Documentary about the Cold War spy George Blake, who betrayed his colleagues to the KGB, then escaped from Wormwood Scrubs five years later and fled to the Soviet Union.
Social & External
Unknown Role
The greatest secret of the Second World War has remained a mystery for the last 80 years: a Jewish Communist, Sandor Rado, led a spy network that proved essential to the victory of Allied Forces. Rado received details of strictly confidential strategies from the highest echelons of the Nazi State through Rudolf Roessler, a dedicated anti-Nazi he'd only known as code name "Lucy." Aided by key German industry leaders, Roessler transmitted timely information from high-ranking collaborators within the German army headquarters. Despite their achievement, Rado, Roessler and their sources remained unacknowledged heroes until today. Thanks to the recent declassification of secret archives, we are now able to step behind the scenes of this incredible story.
Tensions between the USSR and the United States were high in 1959, with the seemingly constant threat of nuclear war. Then some unlikely ambassadors stepped forward to clear all that away: the Harlem Globetrotters. From Harlem With Love is the story of how a group of barnstorming basketball players traveled to the heart of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and bridged a cultural gap many thought would stand forever.
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.
How the Soviet Union was able to copy the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, and the influence of the resulting Tupolev TU-4 on the Cold War.
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.
19 years after the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan, the Olympic Games of 1964 took place in Tokyo. In the midst of the cold war, the games are supposed to become a symbol for a peaceful world. Especially the divided Germany is expected to prove this: By order of the IOC, both German states must participate in Tokyo with a joint team despite deep ideological rifts. The fact that athletes from both German states still had to compete against each other in order to form a joint team for the 1964 Olympic Games in Innsbruck and in Tokyo is all but forgotten. The film tells the story of the East-West German team of 1964 for the first time and is simultaneously a current document about the relation of sports and politics in international relations.
Deals with the establishment of the Italian republic and Italy’s foreign affairs, particularly how Italy regained national sovereignty and appreciation from the USA and Western Europe after the Second World War. It explains in what way Italy benefits from integration into a Western alliance system (NATO, Council of Europe, European Coal and Steel Community) during the Cold War.
A remarkable examination of the forces behind the Civil Rights Movement in 1960’s America. Drawing parallels between successful communist insurrections in China, Cuba, and Algeria; “Anarchy USA” attempts to convince its audience that revolutionary communism was using the noble fight for civil rights to foment racial tension and overthrow the US government. A treasure trove of rare archival footage from America’s most traumatic period of social upheaval. Featuring Ahmed Ben Bally, Julia Brown, Charles De Gaulle, Martin Luther King.
In 1964, a sensation swept through Australian lounge rooms leaving an indelible impression on the children of that generation. That sensation was The Samurai -the first foreign cult television series from Japan to be broadcast in Australia.
Documentary about the Cold War.
The film documents the conversion of young Greek Military Police (ESA) recruits into torturers and touches on the subject of the power of the institution to compel otherwise moral human beings to torture. The documentary examines the processes and methods of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.
Tells the story of how Edward Snowden managed to evade capture by the US. For the first time Snowden tells the story of how he managed to escape so that not to have to spend the rest of his life in an American prison.
Jerry, an ordinary immigrant dad, retired in Orlando, is recruited to be an undercover agent for the Chinese police. Jerry’s family recreates the events on film and his three sons discover a darker truth. True crime meets spy thriller in this genre-bending docufiction hybrid about an immigrant’s search for the American dream. A Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury and Audience Award winner.
Deng Xiaoping's economic and political opening in China. Margaret Thatcher's extreme economic measures in the United Kingdom. Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran. Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland. Saddam Hussein's rise to power in Iraq. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The nuclear accident at the Harrisburg power plant and the birth of ecological activism. The year 1979, the beginning of the future.
Made at the height of 'cold war' paranoia, this drama-documentary shows the work of the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation, who's duties included the issuing of public warnings of any nuclear missile strike and the subsequent fallout.
President Mikhail Gorbachev recounts the end of the Cold War and the reduction of nuclear arms.
The code to unlocking this feature documentary is 1949, the year the director was born, and also the year of the return of Soviet repressions to Latvia. The film tells a very personal story against the background of less visited historic events – the death of director’s father due to the KGB repressions, which is closely linked to the devious game Soviet Latvia’s KGB played against Swedish-British-American spy agencies.
Gorbachev believed that it was impossible to achieve a successful economy until the tensions of the Soviet Union continued with the Western countries, and especially the US, so that their high priority was to tame down, establish relations and negotiate with the Americans.
"McCarthy" chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who came to power after a stunning victory in an election no one thought he could win. Once in office, he declared that there was a vast conspiracy threatening America — emanating not from a rival superpower, but from within. Free of restraint or oversight, he conducted a crusade against those he accused of being enemies of the state, a chilling campaign marked by groundless accusations, bullying intimidation, grandiose showmanship and cruel victimization. With lawyer Roy Cohn at his side, he belittled critics, spinning a web of lies and distortions while spreading fear and confusion. After years in the headlines, he was brought down by his own excesses and overreach. But his name lives on linked to the modern-day witch hunt we call “McCarthyism.”
In the documentary Last To Know political prisoners, sent to jail for openly opposing the East German regime that existed until the German reunification in 1990, talk about their times of trial and their lives today. Neither they, nor their families have come to terms with what happened.