Animated Soviet Propaganda
★ 3 · 1997 · 514m · Documentary · Animation
A landmark four disc Box Set - Unearthed from Moscow's legendary Soyuzmultfilm Studios, the 41 films in ANIMATED SOVIET PROPAGANDA span sixty years of Soviet history (1924 - 1984), and have never been available before in the U.S.
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From Harlem with Love
2014
Tensions between the USSR and the United States were high in 1959, with the seemingly constant threat of nuclear war. Then some unlikely ambassadors stepped forward to clear all that away: the Harlem Globetrotters. From Harlem With Love is the story of how a group of barnstorming basketball players traveled to the heart of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and bridged a cultural gap many thought would stand forever.
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The Arrow of Time
2017
President Mikhail Gorbachev recounts the end of the Cold War and the reduction of nuclear arms.
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American Carnage
2017
See how alt-right icon Steve Bannon’s years as a documentary filmmaker catapulted him to Breitbart News and the Trump White House.
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1945
World War II propaganda trailer asking travellers to have patience and make concessions when travelling on trains. Film mostly consists of rostrum animation of still cartooned images with some very short pieces of true animation. (BFI)
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1999 · ★ 9
During World War II, the propaganda engine of the U.S. government made a pivotal decision with unforeseeable results: they tapped John Huston to shoot war documentaries with an expressly patriotic spin. Few could guess the degree to which Huston's documentaries would depict the sheer brutality and horror of modern warfare - particularly his Let There Be Light and The Battle of San Pietro. The films served (by default) as cinematic protests, even as they graced new and brilliant heights within the scope of American documentary. (Indeed, Light was banned by the government for 35 years). Midge Mackenzie's 1998 documentary John Huston: War Stories explores this little known facet of Huston's career, intercutting clips from the various documentaries with a Huston interview shot just prior to his death.
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The Four Elements
1966 · ★ 5.2
An educational film about power sources that’s rendered as a lyrical meditation on heat and vapor, The Four Elements is a poetic and avant-garde documentary Curtis Harrington made for the United States Information Agency.
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The Girls
2014
Four lucid grandmothers tell their story forgotten by history: the militancy and resistance of the young women of the leftist youth against the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.
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Panodrama
2019 · ★ 9.5
Tommy Robinson goes on the offensive by documenting how his own “hit piece” on his character was being constructed by the taxpayer-funded BBC for their popular investigative news special “Panorama.” In the film he manages to capture footage of the blackmailing of his former employees to invent stories, along with an organization—known as “Hope not Hate”—on set with the BBC, intimidating ex-employees of Robinson during interviews. The host of “Panorama” at the time of filming is caught on camera casually using racist and homophobic slurs during a £220 champagne lunch with the same ex-employee they had planned to coach for a fake interview in which the BBC would possibly edit in which to make it appear as, “a gender, a sexual thing against Tommy Robinson,” according to the host. Within 24 hours of releasing the film, social media giant Facebook made a public statement of their own and removed Tommy Robinson’s accounts permanently.
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Tunnel to Freedom
2021 · ★ 7.2
13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.
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The Conquest of the Air
★ 10
A sweeping, cinematic pseudo-documentary history of human flight, starting with the failed attempt of Icarus, and ending with the aviation triumphs of the fascist regime.
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