A provoking film on the place of women.
Blind Bombing, Filmed by a Bat (2020)
During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.
Unsettled History: America, China, and the Doolittle Tokyo Raid (2022)
Doolittle's Raiders pull off a one-way bombing run over Tokyo and ditch their planes in and along the coast of China, where they are rescued by Chinese villagers, guerrillas, and missionaries. That generosity triggers horrific retaliation by the Japanese that claims an estimated quarter-million lives and prompts comparisons to the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking. The memory of the Raiders and their rescuers is kept alive by their children and grandchildren.
Date With History: Hiroshima (1965)
A reconstruction using archive film of the bombing of Hiroshima, followed by a discussion of the main issues by Ludovic Kennedy and Group-Captain Cheshire.
4 and 20 Fit Girls (1940)
Flock to your local keep fit class - there's a war on and Britain needs its citizens in tip-top shape.
Mrs. T. and Her Cabbage Patch (1941)
Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner's vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of "wartime steaks".
Pull of Gravity (NaN)
North Philadelphia, PA – Kev, El and Andy are three men united by one struggle: they are trying to defy gravity. As part of the 700,000 prisoners released into society every year, they find themselves faced with a chilling outlook: 67% of ex-offenders re-offend within three years. What explains this invisible force that keeps former inmates in a seemingly unending cycle of incarceration? Filmed on the street over the course of two years, Pull of Gravity is an intimate portrait of these three men that confronts head-on the gritty details of lives cut short by poverty and drugs, where dealing is seen as the only route to economic prosperity, where using offers an escape from powerlessness, and where prison is too often the next stop. The film’s unfiltered lense captures its subjects as they lay bare their stories, fears, and tentative dreams.
As If It Were Yesterday (1980)
Documents the little-known heroism of the Belgian Resistance who, during the Nazi occupation, hid over 4,000 Jewish children, rescuing them from deportation and extermination, , often risking their own lives. Directed by Myriam Abramowicz and Esther Hoffenberg, children of parents who spent the war in hiding, the film inspired the creation of The Hidden Child, a world-wide network of hidden children, which, for three decades, has organized reunions of hidden children with the families who hid them in Belgium during WWII.
The Other Daughter (NaN)
unravels the hidden struggles between mothers and daughters across generations.
Fyra dagar som skakade Sverige - Midsommarkrisen 1941 (1988)
At dawn on June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. On the same morning, Germany demanded permission from the Swedish government to transport 18,000 German soldiers from Norway to Finland across Sweden by railway. This was a difficult problem for the Swedish government. On one hand remaining friendly with Germany at the height of its power, on the other maintaining a strict neutrality. The Swedish cabinet meet in Stockholm to decide upon the best reply to the German demands.
Monte Cassino: The Soldiers' Story (2004)
The months-long battle of Monte Cassino, one of the bloodiest of the second World War, is related by the Germans and Allied troops who fought it. Men of the 1st/4th Essex Battalion and the German paratroop regiment are to the fore here, as they were 60 years ago.
Churchill and the Cabinet War Rooms (NaN)
This drama-documentary evokes what it was like to work closely with Churchill in the Cabinet War Rooms during the dark days of the Blitz and the later bombing raids on London. The programme combines superb archive film from the Imperial War Museum’s vast collection, with atmospheric dramatisations actually filmed inside the Cabinet War Rooms – the real locations from where Churchill led the nation. Includes first-hand accounts which reveal the challenges of working with Britain’s bullish war leader at close quarters.
Copy Book Please (1948)
This short post-war film was made to inform people how to address a letter correctly.
Winston Churchill: A Giant in the Century (2014)
A new look at the public and private life of one of the most important statesmen in the history of Europe: Winston Churchill (1874-1965), soldier, politician, writer, painter, leader of his country in the darkest hours, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a myth, a giant of the 20th century.
The Runaway (2007)
The extraordinary life story of former Auschwitz prisoner no. 918, Kazimierz Piechowski, who organized one of the most amazing escapes from the camp.