Africa Rising

How African artists have spread African culture all over the world, especially music, since the harsh years of decolonization, trying to offer a nicer portrait of this amazing continent, historically known for tragic subjects, such as slavery, famine, war and political chaos.

2019-06-03 | de

A Luta Continua (The Struggle Continues)

A Luta Continua explains the military struggle of the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) against the Portuguese. Produced and narrated by American activists Robert Van Lierop, it details the relationship of the liberation to the wider regional and continental demands for self-determination against minority rule. It notes the complicit roles of foreign governments and companies in supporting Portugal against the African nationalists. Footage from the front lines of the struggle helps contextualize FRELIMO's African socialist ideology, specifically the role of the military in building the new nation, a commitment to education, demands for sexual equality, the introduction of medical aid into the countryside, and the role of culture in creating a single national identity.

1971-10-31 | en

Chavela

Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

2017-06-16 | es

Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism"

Working from archives of private film footage from a trip to India by the upper class of the late 1920s, a period of strong anti-colonial outbreak, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi deconstruct the images and analyze the attitude and behavior of Westerners in the East.

2001-09-01 | en

The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation

An exhaustive explanation of how the military occupation of an invaded territory occurs and its consequences, using as a paradigmatic example the recent history of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, to the present day; an account by filmmaker Avi Mograbi enriched by the testimonies of Israeli army veterans.

2021-04-25 | he

Dawn of the Damned

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

1965-07-05 | fr

Melting Snow

Two tons of snow—flown from New Hampshire to Puerto Rico in 1952 in order to “gift” Puerto Ricans a “white Christmas”—become a metaphor for the colonialist paternalism of America’s relationship to Puerto Rico.

2021-04-08 | en

Les 16 de Basse-Pointe

2009-04-22 | fr

4th of July on Quileute Tribal Lands

In a strange twist of irony, Americans celebrate their independence on the sovereign lands of the Quileute People. An ambient soundscape coupled with the opening shot of an adjoining RV park work in unison to reveal an alien invasion on the shores of Quileute Tribal Lands.

2015-01-23 | en

Le Baron et l'Empereur : Japon, la voie de la guerre

2023-10-29 | fr

Statues Also Die

Short documentary commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine. From the question "Why is the African in the anthropology museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in the Louvre?", the directors expose and criticize the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.

1953-05-01 | fr

The Imperial Lullaby

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

2020-03-21 | it

Africa Addio

A chronicle of the violence that occurred in much of the African continent throughout the 1960s. As many African countries were transitioning from colonial rule to other forms of government, violent political upheavals were frequent. Revolutions in Zanzibar and Kenya in which thousands were killed are shown, the violence not only political; there is also extensive footage of hunters and poachers slaughtering different types of wild animals.

1966-02-11 | it

Gerboise Bleue

"Gerboise bleue", the first French atomic test carried out on February 13, 1960 in the Algerian Sahara, is the starting point of France's nuclear power. These are powerful radioactive aerial shots carried out in areas belonging to the French army. Underground tests will follow, even after the independence of Algeria. From 1960 to 1978, 30,000 people were exposed in the Sahara. The French army was recognized recognized nine irradiations. No complaint against the army or the Atomic Energy Commission has resulted. Three requests for a commission of inquiry were rejected by the National Defense Commission. For the first time, the last survivors bear witness to their fight for the recognition of their illnesses, and revealed to themselves in what conditions the shootings took place. The director goes to the zero point of "Gerboise Bleue", forbidden access for 47 years by the Algerian authorities

2009-02-11 | fr

The Writer from a Country Without Bookstores

The ruthless dictator Teodoro Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron hand since 1979. Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is the most translated Equatoguinean writer, but he had to flee the country in 2011, after starting a hunger strike denouncing the crimes of the dictatorship. Since then, he has lived in Spain, feeling that, despite the risks, he must return and fight the monster with words.

2019-12-13 | es

The Rumba Kings

In the fifties, when the future Democratic Republic of Congo was still a Belgian colony, an entire generation of musicians fused traditional African tunes with Afro-Cuban music to create the electrifying Congolese rumba, a style that conquered the entire continent thanks to an infectious rhythm, captivating guitar sounds and smooth vocals.

2021-05-06 | en

Edward Prince of Wales' Tour of India: Malakand, Kapurthala and Dehra Dun

The future Edward VIII visits Malakand, Kapurthala and opens the Royal Military College at Dehra Dun

1922-10-01 | en

Oscar Arias: Without a Shot Fired

This is the story of a tiny country that made a decision to do something that no other country had ever done -- it decided to abolish its army and declare peace to the world. And this is the story of a young boy who grew up in that country, and how he ended up challenging -- and sometimes even convincing -- the greatest powers in the world to follow Costa Rica's example. "Oscar Arias: Without a Shot Fired" is a Don Quixote-like saga with great historical touchstones -- Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Cold War politics and Communism, Central American War and Peace. It follows a slight, academic, and most unlikely hero over the course of more than fifty years, as he travels the world in a quest to stop the spread of the weapons of war. In the end, it is a story about the triumph of reason, of the sparrow triumphing over the eagle, and how the impossible dream can sometimes come true.

2017-06-18 | en

The Pearl Button

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

2015-10-15 | es

Broken Rainbow

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

1985-05-05 | en