How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin

In August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called the Beatles. He arranged their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world. Twenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how the Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life. (Storyville)

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War. In 1960, the UN became the stage for a political earthquake as the struggle for independence in the Congo put the world on high alert. The newly independent nation faced its first coup d'état, orchestrated by Western forces and Belgium, which were reluctant to relinquish control over their resource-rich former colony. The US tried to divert attention by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the African continent. In 1961, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was brutally assassinated, silencing a key voice in the fight against colonialism; his death was facilitated by Belgian and CIA operatives. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach took action, denouncing imperialism and structural racism. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev intensified his criticism of the US, highlighting the racial barriers that characterized American society.

Solidarnosc – Der Mauerfall begann in Polen

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Советская мультипликационная пропаганда

A landmark four disc Box Set - Unearthed from Moscow's legendary Soyuzmultfilm Studios, the 41 films in ANIMATED SOVIET PROPAGANDA span sixty years of Soviet history (1924 - 1984), and have never been available before in the U.S.

Dance Alone

Bil'in Habibti

The Israeli filmmaker Shai Corneli Polak records the building of the 'security wall' through Palestinian territory at the village of Bil'in. The villagers protest mostly peacefully, while the Israeli army doesn't react peacefully. By now the Israeli High Court has ruled that the building of the wall was illegal.

The Atomic Cafe

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.

Slučaj Filipa Franjića

Due to idealism, honesty and resoluteness, a driver in a transport company faces numerous problems in his living and working environment.

1989

Anders Østergaard’s film is an investigative look at the year the Berlin Wall fell, documenting the events that took place in Hungary as a prelude to the dramatic changes in November 1989. The director recreates the events and leads the audiences deep into the politicians’ secret meeting rooms by using a mix of interviews, archive material and reconstructed scenes and dialogues.

Ronald Reagan: The Hollywood Years, the Presidential Years

These 2 one-hour specials will take a look back at Ronald Reagan from his ups and downs as a Hollywood movie star to a legendary force in American politics. HOLLYWOOD YEARS: will take a look at the actor as he goes from local sports broadcaster to respected leading an using film clips, interviews and rare footage. This one a kind documentary traces the ups and downs of his on-screen career, his marriages to Hane Wyman and Nancy Davis and his role as a "friendly witness" during the McCarthy hearings. PRESIDENTIAL YEARS: documents Ronald Reagan's extraordinary transformation from a Hollywood movie star to a legendary force in American politics. From political spokesman to Governor of California, Reagan's rapid rise in leadership carried him all the way to the White House where he would inscribe an indelible legacy into the pages of world history.

Alert Today - Alive Tomorrow

This short shows how the city of Reading, Pennsylvania would implement civil defense procedures to help residents survive a nuclear attack. Through a network of volunteers, makeshift hospitals would be set up, auxiliary police officers would maintain order, and other elements of the civil defense program would be put in place.

Mission to Mir

This film shows how far we have come since the cold-war days of the 50s and 60s. Back then the Russians were our "enemies". And to them the Americans were their "enemies" who couldn't be trusted. Somewhere in all this a young girl in Oklahoma named Shannon set her sights on becoming one of those space explorers, even though she was told "girls can't do that." But she did.

Rich Hall's Red Menace

2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall examines the relationship between the West and the USSR in his inimitable fashion.

Nukes in Space

U.S. nuclear tests in space, and the development of the military intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Don't Drink the Water

Somewhere behind the early 1960s cold-war iron curtain, the Hollander family cause an international spying incident when Walter photographs a sunset in a sensitive region. In order to stay out of jail, the Hollanders take refuge in the American Embassy, which is temporarily being run by the absent Ambassador's diplomatically incompetent son, Axel.

Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We?

With the Doomsday Clock the closest it's ever been to midnight, Jane Corbin investigates the proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe. She visits Los Alamos, home to the United States’ nuclear weapons development facility and the historic home of Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project. In Scotland, she reveals the strategy behind Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and speaks to campaigners in Suffolk fighting against US weapons they fear will be based on UK soil. Jane also discovers how many of the global agreements and safeguards that have constrained the spread of nuclear weapons since the 1970s are breaking down. This is a story told by the scientists, investigators and diplomats who set the clock and have fought to ensure that the ultimate deterrent has not been used in over 70 years.

Berlin Geheimoperation Tunnel

Tunnel der Freiheit

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

Nematomas Frontas

Between 1944–1953, courageous resistance movement took place in the Baltic region of Europe, uniting the partisan troops for struggle against the Soviet Union. “The Invisible Front” was a coded name used by the Soviet Interior forces to describe the resistance movement in Lithuania. Film depicts the story of the fighters through the words and experience of the partisan leader, Juozas Luksa, and interviews with eyewitnesses of those events - both the partisans and the Soviet fighters. Tales of horror, torture and courage are told in the rare archival footage that has never been screened before, and interviews with the surviving members of the resistance movement.

Espions pour la planète

In the aftermath of the Cold War, Russian and American intelligence agencies, once enemies, joined forces and pooled their data to serve the planet, threatened by global warming. The story of a remarkable odyssey.