bad politics / chapter 03 ~COMMUNISM
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- DirectorVsevolod PudovkinStarsVera BaranovskayaNikolay BatalovAleksandr ChistyakovA story about a family torn apart by a worker's strike. At first, the mother wants to protect her family from the troublemakers, but eventually she realizes that her son is right and the workers should strike.
- DirectorEsfir ShubStarsMikhail AlekseyevAlexei BrusilovNikolai ChkheidzeIn May 1913 the Romanov Dynasty celebrates its 300th anniversary at the Russian throne. The last emperor in the long line is Tsar Nicholas II. He rules over a country with huge social and economic differences. Russia is for the most part still an agrarian society, but capitalism and its industries are growing. In 1914 Russia gets involved in the First World War. Tsar Nicholas II declares a general mobilization. A vast number of peasants and workers have to go to the front as soldiers. After three years the country is ruined by the war, and there is a shortage of provisions. In February 1917 workers begin striking in the capital, Petrograd. Their protests are soon joined by soldiers. A complete anarchy is threatening the country, when the parliament, called the duma, reorganizes the power structure by forming a new Provisional Government. At the same time the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies forms another ruling body at the City Hall of Petrograd. In this situation Tsar Nicholas II sees no other possibility than to resign from his government. On the 4th of March 1917 he declares his abdication from the throne. The new Provisional Government and its war minister Kerensky continue the war. This presents an opportunity for the Bolsheviks to organize demonstrations and to persuade the workers and soldiers to overthrow the Provisional Government and seize power themselves.
- DirectorGrigoriy KozintsevLeonid TraubergStarsDavid GutmanYelena KuzminaAndrei KostrichkinIn the beginning of the industrial revolution, the Paris Commune was established in 1871 against the rich and the powerful, and violently repressed by the army that remained faithful to a tamer form of Republicanism. How could the love story between a young sales girl and a soldier unable to decide if he was pro or against the radical fashion? Two short months were needed for the answer to be found - in blood and tears, and under rain that washes all past memories. Any day, a New Babylon shop will open with frilly things for the bourgeois girls. The washerwomen will be there to wash them.
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsGünther SimonHans-Peter MinettiErich FranzThis historical-biographical film begins in the first days of November 1918 on the western front. News comes to the soldiers of a revolutionary uprising in Kiel. Young Thälmann, a soldier against his will, would like to join the expanding conflict on the side of his comrades in Hamburg. As the revolution becomes threatened by the betrayal of the right-wing Social Democrats and the splintering of the working class, he nevertheless tries unremittingly to unite the workers. The reactionaries grow ever stronger and the neediness of ordinary people multiplies. In this dire situation, the Hamburg police commissioner would like to block the unloading of a ship full of provisions that were sent from Petrograd as a message of solidarity. But Thälmann prevails in unloading it. The high point and conclusion of the first part of the Thälmann films is established at the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923.
- DirectorKurt MaetzigStarsGünther SimonHans-Peter MinettiKarla RunkehlThe second part of the Ernst Thälmann films encompasses the time period between 1930 and Thälmann's murder in 1944. It shows Thälmann's battle to achieve a united front with all German workers against the National Socialists, his arrest following Hitler's seizure of power and the eleven years of his incarceration, in which he is unwavering in his beliefs until his death. An attempt to free him on the part of his comrades ends disastrously, and a corrupt offer of freedom from Göring himself receives Thälmann's refusal. He must also witness how his brave fellow Socialist Aenne Jansen in the women's prison across from his tragically loses her life during a bombing raid. The second primary character of the film is Aenne's husband Fiete Jansen, who already proved his loyalty to Thälmann's side as a friend and fighter in the first part. As the commander of the Thälmann Battalion, he fights in Spain on the side of the people and later in the ranks of the Red Army toward a speedy end to the war against Fascism.
- DirectorPeter WatkinsStarsMichael RoyJohn NewingStan MercerAn amateur short film which retells the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
- DirectorAgnès VardaStarsMichel PiccoliJuan AlmeidaAlejo CarpentierA photo montage of Cubans filmed by Agnes Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963. The film explores Cuban society and culture post-revolution.
- DirectorKarel VachekStarsAlexander DubcekAntonín NovotnýLudvík SvobodaThe film captures the excited political atmosphere in March 1968 Czechoslovakia when president Antonin Novotny stepped down and Ludvik Svoboda was elected a new president. The then top political figures are filmed during their day to day meetings, often during their personal conversations. Thus a mosaic of shots portraying the spirit of those times is created.
- DirectorJan NemecStarsGene MoskowitzA unique document of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the movie was begun as a documentary about the liberalization of Czechoslovakia and then became a record of the entry of Russian tanks into Prague. The only filmed footage of the Soviet invasion, it was seen by more than 600 million people when broadcast on television, and it was the first information that the Soviet Army had not been "invited" in. The film also includes never-before-seen scenes from the Prague Spring before the invasion.
- DirectorJaromil JiresStarsJosef SomrJana DítetováLudek MunzarIn the 1950's, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.
- DirectorCosta-GavrasStarsYves MontandSimone SignoretGabriele FerzettiA high-ranking official is forced to confess to high treason.
