Tchernobyl, la dernière bataille de l'URSS

Three decades after the nuclear explosion, almost everything has been said about this ecological and sanitary disaster that made Pripiat a part of History. How did the greatest industrial disaster change the course of History, disrupt global geopolitics and, directly or indirectly, redistribute the balances and power relations of the twentieth century? The world will never be the same again. By retracing the incredible battle waged by the Soviet Union against radiation, this film proposes to retrace and enlighten an extraordinary story, while exploring the historical stakes in the medium and long-term…

Stalin: Man of Steel

Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.

Le Dernier Complot de Staline

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.

La ciudad de los fotógrafos

A film about the fearless photographers and photojournalists who documented strikes, demonstrations, protests etc during the Chilean military regime of Augusto Pinochet, sometimes risking their very lives.

Armádní den

12 Eylül: Renklerin Çatışması

Turkish democracy got over the 27th of May and the 12th of March and set off again, but the storm did not subside and the mutual reckoning was not over. On the contrary, new fronts were opened in the country and blood began to flow like a gutter. Finally, on September 12, there was a knock on the door again. Those who came that day changed everything, everything. Nothing would ever be the same again, nothing would be the same as before.

The Viking Invasion of Wessex 878 AD

The Viking Invasion of Wessex 878 AD is the second DVD in this sensational new series, The Dark Ages, which delves into a war-torn and obscure period of Britain's past to focus on some of the pivotal events that completely altered the history, culture and politics of the British Isles. In the year 878 AD, Alfred King of Wessex faced the fourth and most serious attempt by the devious Viking chieftain Guthrum to seize the last remaining Saxon kingdom. Thwarted in their conventional attempts in 871, 876 and 878, the Vikings, stole away from their base in Gloucester and descended on Alfred's court while they were celebrating Twelfth Night on the borders of wintery Wessex at Chippenham. Alfred escaped but was driven into hiding in the Somerset Marshes, while the Vikings fanned across Wessex.

Buena Vista Social Club

In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.

Operation Market Garden: Arnhem - Battle of the Woods

Jumping in to Drop Zones eight to ten miles from Arnhem on the second day of Operation Market Garden was always going to be difficult for Brigadier “Shan” Hackett's 4th British Parachute Brigade. With little information on how 1 Para Brigade's battle went the day before or what faced them on the ground the stage was set for an epic battle. John Waddy, v company commander in 156 Para Battalion and a team of Arnhem experts cover the ground where 4 Para Brigade fought with 9 SS Pz Div in the woods to the west of Arnhem in what was to be an unequal but heroic battle; the result of a flawed concept and plan.Driven back the Brigade was withdrawing across LZ P when the Polish heavy lift gliders swept in to cause. Captain Quirepel was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his action in helping stem the enemy advance long enough for the Paratroopers to escape across the railway embankment by nightfall.

Maestra

Cuba, 1961: 250,000 volunteers taught 700,000 people to read and write in one year. 100,000 of the teachers were under 18 years old. Over half were women. MAESTRA explores this story through the personal testimonies of the young women who went out to teach literacy in rural communities across the island - and found themselves deeply transformed in the process.

Rise of the Superbombs

Viewers go inside the new world of futuristic conventional warfare and journey through the modern development of the U.S. and worldwide arsenals, highlighting the critical technological turning points of the post-WWII age, the most fearsome weapons in circulation now, and the mind-blowing armaments in development that will soon eclipse anything seen thus far.

Ghost Town to Havana

A rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.

Supermalo

As the walls of Cuba's ageing infrastructure continue to crumble, a burgeoning street art scene is born in Havana. Murals of hand-painted masked character – Supermalo – with the tag “2+2=5?” have begun to appear in seemingly every corner of the heavily foot trafficked city.

Another Day of Life

In 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, a veteran Polish journalist, embarked on a seemingly suicidal road trip into the heart of the Angola's civil war. There, he witnessed once again the dirty reality of war and discovered a sense of helplessness previously unknown to him. Angola changed him forever: it was a reporter who left Poland, but it was a writer who returned…

Staline, le tyran rouge

On March 9, 1953, Joseph Stalin was buried in Moscow in front of a million people. His funeral is that of a demi-God. Ultimate paradox for one of the greatest criminals in History who brought misfortune to his people while arousing collective admiration.

The Spy Who Went Into the Cold

A documentary about Kim Philby, a British member of MI6 who was in reality a spy and defected to the U.S.S.R.

Egzamin Dojrzałości

The final oral exam in history and social studies at one of Warsaw's high schools. The film illustrates the theatre of social life in Soviet Poland where one says different things on the stage and another behind the scenes.

Годовщина революции

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

Amerikas geheimer Krieg in Laos - Die größte Militäroperation der CIA

After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making, this film uncovers the story of the CIA's most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos, which was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973. While the world's attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighboring and neutral Laos and recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counterinsurgency warfare. As the conflict in Vietnam grew, the objective in Laos changed from a cost effective low-key involvement to save the country from becoming communist into an all-out air war to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bomb Laos back into the Stone Age that it had never really left in the first place. Conventional bombs equivalent to the destructive power of 20 Hiroshima-type weapons fell on Laos each year - 2 million tons

Die Stadt unter dem Eis – Kalter Krieg auf Grönland

How in 1959, during the heat of the Cold War, the government of the United States decided to create a secret military base located in the far north of Greenland: Camp Century, almost a real town with roads and houses, a nuclear plant to provide power and silos to house missiles aimed at the Soviet Union.