Writing
How did the Soviet Union impose its communist ideology on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II? The story of how, from 1945 until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, these countries were gradually subjected to the totalitarian Soviet yoke.
After one of the most shocking presidencies in history, Donald Trump's top advisers and the leaders who clashed with him lift the lid on the critical moments of his foreign policy.
A new documentary series chronicling the decisions that have shaped Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past two decades.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.
1945, the war is over. Defeated Germany is divided into four zones of occupation by the Allies. The French obtain the Palatinate, with Baden-Baden as its capital. Hansgerd Schulte, aged 12 when the French arrived, Jean and Colette Nurdin, teachers sent to a country in ruins, and philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin testify. Author of "L'An zéro de l'Allemagne", Morin took part in the denazification of the country, which had endured twelve years of Hitler's dictatorship.
Dark fears over the North Pole. Long sheltered from large-scale industrial exploitation, the Arctic is now at risk of becoming the last El Dorado for major oil companies. This, combined with the melting of ice caused by global warming, poses enormous ecological risks: the impact of an oil spill, for example, would be incomparably more serious in this extreme climate than in any other part of the world.
Ambroise Vollard's fabulous collection of modern artworks had an incredible fate after the art dealer's death in 1939.
In August 1999, Vladimir V. Putin, head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, was appointed Prime Minister. On December 31st of that year, Boris Yeltsin announced that Putin would succeed him as President of the Russian Federation. How Putin Came to Power traces the stunningly rapid ascension of this political unknown to leadership of the Kremlin.
Spetsnaz is the Russian for Special Forces. In this series this highly secretive organisation will be laid bare. Since the mid-seventies the unit has seen active service in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and the crime-ridden streets of Moscow. The films follows some of the different units on operations in Chechnya, Angola and Moscow, as well as their competitive selection process. This film delves inside the domestic counter-terrorism unit ALPHA GROUP, the KGB's foreign commando force, VYMPEL and the special police commandos, OMON. For the first time, our cameras record how new candidates to Spetsnaz units are put through their paces at Balashikha, the joint KGB/Interior Ministry training centre outside Moscow. We will get to know the men and women who aspire to make the transition from regular soldier / policeman to fully-fledged Spetsnaz.
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The recent democratic revolutions throughout Eastern Europe—Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and the Ukraine in 2004—all seemed to follow a quick and easy pattern: the exposure of rigged elections, followed by massive street protests, and a regime that collapsed without a fight. But THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTIONARY HANDBOOK reveals the lengthy and meticulous preparations behind these seemingly spontaneous demonstrations, showing how modern marketing techniques have combined with revolutionary politics to transform the region's governments.
For years, looted cultural property has been flooding the legal market with impunity. Investigation into a new economic, cultural, and diplomatic war.
A popular trend among Russian oligarchs is to purchase works of art. Why? It's a way to get into the Kremlin's good graces, to gild their image…and to cover up the origin of their fortunes, often acquired in the shadow of post-Soviet power. Following a group of newly-minted collectors as they attempt to follow in the steps of well-known collectors of the early 20th-century, Tania Rakhmanov's powerful documentary Art and Oligarchs depicts a Russia where art, easy money, and an authoritarian state co-exist.
