Private Screenings(2017)

Tunnel to Freedom(de)

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.

The Empty Screen(en)

A video essay from Mark Rappaport about movies in movies, and how the screen watches us just as we watch it.

100 Years of British Trains(en)

A fascinating compilation tracing the development of British trains throughout the 20th century. This program provides a record of the greatest days of steam; the magnificent express engines developed by the 'Big Four' - the GWR, SR, LNER, and LMS; many famous named trains like the Golden Arrow and the Brighton Belle, the War and Nationalism; and the amazing variety of elder locos from the 1950's.

Who was Hitler(de)

Hitler's biography told like never before. Besides brief historical localizations by a narrator, only contemporaries and Hitler himself speak: no interviews, no reenactment, no illustrative graphics and no technical gadgets. The testimonies from diaries, letters, speeches and autobiographies are assembled with new, often unpublished archive material. Hitler's life and work are thus reflected in a unique way in interaction with the image of the society in the years 1889 to 1945.

Mon Chirac(fr)

At the close of Jacques Chirac's life, politician Jean-Louis Debré has wished to make a film to celebrate his friend, to tell the story of their friendship and professional understanding, and to make an intimate portrait of the former President of France through the accounts of a few very close friends. Thanks to Jean-Louis Debré's presence, Claude Chirac and some of Jacques Chirac's closest friends, famous or unknown, agreed to talk to the camera, sometimes for the first time, to evoke their untold-before memories and tell about the moments that bonded the two men for a lifetime.

Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément... Les Présidents et les Français(fr)

De Gaulle, the Last King of France(fr)

Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.

Dans les coulisses du métro de Paris(fr)

Love (between) Pickle(ko)

About the countless faces, memories, love, and people that exist between love and pickle.

Dictator: One Crazy Job(fr)

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

Кто убил Рихарда Зорге?. Рождение мифа(ru)

Blood Money: Inside the Nazi Economy(fr)

How did Nazi Germany, from limited natural resources, mass unemployment, little money and a damaged industry, manage to unfurl the cataclysm of World War Two and come to occupy a large part of the European continent? Based on recent historical works of and interviews with Adam Tooze, Richard Overy, Frank Bajohr and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent, and drawing on rare archival material.

Bergen - A City West of Reason(no)

A poetic and beautiful tribute to the city of Bergen, Norway. Based on archive footage from the last century and packed with Bergen music from Grieg to Vaular.

Castro's Spies(en)

The thrilling story of an elite group of Cuban spies sent undercover to the US in the 1990s. From their recruitment, training and eventual capture on US soil; this film peers into a secret world of false identities, love affairs and betrayal. Using never seen before footage from the Cuban Film Institute’s archive and first-hand testimony from the people at the heart of this story, Castro’s Spies gives a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of a spy – where the stakes are life and death.

Echoes from a Sombre Empire(de)

Documentary examining Bokassa's rule in the Central African Republic using the testimony of witnesses and visits to key sites.

Beefcake(en)

A look at the 1950s muscle men's magazines and the representative industry which were popular supposedly as health and fitness magazines, but were in reality primarily being purchased by the still-underground homosexual community. Chief among the purveyors of this literature was Bob Mizer, who maintained a magazine and developed sexually inexplicit men's films for over 40 years. Aided by his mother, the two maintained a stable of not so innocent studs.

The Golden Age of Songs From Our Childhood(fr)

This 135-minute documentary offers to reopen this magical parenthesis which has seen the birth of a whirlwind of artists with very different styles. From Chantal Goya to Annie Cordy, from Pierre Perret to Carlos. They knew how to bring each in their own way generations of children into their poetic universe.

Élie Kakou, ben alors... 20 ans déjà(fr)

Claude Chabrol, the Maverick(fr)

An account of the life and work of French filmmaker Claude Chabrol (1930-2010), a sybarite Buddha, a furtive anarchist, an insolent lover of life.

Dancing with Le Pen(fr)

In France’s last presidential election, Marine Le Pen, a right-wing candidate, won over 30 per cent of the vote after an attempt to rebrand a party long associated with her controversial father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. See how three of her supporters faced similar obstacles in changing the narrative.