Torre David, a 45-story office tower in Caracas, was almost complete when it was abandoned following the death of its developer and collapse of the Venezuelan economy. Today, it is the improvised home of more than 750 families, living in an extra-legal occupation that some call a vertical slum.
We live in a world dominated by crisis, imperialist war and exploitation. We're told there is no alternative to cuts, privatisation, hunger and homelessness. The Bolivarian Revolution illustrates what can be achieved when governments and people working together, put human need before capitalist profits. Despite Chavez's death in 2013, the process is being built every day by President Maduro and millions of Venezuelans working to create a society built on collective socialist organisation and production. Venezuela provides an inspiring example of how the fight against austerity can develop into a fight for socialism. This film takes you on that journey through the barrios, universities and workplaces to meet the political activists, students and workers who are changing their future. Alongside the achievements of socialist Cuba, Venezuela shows that not only is another world possible, but this world is being built today in Latin America.
The portrait of the former news editor of STV, who created a "positive image of Slovakia" during the reign of Vladimír Mečiar, reveals how the post-totalitarian mechanisms of television manipulation worked.
Alessandro is a young immigrant of Italian origin, with a difficult past, who, after leaving his country of origin and moving permanently to Italy, finds himself in a complex existential dilemma when he is unable to converse with Pietro, his boyfriend, who has a vision of the world completely different from his. Thus a clash of different realities starts that can ruin everything. "Floating In The Liquid" is the first part of the "Trilogy of Work", written and directed by Vinicius Bellemo.
Climate change is among the world’s greatest challenges. As a small Caribbean island, Cuba is disproportionately affected by climate change through extreme weather events. Up to 10% of Cuban territory could be submerged by the end of the century, wiping out coastal towns, polluting water supplies, destroying agricultural lands and forcing one million people to relocate. Finding solutions is now essential. In this documentary, Dr Helen Yaffe goes to Cuba to find out about ‘Tarea Vida’ (Life Task), a long-term state plan to protect the population, environment and the economy from climate change. The Cuban approach combines environmental science, natural solutions and community participation in strategies for adaptation and mitigation. Produced by DaniFilms with Dr Helen Yaffe from the University of Glasgow for the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
The history of Camp Kinderland, founded in the 1920s to provide Jewish children an escape from the hot New York City summers.
Frontline examines Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez chronicling his rise to power and offering insights into his personality, policies and his shrewd use of the media.
No system don't allow to person to do work which loves, knows and finally to achieve succes in the world. If we will try along our life to follow rules of system we people neither can be happy nor to achieve succes.
Shot in 1983–84 and focusing on the work of the Historical Institute, this film witnesses how Nicaraguans are recovering their history, the memory of Sandino’s struggle, to transform their sense of identity.
During the first days after the 1973 Chilean coup d’état, the political leadership of the Popular Unity government was arrested and transferred to Dawson Island, Magallanes Region, extreme south of Chile and the mainland. The wives of the then political prisoners began an incessant effort to find out the whereabouts of their husbands and then try to return them alive. In these circumstances, they meet and spontaneously organize into a group they call the “Dawsonianas.”
A portrait of a remote area in the rural north of Nicaragua facing difficulties with the revolutionary process. It follows Marlon Stuart, the regional FSLN political organiser, at the time of the 1984 elections.
Leon Trotsky is considered one of the most controversial revolutionary figures of his time. Was he a practical revolutionary or a naive idealist? On the practical side, he was the mastermind behind the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, and was totally ruthless during the ensuing Civil War. As an idealist, he was committed to the pursuit of international revolution, but created many political enemies. After Lenin's death, Trotsky lost in a power struggle with Stalin, and later was expelled from the Communist Party. Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, eventually finding refuge in Mexico. In 1940, Stalin ordered his assassination, and Trotsky died after being struck in the head with an ice-pick. History records that Trotsky was a master theoretician, a skillful propagandist and a brilliant orator.
The film gives the history of Venezuela from 1989 to 2004 and then explores some of the projects sponsored by the Bolivarian government, including the financing of cooperatives as a way of building the Socialism of the 21st century.
The isolated, hermit kingdom of the DPRK is shrouded in secrecy, It's nearly impossible to get any reliable information from behind the bamboo curtain. Nonetheless, every week, on T.V. and online, we are bombarded by the bizarre media-spectacle of North Korea. From nuclear apocalypse and prison camps to banned sarcasm and compulsory identical haircuts - any shred of information regarding North Korea becomes a viral media hit, regardless of how dubious the story is. But that's all about to change. Two Aussie boys decided to take matters into their own hands and go to North Korea to find out the truth for themselves. Join us as we look past the click-bait and unpack the forces behind the way our media represents the "Democratic People's Republic of North Korea".
Ilya Kabakov is considered one of the most important contemporary artists worldwide. Born and raised in the Ukraine in the period between Stalin and Gorbatschow he left the country in the 80s. In his Installations and his numerous paintings Kabakov creates a world of its own, which leaves the heaviness of socialist and post-socialist life far behind. The film links Ilya Kabakovs artistic spaces with insights into Russian everyday life, which itself sometimes appears like an installation by the artist.
A documentary on the rise and fall of Project Cybersyn, an attempt at a computer-managed centralized economy undertaken in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende.
History of US labor movements and their suppression. It includes sections on the American Constitution; the Civil War draft riots; Reconstruction; Industrialization; the evolution of the police; the robber barons; early American labor unions; and major mid-to-late 19th Century labor events including the uprising of 1877, the Haymarket Affair, the Homestead strike and the New Orleans General Strike. The introduction examines the West Virginian coal wars of the early 20th Century, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain.
"My Socialist Home" is a documentary film exploring the significance of gender in the constitution of domestic space in the socialist and postsocialist state.
In the period 1891-1927, Henriette Roland Holst goes through a dramatic development. As an aspiring poet from an affluent bourgeois milieu she throws herself, full with idealism and conviction, into the labour movement. Within the various socialistic parties however, a fierce battle on direction takes place, wherein Henriette has trouble finding her place. After returning disillusioned from a trip to the Soviet Union, she does not feel at home in any leftist party. Later she will recollect on this period in her biography "Het vuur brandde voort" (translation: "The fire rages on"). The film reconstructs this period with the use of old film material combined with texts by Henriette Roland Holst herself: fragments from letters, poems, speeches and books, sparingly supplemented with personal commentary by the filmmaker.