lumière no. 765 or 765.1 (colorized, different dancer?).
A documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It presents the building, with its processes of cataloguing and preserving all sorts of printed material, as both a monument of cultural memory and as a monstrous, alien being.
A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen narrates his life and horrific crimes via a series of chilling audiotapes recorded from his jail cell.
A family falls prey to the manipulative charms of a neighbor, who abducts their adolescent daughter. Twice.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
After the high-profile killing of Damilola Taylor, Cornelius' family move out of London. But when they discover their new town is run by racists, Cornelius takes a drastic step to survive.
A journey inside the world of real life caped crusaders. From all over America, these self-proclaimed crime fighters, don masks, homemade costumes and elaborate utility belts in an attempt to bring justice to evildoers everywhere.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
Dubbed “The Cannibal Cop,” former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle was charged with conspiring to kidnap and eat women but argued it was all a fantasy. His story made headlines both for its disturbing details and its potential to kick off a trend of thought-policing across the nation. Featuring intimate interviews with Valle and insights from experts, Thought Crimes explores if someone can be found guilty for their most dangerous thoughts.
A father fights for decades to bring his daughter's killer to justice in France and Germany before taking extreme measures.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
