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.
Rich Hall
as
Since Russia was brought to its knees in the 1990s by crippling debt and the grip of the oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has made it his mission to return superpower status to Russia. While not partisan to Putin's wrongs, this insightful doc examines the logic and motivations of Putin's vilified regime, and why he is so loved in his homeland.
Documentary about the Intervision Song Contest in general and the 1980 edition in particular. Focuses on Finland's participation and the shipyard strikes in Gdansk at the time.
A Texas congressman sets a series of events in motion when he conspires with a CIA operative to aid Afghan mujahideen rebels fighting the Soviets.
It’s the last dictatorship of Europe, caught in a Soviet time-warp, where the secret police is still called the KGB and the president rules by fear. Disappearances, political assassinations, waves of repression and mass arrests are all regular occurances. But while half of Belarus moves closer to Russia, the other half is trying to resist…
Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Jewish dissidents plot to hijack an empty plane and escape the USSR. Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane. 45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, leaders of the group, "heroes" in the West but "terrorists" in Russia, even today.
Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. A legend says that she returned to Earth as a ghost and still roams the streets of Moscow alongside her free-drifting descendants. While shooting this film, the directors little by little realised that they knew the street dogs only as part of our human world; they have never looked at humans as a part of the dogs’ world.
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
Soviet Lithuania in 1972. A young theatre actress is trying to make a difference and tell the forbidden story of repression in a play.
The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—the nuclear standoff with the USSR sparked by the discovery by the Americans of missile bases established on the Soviet-allied island of Cuba.
This film discusses conditions in the Soviet Union, including party activity and influence, the shortage of consumer goods, the roles of children and women, the status of religion, and the purpose of Soviet realist art.
March 1965. In the heat of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR are competing for supremacy in space. What both superpowers aim for in this race, is to be the first to have a man walk in outer space. To accomplish that, no price is too high and no risk is too great. Now it’s up to the unlikely duo of a seasoned war veteran and a hot-headed test-pilot to fulfill this mission. Two men in a tiny spaceship, without proper testing, facing the complete unknown. They were supposed to do what no man has done before—and no man imagined what would happen next.
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.
Mothers and doctors speak out about the grim reality of life in the five years following the Chernobyl disaster. In children, doctors witnessed a massive increase of recurrent infections, baldness, as well as leukaemia and other cancers.
This documentary follows the election campaigns of a journalist, a local crime boss, a formerly exiled oligarch, and a local access TV host as they compete for a spot in the Moscow Central Constituency, in Russia's first free elections since 1917
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
Documentary footage of late 1950s Russia covers such cities and towns as Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Yalta, the Black Sea, Kharkov, Sochi, Sukumi, Gori, Bukhara, Samarkand, Frunzo and Siberia.
This 1982 film explains the KGB infiltration of America. Who they are, what they are doing, and how well they have infiltrated North America.
In a small village of Communist-era Romania a young couple wish to marry, but Joseph Stalin dies the night prior to their wedding ceremony forcing the bride and groom to marry in silence.
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.