2019-12-10
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Jan Smuts is a foremost political figure in South African 20th Century History, and is recognised today by two of the world's leading historians as being at the very centre of the vision for a new world order that emerges from the League of Nations and the United Nations.. Yet, he is virtually persona non grata in his own country.... and largely ignored in school history books. This one hour drama-documentary, with its dramatised cameo scenes in which his look-alike grandson takes on the role of Jan Smuts, battle re-enactments, historical archival footage, comments from historians, political analysts, and South African political struggle heroes, looks back on his life and the circumstances that shaped it in search of some answers.
China’s President Xi Jinping is a force to be reckoned with. As leader of the Communist colossus, he commands the world’s attention, but who is China’s strongman and what is his agenda?
Rotem Genossar, a teacher at the Bialik-Rogozin campus in south Tel Aviv, founds a running group for his students, young African refugees whose families fled their homeland and now live in Israel without any legal status. At first running is just a social activity for the students, but it quickly becomes a means to fight for their civil rights, part of a struggle to secure them a place of their own, out of the margins of Israeli society.
Running Movie is a documentary film that focuses on Israeli long-distance runner Ayele Seteng (a.k.a. Haile Satayin), the oldest marathon runner to compete in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and his efforts to participate in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Satayin has been a long-distance runner since he was a young boy in Ethiopia, but he only became a marathon runner after immigrating to Israel in the early 1990s. Now, at the age of 55, he keeps on running. We follow him as he practices in Ethiopia, far from his wife and eight children, and witness his moments of victory and defeat, as he competes in marathons around the world—from Berlin, Germany, to Tiberias, Israel.
Biniam Girmay’s recent successes have shown that African cycling is on the up, ready at last to follow athletics and football into the big time. But why has it taken so long, and what’s needed to take it all the way? Set against the beauty and battles of the Tour du Rwanda, we explore the past, present and future of riders from Eritrea, South Africa, Rwanda and more, meeting Girmay and the rising stars hot on his heels, as well as the people passionate about giving these riders the opportunities they deserve. This is the story of the next great continent in cycling - Africa.
A new reading of the historical period that began with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs (1479-1516) and the discovery of America (1492), as well as an analysis of its undeniable influence on the subsequent evolution of the history of Spain and the world.
The region of Lake Turkana, located in Kenya and Ethiopia, is considered to be “the Cradle of Humankind”. Among other finds, primate fossils from millions of years ago have been discovered in the region. But what about the region’s modern inhabitants and their relationship to their environment? Iiris Härmä, whose previous work includes the award-winning Leaving Africa, had the chance of joining Helsinki University’s researchers, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares and Mar Cabeza, on their pre-pandemic trip to study the Daasanach people’s relationship to their environment through traditional animal tales. The researchers hope that storytelling would help to bridge the gap between people’s everyday lives and conservation efforts.
A "Chinese" father reflects on the changing relationship of China and US during his trip to Beijing to retrieve his 3-year-old "American" daughter who has been stranded because of the recent "decoupling" of the two countries. Born in China and living in the American Midwest, filmmaker Yinan Wang attempts to unpack his own experience of how a transnational migrant family deals with the distress caused by identity, nationalism, and geopolitics.
Sara from Zurich was circumcised as a little girl in Ethiopia. This event severely traumatized her. To find her inner peace, Sara decides to look for her circumciser.
A look back over nine years of the Syrian Civil War, an inextricable conflict, like a black box, due to the competing interests of the many factions in presence and those of the foreign powers.
"A Walk to Beautiful" tells the story of five women in Ethiopia suffering from devastating childbirth injuries. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The trials they endure and their attempts to rebuild their lives tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation.
A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.
Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.
When two women with a video camera follow an HIV research team to Eritrea, Africa, they find a strange and magical country which transforms their documentary into an intimate investigation of their own capacities to love, suffer and forgive.
The war in the Ukraine has changed the way many European countries view Russian politics. Suddenly it became clear how dependent countries had become on Russian gas imports for decades and what Vladimir Putin was up to. However, no country needs more gas than Germany. It was only after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine that the German government realized that Russia had long used gas as a weapon to impose its will on states. The instrument created for this purpose is the natural gas production company GAZPROM. So how did Germany become so dependent on Russian gas? The documentary shows how, over several decades and several changes of government, a broad alliance of politicians and business representatives did everything possible to secure Germany's energy supply with cheap Russian gas, while the Kremlin's foreign policy became increasingly aggressive and the warnings of experts went unheeded.
The story of the cross destiny of George Orwell (1903-50) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the genius authors of the two most groundbreaking novels of anticipation of the 20th century: 1984 and Brave New World; two lucid witnesses of the maledictions of the modern world whose novels have found a considerable echo with our time.