- DirectorMiguel LittinStarsSalvador AllendeRégis DebrayOn January 4, 1971, an extensive dialogue takes place between the president of Chile Salvador Allende and the French intellectual Regis Debray discuss the Chilean process towards the installation of a socialist government.
- DirectorÁlvaro J. CovacevichStarsSalvador AllendeFidel CastroIn November 1971, Salvador Allende and Fidel Castro chat to each other about revolution, imperialism, oligarchy, underdevelopment, cultural dependency and economics.
- DirectorMichelangelo AntonioniStarsGiuseppe RinaldiA documentary on China, concentrating mainly on the faces of the people, filmed in the areas they were allowed to visit. The 220-minute version consists of three parts. The first part, taken around Beijing, includes a cotton factory, older sections of the city, and a clinic where a Caesarean operation is performed using acupuncture. The middle part visits the Red Flag canal and a collective farm in Henan, as well as the old city of Suzhou. The final part shows the port and industries of Shanghai and ends with a stage presentation by Chinese acrobats.
- DirectorMiguel LittinStarsSalvador AllendeRégis Debray
- DirectorFrancis DeronJean-Paul TchangRené ViénetA Shakespearian story full of noise and fury, but that means something. In the role of the "Grand Helmsman", Mao ZeDong himself, in the role of Madame Mao, famous actress Lan Ping, aka Jian Qing, as closest comrade in arms, traitor Lin Piao. Co-star-ring the vanished glories of the "Gang of Four". In the role of the proletariat, the Worker XXX. The costumes, the make-up, the gala dinners were kindly provided by the Maoist bureaucracy. Historical tricks: Third International, American imperialism, Jean Chesneaux, the Maoist bureaucracy, etc. The directors thank the People's Liberation Army for its invaluable assistance in eliminating the traitor Lin Piao. As writer Simon Leyes said: "The film gives us back the hysterical liturgies and medieval thaumaturgies of the cult of Mao".
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsSimone SignoretJorge SemprúnDavos HanichFrench essay film focusing on global political turmoil in the 1960s and '70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America.
- DirectorHarun FarockiAndrei UjicaStarsIon CaramitruElena CeausescuNicolae CeausescuThis documentary uses news footage and amateur video to paint a vivid picture of Romania's 1989 revolution and the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
- DirectorMichael AptedStarsJinming ZhangYiming HuangYi-fen KanThe film is a documentary about the demonstrations of students in Peking on the 4th of June 1989 for more democracy in the People's Republic which were ended by army forces. The story is told from students point of view.
- StarsWill LymanWei-Kuo ChiangMo Wen-HuaChronicling China's tumultuous 20th century through rare archival footage and eyewitness accounts. Covers civil war between Mao and Chiang, Mao's attempts to forge a new China, Deng's market reforms after Mao's death.
- DirectorAleksey GermanStarsYuriy TsuriloNina RuslanovaJüri Järvet Jr.Late winter 1953. The lives of nearly half the planet are in Stalin's hands.
- DirectorGeramie BarméRichard GordonCarma HintonStarsNanyang LiRui LiShao-Chi LiuAbout the shifting, unpredictable currents behind the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this documentary shows the various phases of the 12 years from 1964 through the purging of the Gang of Four at the end of 1976, with some retrospective information about the Long March and the 1958 Great Leap forward. It is built around contemporary interviews with survivors of three families: The most prominent is Liu Shaoqi, the President of China until 1967 & the highest ranking target of the revolution, his wife, Wang Guangmei and his daughter Liu Ting. The most complete coverage was given to a former secretary to Mao, Li Rui, who was banished when he questioned the Great Leap forward. He was rehabilitated in the early 60's, but not brought back into the Party and was banished again when the Cultural revolution started. Li's daughter Li Nanyang who was 11 or 12 when Li Rui was first imprisoned, was a staunch supporter of the Cultural Revolution, but she was never allowed to join the Party because of her father's background. Both daughters' reactions to and discomfort with their fathers was a major thread. This film also highlights the social pressure and Li Nanyang's loss of face among her student peers, which lasted until her father was rehabilitated in 1979. The third family was middle class and capitalist before the 1949 revolution and was therefore suspect. The older brother, Yu Luoke who was refused entry to university, asserted that the revolution was going astray by focusing on the family background of students. His poster asking for equal treatment for everyone, no matter what their family background was celebrated for several months, but then he was arrested and finally executed in 1970. His brother, Yu Luowen now still does not know the whole story, but can tell of how their paper was shut down when the winds changed in 1968. Another thread focused on two teenaged Red Guards, and their disillusionment with the violence that developed after the first few months of the Cultural Revolution.
- DirectorAndrew MoodyJamie PearceStarsEthan GutmannAlbert HoAnnie YangAn expose of Genocide taking place in China against the spiritual movement Falun Gong, which was incorrectly defined by the CCP as an 'evil cult'. Survivors of slave labour, brainwashing, torture and attempted organ harvesting combine with eminent experts, and an investigative journalist, to deliberate on this contentious subject that increasingly involves the West.
- DirectorAndrei UjicaStarsNicolae CeausescuElena CeausescuStefan AndreiThe film explores the image of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu using unknown official footage from the Romanian National Television and National Film Archives.
- DirectorRaoul PeckStarsAugust DiehlStefan KonarskeVicky KriepsThe early years of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Jenny Marx, between Paris, Brussels and London.