When the revolution in Nicaragua won its victory nearly 40 years ago, the world began to dream. A young generation was taking the reins in a country of grand utopias. From West Germany alone, 15,000 “brigadists” travelled to help rebuild the war-torn country: liberals, greens, unionists, social democrats, leftists and church representatives harvested coffee and cotton, built schools, kindergartens and hospital wards. No movement has mobilised so many people. What became of the hopes and dreams of the revolutionaries and their supporters?
05 Aug 2024
The first transatlantic communications cable, traversing the ocean floor from Valentia Island, County Kerry, to Newfoundland, Canada, 165 years ago was an 8 year endeavor that helped lay the foundation of the modern technology industry and explains the fragility of undersea cables today.
19 Nov 2019
The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every continent, this is architectural magic on a cosmic scale.
15 Dec 2020
Secret societies is the new code word for organizations believed to pull the strings of the world. These groups have been both credited and blamed for great many nefarious acts perpetrated against humanity. Among the most infamous of secret societies stand without doubt the shadowy Illuminati.
19 May 2015
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03 Jun 2023
Doaa el-Adl, the first woman to be awarded the esteemed Journalistic Distinction in Caricature, serves as a catalyst for transformation within the predominantly male-dominated realm of Egyptian political cartoonists. Challenging patriarchal norms, she routinely confronts censorship, harassment, and even threats to her life. In a remarkable fusion of documentary, cartoons, and animation, Egyptian director Nada Riyadh breathes life into el-Adl's most renowned works. This dynamic and fearless presentation delves into the issue of violence against women, stretching the boundaries of freedom of speech in a society often characterized by restrictions. Through her exceptional talent, el-Adl not only champions women's rights but also serves as an inspiration for societal change.
07 Aug 2024
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25 Nov 2021
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07 Mar 2019
Based on the latest technological and scientific advances, this documentary explores the palace's architectural past to resurrect Louis XIV's vanished Versailles. Versailles was an ongoing building site at the time of Louis XIV and continued to be transformed by its successive occupants later on. The Versailles we know today only vaguely resembles the Versailles of the Sun King. Most of its original features and apartments no longer exist. Thanks to the digitisation of thousands of plans, a team of scientists takes us back in time to explore this forgotten past in a new way, through a large-scale reconstruction project to bring back the Versailles of Louis XIV as he designed it, according to his requirements and dreams.
27 Dec 2021
Dante Alighieri was a poet, philosopher and politician in 1300 Florence. The visionary author of "Inferno", the first book of the "Divine Comedy", he was both a direct witness and a narrator of his times and his poem is a remarkable geopolitical chronicle of a tumultuous period of the Middle Ages from 1300 to 1320, a time when Kings, Popes, rulers and warlords played a deadly chess game for the control of Europe. In this high end docudrama, some of the world's finest scholars will help provide historical context to the unfolding of events, making them accessible to a wide audience, and giving us a privileged viewpoint over one of the most eventful and funding chapters of European history.
15 May 2007
Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group university and, through it, the history of theater in Portugal, revealing two remarkable decades of the History of Portugal. Through the Academy of Coimbra, the documentary reproduces student life, the position of women in society, and the change in mentalities of being and being in the world. It reproduces the existing censorship and the fight against the dictatorship, the resistance to an exhausted regime, as well as the emerging contradictions of the democratic revolution. CITAC has a heritage of 50 years of experience in Coimbra. It carries with it the possibility of the theatrical and civic formation of thinking bodies, constituting a proper ball of a possible model, generation by generation, between studies, theater, and social drama.
31 Aug 2023
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06 Nov 2021
These are the future leaders of their communities. Ever wonder what it’s like to walk a day in their shoes? How the world looks through their eyes? We were curious. So, we asked them.
29 Oct 2014
What does the violent heart of revolution feel like? As the anger and hatred glow white hot is there a language its players use to speak to one another? And what becomes of the gun toting authorities when their fiefdom is destroyed, nobody is any longer afraid, and all things are ablaze? Just some of the questions addressed in this visceral documentary from Maidan square in the violent Ukrainian winter of 2013-14.
19 Jan 2024
Born from the ashes of the iconic punk band Ebba Grön, this documentary tells the story of Imperiet and their journey to become the leading star of the post-punk generation and one of Sweden's biggest rock bands. It's also the story of Sweden, at a time in which they took their firm position on the world stage and when political commitment from the artists was a necessity.
10 Dec 2021
When the film West Side Story was released in 1961, New York's reviled Puerto Rican community gained some visibility and, over time, both in Spanish Harlem and the Bronx, neighborhoods plagued by poverty, drugs and crime, Hispanic identity was reborn and strengthened, thanks to a syncretic and intentionally popular music that eventually conquered the entire city.
19 Jan 2022
It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.
18 Jan 2022
Since the outbreak of the global corona pandemic, the number of anti-Semitic content on the Internet and social media has also been increasing. Researchers see a connection between online radicalization and anti-Semitic violence – and also attacks. "Jud Süß 2.0" documents the visual roots of this new anti-Semitism.
01 Jan 1975
Film directors with hand-held cameras went to the streets of Lisbon from April 25 to May 1, 1974, registering interviews and political events of the Portuguese "Carnation Revolution", as that period would be later known.
02 May 2022
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05 Jun 2023
This explores the mysterious and catastrophic collapse of ancient civilizations during the late Bronze Age, from the Hittites to the Mycenaeans and the Egyptians, revealing the tumultuous events that brought an end to a thriving era of human history, and warns we may be facing similar threats today.