
17 Feb 2014

Breath of Freedom
In World War II. African-American GIs liberate Germany from Nazi rule while racism prevailed in their own army and home country. Returning home they continue fighting for their own rights in the civil rights movement.
The order comes in the summer of 1941 from propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels himself: The best animators are summoned to Berlin. Their task: Producing feature-length cartoons in ‘Disney-Quality’ with the newly founded ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH’. To get trained, the Disney movie “Snow White” is re-traced frame by frame. After the final victory, one new feature-length production of quality shall be released every year from 1947 onwards. – that is the plan. Only in 1943, the first production is completed: “Armer Hansi” a 17-minute-long colour movie, realized with the effortful Multiplane-technology. The second film by the ‘Deutsche Zeichenfilm’ is only completed in 1946 – by DEFA. In the territories occupied by Germany, cartoons are produced as well, sometimes harmless ones, sometimes propagandistic ones. With excerpts from animated movies, life-action film documents, and witness reports by contemporaries, this documentary draws a picture of the cartoon production in the third Reich.
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17 Feb 2014
In World War II. African-American GIs liberate Germany from Nazi rule while racism prevailed in their own army and home country. Returning home they continue fighting for their own rights in the civil rights movement.
03 Mar 1978
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state.
24 Feb 2021
Born in Berlin in 1896, Lotte Eisner became famous for her passionate involvement in the world of both German and French cinema. In 1936, together with Henri Langlois, she founded the Cinémathèque Française with the goal of saving from destruction films, costumes, sets, posters, and other treasures of the 7th Art. A Jew exiled in Paris, she became a pillar of the capital's cultural scene, where she promoted German cinema.
21 Jul 2005
Munich, Germany, 1923. Two years have passed since Edward Elric was dragged from his own world to ours, leaving behind his country, his friends and his younger brother, Alphonse. Stripped of his alchemical powers, he has been all this time researching rocketry together with Alphonse Heiderich, a young man who resembles his own brother, hoping to one day find a way back home. His efforts so far had proven fruitless, but after lending a hand to a troubled gipsy girl, Edward is thrown in a series of events that can wreak havoc in both worlds. Meanwhile, at his own world, Alphonse Elric ventures deeper into the mysteries of alchemy in search for a way to reunite with his older brother.
17 May 2022
How could the Cannes Film Festival become the biggest cinema event in the world? For 75 years, Cannes has succeeded in this prodigy of placing cinema, its sometimes paltry splendors but also its requirements of great modern art, at the center of everything, as if, for ten days in May, nothing was more important than it. This film tells how Cannes has become the largest film festival in the world by opening up to cinematic modernity while never forgetting that cinema remains a performing art, a popular art.
01 Jan 2020
Dark green, impenetrable forests cover a landscape with secluded valleys and rugged mountain ridges. 2.000 rivers and streams dig deep into the underground and transport their water into reservoirs or "Germany's Wild Amazon", the Wupper. These forests and rivers, together with heath-lands and moors, are home to a diverse fauna. Martens, badgers, wild boars, hares, roe deer, red deer and wild boars, even black grouse and hazel deer find shelter in these parts. Wolves have also have a dominant presence, not to mention those who live underground, such as lizards, bats, and snakes. Accompany us on a journey where we explore every corner of this rugged land. Climb underground into the Bergisches Land, through the vast hidden cave systems that sprawl far beneath the forests. There is also much to be discovered in the water, dive with us in crystal clear streams and rivers with their diverse flora and fauna.
05 Oct 2023
In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”
15 May 2008
Jack L. Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner and Sam Warner were siblings who were born in Poland and emigrated to Canada near the turn of the century. In 1903, the brothers entered the budding motion picture business. In time, the Warner Brothers moved into film production and would open their own studio in 1923.
20 Apr 2010
A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades.
16 Nov 2004
The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II.
10 Jul 2022
In 1987, a small film distributor from Frankfurt/Main brings the film "Dirty Dancing" to West German cinemas against all negative odds. The film becomes the hit of the year, in complete contrast to France, where foreign films have a hard time against the local film landscape.
17 Jul 2022
An account of the life and work of Spanish actress Penélope Cruz: a long journey that began in the working-class neighborhoods of Madrid and ended in the hills of Hollywood.
29 May 2014
A documentary about film producer Hal Roach.
23 Nov 2010
Documentary short regarding the preservation and restoration of the worldwide remains of the Keystone films.
11 Dec 2003
In the months and years following the end of the World War Two, Allied forces faced a series of bombings and attacks in occupied Germany. Nazi loyalists attempted to derail the rebuilding process by killing any Germans collaborating with the enemy. And the mysterious SS-Werewolves underground organization boasted of the coming rebirth of the Party.
25 Mar 2021
Act of Violence Upon a Young Journalist is a film shot in 1988 and released on VHS in 1989; a mysterious cult work of Uruguayan cinema surrounded by strange theories about Manuel Lamas, its unknown creator. Until now.
22 Aug 2004
The glorious and tragic story of American athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller (1904-84), Olympic swimmer, water polo player and the only true Tarzan, an archetypal character and myth of cinema, that of the original Hollywood blockbusters (1932-48).
01 Oct 1998
Former classmates at a school in the Southern Germany city of Ulm, Jewish and non-Jewish, recall their childhood in Nazi Germany.
05 Oct 2019
A young girl is cured of her epilepsy just as summer vacation is about to begin. During her last days with her classmates, she’ll come to experience life in a new way. Arranged as a series of elliptical tableaux, this haunting narrative from Luise Donschen (Casanova Gene) captures a simultaneous sense of discovery and disorientation as it proceeds from the confines of the classroom to a wider world of adolescent anxieties.
12 Jun 2006
The history of the comic book superhero, Superman, in his various media incarnations.