Theory of Change(2023)

With Sea Views(es)

After consolidating itself as a tourist destination in the mid-1960s, this small coastal village has become the dormitory town for the workers of a Nuclear Power Plant. With the liberal promise of prosperity and socioeconomic wellfare, many workers left their homes to move to the small city and started working at the new Nuclear Power Plant. The collective unrest and the silence, cut off by the great gusts of wind, articulate the landscape of the village that is now under the aid of the Nuclear Power Plant.

Wellstone!(en)

Paul Wellstone was the charismatic Minnesota progressive who used grassroots organizing to get elected and give ordinary people a stake in government. His 3rd election campaign was cut short when his small plane crashed into the north woods of Minnesota just 11 days before the 2002 election. Wellstone! explores the origin of his politics, his controversial road to the United States Senate, his deep bond with his wife and 'co-senator' Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.

Praying for Armageddon(en)

While much of the world struggles to keep the planet going, a frighteningly large group of American fundamentalist Christians are working to promote the apocalypse. The evangelical movement is convinced that they will be saved when Jesus appears in the state of Israel on horseback and, with a sword raised to heaven, kills the infidels so that the blood reaches the horses’ bridles. Natural fires, corona, wars and crises are evidence that the time is nigh. But for the prophecies to be realized, the state of Israel has to grow stronger, so they provide huge financial support and are so far inside the White House that they help influence US foreign policy.

Vive la crise !(fr)

Agnus Gay(pt)

Footage from the first ever São Paulo LGBTQ Pride Parade, which took place on the 28th of June 1997 on Avenida Paulista. The annual event would go on to become the largest pride parade in the world.

The Liberal War(en)

The Vietnam War during the JFK years and beyond. Made in 1972 in the filmmaker's apartment, without documentary footage of the war, metaphors are created through the animation of images and objects, and through guerrilla skits. By rejecting the authority of traditional documentary footage, the anarchist spirit of individual responsibility is established. This is history from one person's point of view, rather than a definitive proclamation.

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP(en)

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP is an inspiring documentary about the birth and life of the AIDS activist movement from the perspective of the people in the trenches fighting the epidemic. Utilizing oral histories of members of ACT UP, as well as rare archival footage, the film depicts the efforts of ACT UP as it battles corporate greed, social indifference, and government negligence.

Strike(ru)

Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.

Endless Summer Syndrome(fr)

When the mother of two adoptees is tipped off about the possible affair her husband may be having with one of their children, her sense of duty takes a macabre turn.

Chance, History, Art...(en)

Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.

Petar Dobrovic(sh)

Documentary about painter Petar Dobrovic.

My Homeland(en)

Perhaps this is Robert Vas' most personal film; a portrait of his country - Hungary - as seen through the eyes of an exile. Robert Vas escaped from his homeland after the brutal crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising by the Russians and he was never able to return. He portrays his country through the writings of Hungary's national poets and illustrates the film with images of the Revolution and of the society it would become in the years immediately following 1956. The film was transmitted on the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the uprising.

Mysterion(fi)

A documentary about a convent of Russian Orthodox nuns in Estonia who have dedicated their lives to serving God.

Coalesce: A City Composed(en)

A visual artist and a musician create a series of works in which paintings and musical scores form cohesive pieces intended to be experienced together. The works interpret the excitement and monotony of life in the urban desert sprawl from the diverse perspectives of the native and the newcomer.

The Final Year(en)

Featuring unprecedented access inside the White House and State Department, The Final Year offers an uncompromising view of the inner workings of the Obama Administration as they prepare to leave power after eight years.

Duerers Heritage(de)

Dammbeck, himself an alumnus of the Leipzig Academy for Graphic and Book Design, presents the origins of the new German realism developed by the so-called Leipzig School, which took place in the context of socialist-realist dogma in the GDR before the Wall was built in 1961. After the Wall came down in 1989, what happened to the major Leipzig School painters Werner Tübke and Bernhard Heisig, who had been called “Dürer’s red heirs” by West German journalists in the 1970s? In the film, Tübke, Heisig, and former GDR officials who were involved with the cultural scene in Leipzig at the time talk about modernism, conformism, political pressure, party discipline, personal claims, and fading memory. The documentary paints an insightful, often critical picture of early East German art history.

Time of the Gods(de)

The film explores what transformations in power and politics do to art, how much opportunism can be found in “pure” art and whether fascist symbols can ever regain their aesthetic innocence. The questions it addresses about the relationship between ethics and aesthetics make a valuable contribution to any discussion about art and power.

The Rape of Recy Taylor(en)

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

Teaching War(cs)

This episode from the Czech Journal series examines how a military spirit is slowly returning to our society. Attempts to renew military training or compulsory military service and in general to prepare the nation for the next big war go hand in hand with society’s fear of the Russians, the Muslims, or whatever other “enemies”. This observational flight over the machine gun nest of Czech militarism becomes a grotesque, unsettling military parade. It can be considered not only to be a message about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated into a state of paranoia by the media, but also a warning against the possibility that extremism will become a part of the regular school curriculum.

Two Meetings and a Funeral(en)

Two Meetings and a Funeral explores Bangladesh’s historical pivot from the socialism of the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algeria to its ideological counterpoint, the emergence of a strong Islamic perspective at the 1974 Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) meeting in Lahore. Centred on Bangladesh’s navigation of these two historic meetings, as well as its fight for United Nations recognition (vetoed by China, acting as a proxy for Pakistan), the film considers the erosion of the idea of the Third World as a potential space for decolonialism, liberation theology and socialism. In particular, it looks at how a transnational Islamic ‘ummah’ concept was used against socialist forces.