The story of Italian cinema under Fascism, a sophisticated film industry built around the founding of the Cinecittà studios and the successful birth of a domestic star system, populated by very peculiar artists among whom stood out several beautiful, magnetic, special actresses; a dark story of war, drugs, sex, censorship and tragedy.
Self - Narrator (voice)
Clara Calamai
Maria Denis
Elsa De Giorgi
Carla Del Poggio
Doris Duranti
Luisa Ferida
Isa Miranda
Alida Valli
Self - Film Historian
Self - Film Critic
Self - Actor
Vittorio Mussolini (voice)
Self - Politician (archive footage)
Self - Filmmaker (archive footage)
Self - Politician (archive footage)
Self - Actor (archive footage)
Self - Actor (archive footage)
Self - Actress (archive footage)
Self - Politician (archive footage)
11 Feb 1999
In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.
01 May 1997
Europe, 1940. For thousands of Jews, a Japanese diplomat and his wife defy Tokyo and the Nazis, and offer visas, for life.
04 Feb 1965
Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.
16 Sep 1999
In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.
24 Feb 2023
A look at the life and work of the iconic US actor Charlton Heston (1923-2008); the embodiment of many mythic heroes who was both a staunch defender of the Civil Rights movement during the sixties and a spokesman for the National Rifle Association in his later years. The extraordinary and controversial public and personal career of one of the greatest film personalities of all time.
This documentary retraces the life of Jacques Maritain (1882 - 1973), French Christian philosopher. In evoking his life, it paints a portrait of the 20th century: the scientism of the Sorbonne, the rise of Nazism, the Resistance, Free France, Christian Democracy in South America, but also art, freedom, peace and love for the human person. Jacques Maritain, in the torments of the 20th century, of it's murderous madness and it's hope for peace, holds a secret: his ineffable and faithful love for his wife Raïssa, the inspiration for his political commitments and his philosophical thought.
16 Oct 2021
No overview found
24 Jan 1943
About the war effort in the West Indies.
01 Feb 1991
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
30 Sep 1943
The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.
23 Jan 1943
A brisk visual summary of the changing faces of the English town throughout the ages, from the ancients and their hill-forts to the Second World War -- enlivened by the appearance of ghostly denizens to defend their eras against the narrator's various strictures!
23 Jan 1943
A British documentary on tunneling if a building falls in ruins.
25 Jul 2004
An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever.
17 Sep 1981
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
16 Sep 2004
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
04 Sep 2020
No overview found
12 Sep 1997
Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Llaso, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.
01 Dec 1933
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)
03 Jun 1987
Elliot Ness, an ambitious prohibition agent, is determined to take down Al Capone. In order to achieve this goal, he forms a group given the nickname “The Untouchables”.
30 Jun 1896
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.