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This FitzPatrick Traveltalk short visits the cities of Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakesh in Morocco, as well as the city of Algiers in Algeria.
It is the evocation of a life as brief as it is dense. An encounter with a dazzling thought, that of Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist of West Indian origin, who will reflect on the alienation of black people. It is the evocation of a man of reflection who refuses to close his eyes, of the man of action who devoted himself body and soul to the liberation struggle of the Algerian people and who will become, through his political commitment, his fight, and his writings, one of the figures of the anti-colonialist struggle. Before being killed at the age of 36 by leukemia, on December 6, 1961. His body was buried by Chadli Bendjedid, who later became Algerian president, in Algeria, at the Chouhadas cemetery (cemetery of war martyrs ). With him, three of his works are buried: “Black Skin, White Masks”, “L’An V De La Révolution Algérien” and “The Wretched of the Earth”.
In an age when women were incapable of joining the artistic dialogue, Lilias Trotter managed to win the favour of celebrated critics.
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.
On August 5, 1928, after 2 hours and 32 minutes of racing, the 71st rooster wearing the bib entered the Olympic stadium in Amsterdam. Ahmed El Ouafi Bouguéra wins the gold medal and becomes the first Olympic champion from the African continent. He achieved his feat under the tricolor flag. The start of his real marathon is underway. The history of sport extends to the history of Algeria and France. This documentary retraces the different stages of the life of this great champion, not only the history of sport but also the great story. Archival photographs and interviews mingle with the painted paintings. The series thus once again gives voice to this forgotten hero, one of the great heroes of immigration who defended France for more than a century.
May 8, 1945, the day of victory over Nazism, is also a day of mourning. In Algiers, thanks to demonstrations for victory, the Algerian flag appears for the first time, thus claiming independence. But in Sétif, the standard bearer is shot dead at the head of the procession and a riot breaks out. The colonial massacre that followed would extend to all of Constantine. The commission of inquiry never delivered its conclusions and an amnesty law erased the traces of this savage repression. Fifty years later, the file is open.
The construction of a pipeline from the Sahara to the Mediterranean Sea.
On September 5, 1960, the trial of about twenty French activists from the "Jeanson Network" began, supporters in the metropolis of the action of the Algerian FLN independence activists. But after a few days, the situation was reversed and the trial transformed into a political arena, it was the government, the army, their policy, it was the entire Algerian war whose trial began. Accused, witnesses, lawyers, overflowing a stunned court, transformed the courtroom into a tribune of the opposition. The trial coincided with the publication of the "Manifesto of the 121" on the right to insubordination, signed among others by Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur Adamov, Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, Marguerite Duras, Pierre Boulez, René Dumont, François Chatelet…
Beginning with a promotional reel encouraging farming investments in Algeria and ending with the secret 1950s nuclear tests that France conducted using Algerian prisoners, How Much I Love You appropriates archival footage produced by the French colonial powers in Algeria. Meddour’s approach is disarmingly simple and yet awe-inspiring—his caustic undoing of colonial discourse is underscored by a liberating release of humor.
Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.
When her husband died Soumicha, mother of three, had to earn a living. She became the only woman taxi driver in Sidi Bel-Abbès, Algeria. This film accompanies Soumicha around a city where religious and political violence rages, and records her experiences in a job normally reserved for men.
"Gerboise bleue", the first French atomic test carried out on February 13, 1960 in the Algerian Sahara, is the starting point of France's nuclear power. These are powerful radioactive aerial shots carried out in areas belonging to the French army. Underground tests will follow, even after the independence of Algeria. From 1960 to 1978, 30,000 people were exposed in the Sahara. The French army was recognized recognized nine irradiations. No complaint against the army or the Atomic Energy Commission has resulted. Three requests for a commission of inquiry were rejected by the National Defense Commission. For the first time, the last survivors bear witness to their fight for the recognition of their illnesses, and revealed to themselves in what conditions the shootings took place. The director goes to the zero point of "Gerboise Bleue", forbidden access for 47 years by the Algerian authorities
Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.
This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.
Since the uprising of a pro Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine in 2014, hundreds of women joined the army. Only a few made it to the front line. Filmmaker Masha embeds herself in the war zone to follow the daily life of three of them. By sharing the intimacy of these fighters, Masha soon becomes a victim of this brotherhood conflict jeopardizing this film and her life.
