Looking for a Happy Ending(1991)

M'hamed Issiakhem(ar)

"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi Sahraoui produced by the RTA in 1985 and filmed a few months before the painter M'hamed Issiakhem 'turns off this sentence is spoken. A very interesting docu-fiction in which Issiakhem delivers himself with finesse, passion and generosity.

Rasputin: Murder in the Tsar's Court(de)

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Ray Kappe: California Modern Master - Forty Years of Modular Evolution(en)

Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series: Ray Kappe has long been a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around Los Angeles. In 1972, he founded the influential, avant garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC), where many of the younger-generation architects have studied or taught.

Mies(en)

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It(en)

This 56-minute documentary on America's most controversial and unique composer manages to cover a great many aspects of Cage's work and thought. His love for mushrooms, his Zen beliefs and use of the I Ching, and basic bio details are all explained intelligently and dynamically. Black Mountain, Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Duchamp are mentioned. Yoko Ono, John Rockwell, Laurie Anderson, Richard Kostelanetz make appearances. Fascinating performance sequences include Margaret Leng-Tan performing on prepared piano, Merce Cunningham and company, and performances of Credo In Us, Water Music, and Third Construction. Demystifies the man who made music from silence, from all sounds, from life.

Zaha Hadid... Who Dares Wins(en)

Alan Yentob profiles the most successful female architect there has ever been, the late Zaha Hadid, who designed buildings around the globe from Austria to Azerbaijan.

Ivan the Terrible(de)

Ivan, first tsar of Russia. History will remember him as "the Terrible. Russian people love him for centuries. He liberates Russia from foreign oppressors, demands absolute obedience and loyalty in order to radically modernise Russia? Ivan IV, Grand Duke of Moscow, first Tsar of Russia by the grace of God. A madman? A sadist?

Rusia: Revolución conservadora(es)

Achieving the Unachievable(en)

M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?

Exergo(eu)

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) - Muse of Keening(en)

A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introduction to the great Soviet era modernist poet, Anna Akhmatova; shot in winter in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), it contains rare interviews with people who knew her, academics, and dramatized readings of some of her poems.

Russen und Deutsche - Sieben historische Wendepunkte(de)

Stalin and the Katyn Massacre(fr)

The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.

The History of the Civil War(ru)

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

Stolen Children(de)

June 1941, during World War II. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler orders the mass abduction of particularly well-bred young children from Poland and the occupied territories of the Soviet Union in order to be educated in German culture, by both state schools and German families…

Frenemies: Putin and Trump(de)

Russian President Vladimir Putin was one of the first politicians to congratulate Donald Trump on his election as president of the United States in 2016, but over time the relationship between the two heads of state has had its ups and downs. Are they friends or enemies? Has their mutual admiration turned into mutual distrust?

In the Turmoil of the Russian Revolution(fr)

2017 marks the centenary of one of the most significant events of the 20th century - the Russian Revolution. Using the private journals of Pierre Gilliard, tutor to the Romanov children, this film is an intimate and eye-opening account of the Russian Imperial family in those days of turmoil. How did they get through their days? How did they perceive their lives as their world crumbled around them?

Exit Through the Gift Shop(en)

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

Die Brücke: The Birth of Modern Art in Germany(de)

This movement marks the beginning of modern art in Germany. It is the German equivalent of French Fauvism, from which it draws its main inspiration, but it carries an Expressionist and social emphasis that is characteristic of Nordic 'angst.' The artists of Die Brucke were restless creatures, over-sensitive, haunted by religious, sexual, political or moral obsessions. Dramatic landscapes and nudes, mystical and visionary compositions, scenes of the countryside, the streets, the circus, the cafe-dansants and the demi-monde were their principal subjects. Their pure colours blaze in acid stridency, encompassed by rough, dry contours which show the influence of African art and primitive woodcuts. The work of the following is shown: Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Muller, Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein.

Extinction(pt)

The end of the Cold War did not bring about a definitive thaw in the former republics of the Soviet Union, so that today there are several frozen conflicts, unresolved for decades, in that vast territory. As in Transnistria, an unrecognized state, seceded from Moldova since 1990. Kolja is a silent witness of how borders and bureaucracy shape the lives of citizens, finally forced to lose their identity.