1976-08-09
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A look at the recently discovered fascinating behind the scenes footage shot by the legendary Hollywood director John Ford at Pearl Harbor in 1942 while filming his popular World War II documentaries December 7th and The Battle of Midway.
After the latest Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, once the bombings cease, the reality of the conflict disappears from the media. The documentary is a trip to Gaza, where through various characters we know the violation of human rights they suffer daily and the post-war blockade and situation that the Palestinian population is trying to survive in the Gaza Strip. A journey through their cities, their people and also, somehow, their history under the occupation of Israel.
Documentary about the first German foreign deployment of German soldiers in Kosovo since the Second World War in 1995.
Something from there is a short film on the substance of our original lands. Weaving between the voices of the artist’s parents, one a refugee and the other not, the film is personal, yet evokes a shared Palestinian experience.
Documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever.
In a stirring blend of archival footage, fictional recreations, interviews, and animation, the film delves into the story of Italy’s ‘Unknown Soldier’. November 4, 2021, in fact, is the hundredth anniversary of the burial of the Unknown Soldier in the Altare della Patria in Rome. Thanks to a collaboration with the Ministry of Defense, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, the city of Aquileia, and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà, this film reconstructs the events that led up to that event in 1921
Hasan Hourani, a Palestinian poet and illustrator, died aged 29 in Jaffa while trying to rescue his nephew from the sea. Shortly after, the filmmaker Mais Darwazah discovers his drawings and poems and feels drawn to Hourani's world— a universe outside space and time; a place of wonder, discovery, and freedom. Motivated by this kinship, Darwazah embarks on a journey to her homeland, Palestine: a place she has never known.
Its main focus is on the plight of the Palestinians which can be seen as the most enduring residue of the modern encounter between the Arabs and the West. Edward Said traces the course of European involvement with the Near East via the Crusades to Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and the French and English entrepreneurs, adventurers and empire builders who came in his wake.
In the polyphony of voices, a search for home unfolds. What is home? What is its purpose? Is there anything bigger than home? What are the sounds, colours, and smells that let it live in our memory? The collective and the individual is expressed through the voices of those who lost it in the Russian war in Ukraine. Associations, memories, meanings: four letters, four hundred things between them — home.
An Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.
In May 1974, the Israeli Air Force carried out an extermination operation against the Palestinian refugee camp Nabatiyeh. With this as a starting point, it is reviewed how the last 50 years of Zionist colonization of Palestine have partly led to the establishment of the state of Israel, partly to the expulsion of a people, the Palestinians, from their land. The film shows scenes of daily life in Palestinian refugee camps. We hear various of the inhabitants talk about their desire to return to their country, and we follow how the resistance movement works to free women from their traditional backward role. At the same time, the emergence of the armed resistance struggle is analysed, and the significance of the latest military technological developments for guerilla wars in the 3rd world is explained.
Carried by an immersive sound environment that plunges us in the reality and the perceptions of these resilient and inspiring people, this film questions our own blindness face to violence and suffering of our time — despite the overabundance of images that reach us — and highlights the urgency of lending an ear to hear these stories.
The tape-recorded words “erase it” take on new weight in the context of history and war. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, war broke out and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in its aftermath. Israelis know this as the War of Independence. Palestinians call it “Nakba” (the Catastrophe). In the late 1990s, graduate student Teddy Katz conducted research into a large-scale massacre that had allegedly occurred in the village of Tantura in 1948. His work later came under attack and his reputation was ruined, but 140 hours of audio testimonies remain.
This short film employs an anonymous hotline to elevate the voices beneath Vermont's F-35 flight path, the first urban residents to live with one of the military's most controversial weapons systems overhead. Tranquil scenes of unassuming neighborhoods near Burlington International Airport are juxtaposed with voicemails of the unheard, those drowned out by the ear-shattering “sound of freedom.” Exploring the relationship between picturesque residential areas and the deafening fighter jets overhead, Jet Line is a poetic portrait of a community plagued by war machines, documenting untenable conditions in a small city once voted one of the best places to live in America.
One of the key works in creating the American social documentary film, this 1934 newsreel compilation crams a lot of information into just 11 minutes. Skillfully edited, the picture captures a panorama of international events centered on the labor movement. Scenes include Mussolini, Hitler and FDR preparing for war, Nazi soldiers persecuting German Jews, a political strike in Paris, the Scottsboro demonstration in Washington, DC, police violence against striking steelworkers in Pennsylvania and union members stopping scab workers from delivering milk during a dairy farmers strike in Wisconsin. Under the direction of pioneering documentarian Leo Hurwitz, the images are edited together to create a powerful image of a world that, in his view, desperately needed radical change.
When 18 children – nine from Palestine and nine from Israel – come together to form a kids soccer team, they come face-to-face with the other side for the first time in their lives. United by the common goals of teamwork and dedication to a shared purpose, they confront generations of fear head on. Is peace through sports really possible, or is it hopelessly naive to think that a handful of 12-year-old soccer players can begin to change their world?
On July 1st, 1916, the Newfoundland Regiment took part in a massive First World War offensive on the Somme, led by the British. At Beaumont Hamel the regiment was nearly wiped out, as only 110 of 780 soldiers survived the day. To commemorate its 100th anniversary, Brian McKenna’s documentary film tells the story of this epic tragedy. Using a technique that brings new meaning to reenactment, McKenna recruits descendants of soldiers who fought this battle, offering them a unique opportunity to relive the experience of their ancestors in trenches built specifically for the film.
From the very first day of Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014, filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly has been there with his camera. He follows a team of paramedics in an ambulance, eventually becoming a core member who bears witness to their perilous and heartbreaking rescue work. Ambulance tracks the harrowing chaos amidst a state-run military operation on civilians.
This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as "Exodus", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Black Sunday", "Little Drummer Girl", and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.