161>88 (2012) Director: Antifascist Action (AFA) Runtime: 94 min The rise of the extreme right in Czech Republic after 1989, as well as the birth of a new anti-fascist movement, and more than 20 years of struggle against neo-Nazis that followed, is very well documented in this activist and anti-fascist film. Transition in Czechoslovakia began …
Bronenosets Potemkin (1925) Director: Sergei Eisenstein Actors: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigori Aleksandrov Runtime: 75 min Battleship Potemkin is one of the most influential films of all time. When the film was made in 1925, it quickly established a film editing as one of the key elements of film language and radically changed cinema. Indeed, …
Conspiracy (2001) Director: Frank Pierson Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci Runtime: 96 min In late January of 1942, in Wannsee near Berlin Nazi bureaucrats held a meeting which brought together 15 representatives of different branches of the German state, the army, the SS, the Nazi party and so on. The sole topic of the meeting …
Shoah (1985) Director: Claude Lanzmann Runtime: 566 min Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust, the genocide of approximately six million of European Jews conducted by Nazis (and their collaborators) during World War II. It is very difficult to find the words to express or think about the Nazi industry of death. I will …
L’aveu (1970) Director: Costa-Gavras Actors: Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Gabriele Ferzetti Runtime: 139 min The split between Tito and Stalin (1948), in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was followed by show trials of prominent Communists all over Eastern Europe and the wave of Stalinist purges in which tens of thousands suffered or lost their …
Everything Is Illuminated (2005) Director: Liev Schreiber Actors: Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin Runtime: 106 min A young Jewish American decides to travel to Ukraine to find out more about his grandfather, one of the very few from his village who survived the Holocaust and saw the end of the war. The journey he …
Le chagrin et la pitié (1969) Director: Marcel Ophüls Runtime: 251 min This two-part documentary analyzes the occupation of France in World War II through the example of a city with a population of approximately 100,000 people. The spirit of the time is quite well conveyed with the use of archive materials, as well as …
Nazi Concentration Camps (1945) Director: George Stevens Runtime: 59 min The official documentary, made from footage that was recorded by U.S. troops during the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. It was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials. The camps are shown one after the other, and include footage from Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and many others. …
Racism: A History (TV mini-series 2007) Director: Paul Tickell Runtime: 3 x 59 min An excellent overview of the history of racism from its origins to the present day, through the development of colonialism, the abolition of slavery, imperialism, various racial theories, eugenics, monstrous exploitation and genocide around the world. Solid and informative.
It Happened Here (1965) Directors: Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo Actors: Pauline Murray Runtime: 93 min An alternative history in which the Nazis succeeded in landing and occupying England. The film does not focus on the German occupation forces but rather on English collaborators and the mechanisms which people use to rationalize their acceptance of fascism. In this …