60 years ago, in the Algerian desert, an atomic bomb, equivalent to three or even four times Hiroshima, exploded. Named the “Blue Gerboise”, it was the first atomic bomb tested by France, and of hitherto unrivaled power. This 70 kiloton plutonium bomb was launched in the early morning, in the Reggane region, in southern Algeria, during the French colonial era. If this test allowed France to become the 4th nuclear power in the world, it had catastrophic repercussions. France had, at the time, certified that the radiation was well below the standard safety threshold. However, in 2013, declassified files revealed that the level of radioactivity had been much higher than announced, and had been recorded from West Africa to the south of Spain.
The exceptional portrait of a pacifist general, the only senior officer to have spoken out against torture. This precious testimony still remains censored in France, since no national channel has to date decided to program this documentary. Son and brother of a soldier, General Pâris de Bollardière was destined for a career in arms. He was, for many years, one of the most brilliant representatives of this adventurer career in France, from Narvik to the Algerian War. After fighting in the French maquis, he reached Indochina, where he suddenly found himself in the aggressor's camps. His beliefs are strongly shaken. But it is in Algeria, where the French army practices torture and summary executions, that he takes the big turn. He expresses his contempt to Massu, and is relieved of his command. Until his death in 1986, Jacques de Bollardière fought for world peace, from the Larzac plateaus to the Mururoa atolls.
Sisters of Wrestling paints an intimate portrait of Azaelle, LuFisto and Loue O'Farrell, three ring warriors for whom wrestling is both a passionate love and an outlet from everyday life.
Between 1954-1962, one hundred to three hundred young French people refused to participate in the Algerian war. These rebels, soldiers or conscripts were non-violent or anti-colonialists. Some took refuge in Switzerland where Swiss citizens came to their aid, while in France they were condemned as traitors to the country. In 1962, a few months after Independence, Villi Hermann went to a region devastated by war near the Algerian-Moroccan border, to help rebuild a school. In 2016 he returned to Algeria and reunited with his former students. He also met French refractories, now living in France or Switzerland.
Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.
May 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre. Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
In Libya, an American tank commander, along with a handful of Allied soldiers, tries to defend an isolated well with a limited supply of water from a German Afrika Korps battalion during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
After being freed from a Vietnamese war prison, French Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy is sent to help quell resistance forces in Algeria. With the help of the Capt. Esclavier, who has grown weary of war, and Capt. Boisfeuras, who lives for it, Raspeguy attempts to convert a rugged band of soldiers into a formidable fighting unit, with the promise of marrying a beautiful countess if he's made a general.
Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
Mercenary soldiers Jamie and Drew are hired by a large corporation to liberate Zangaro, a small African nation, from an despot. Havoc ensues.
Kenza and Yaël are two young French women who go to Syria to fight alongside the Kurdish forces. There they meet Zara, a Yezidi survivor. Born in different cultures but deeply united, the women-fighters heal their past wounds and discover their present strength, especially the fear they inspire in their opponents. The three young women soon bound together and become true sisters-in-arms.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
When a high-ranking war planner is captured and held in a German prisoner of war camp, a team of specialists take on the dangerous mission of trying to break him out. Trouble is, he doesn't want to be rescued.
This documentary movie is about the battle of San Pietro, a small village in Italy. Over 1,100 US soldiers were killed while trying to take this location, that blocked the way for the Allied forces from the Germans. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.
An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time — drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Behind the scenes look at fight choreography and action training.
1793, French Revolution. For three years now, Charette, a young man retired from the Royal Navy, has been back home. In the country, the anger of the peasants rumbles: they call on the young retiree to take command of the rebellion. In a few months, the idle sailor becomes a charismatic leader and a shrewd strategist, bringing in his wake peasants, deserters, women, old people and children, of which he makes a formidable army. The fight for freedom has only just begun.
A former fighter reluctantly returns to the life she abandoned in order to help her sister survive the sadistic world of illegal fighting and the maniac who runs it.
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera, and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"
Stars of "The Walking Dead," Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira, walk down memory lane and visit iconic locations where pivotal moments between their characters, Rick and Michonne, were filmed.
