Social & External
Historians and engineers investigate how Allied forces conspired to destroy Hitler's "supergun".
"Our Cities Must Fight" is a civil defense film that was produced for the U.S. government to illustrate the importance of not abandoning urban centers during an atomic bombing. The film cautions that doing so would make it easier for the invading "enemy."
World War II, June 1940. France has fallen and suffers the relentless boot of Nazi Germany. But Algeria, the prized French colony in North Africa, remains part of the territory controlled by the Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain. A strict colonial order is maintained: the French of European origin rule, while local Jews are stripped of French citizenship and discrimination against the mainly Muslim population increases.
In 1914, the Czech architect Jan Letzel designed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima Center for the World Expo, which has turned into ruins after the atomic bombing in August 1945. “Atomic Dome” – all that remains of the destroyed palace of the exhibition – has become part of the Hiroshima memorial. In 2007, French sculptor, painter and film director Jean-Gabriel Périot assembled this cinematic collage from hundreds of multi-format, color and black and white photographs of different years’ of “Genbaku Dome”.
Annita Malavasi was just 22 when the Germans occupied Italy, their former allies, in 1943. As a partisan in the Italian resistance named “Laila”, she moved throughout the Apennines with and between fighting units, delivering information, transporting weapons, and taking part in battles. She spent over a year in the Apennines, fighting against the German occupation. At the same time, she had to assert herself against the men of the mountain villages. By the end of the war, Laila had risen among the ranks to become one of the few female commanders in the Italian resistance. This film chronicles the story of a lifelong struggle for emancipation that began with the battle for Italy’s liberation from fascism. Laila and her two comrades, Gina “Sonia” Moncigoli and Pierina “Iva” Bonilauri talk about their time in the Resistenza and what it meant to them and many other women.
A young filmmaker joins a tour of WWII veterans from the 29th Infantry through celebrations surrounding the 70th anniversary of D-Day in a quest to better know her late grandfather.
On July 4th, 1946, the crowd in Kielce, Poland, slaughtered forty-two Jews and wounded many others. Forty years later, in 1987, Marcel Łoziński visited those places and met some witnesses of the carnage.
An unclassified US Navy introductory training film detailing the duties and training required of radio operators (aka radiomen).
Irina was only 3 years old when her mother, a worker at the Kirov Plant, decided to evacuate her from Leningrad. Working tirelessly at the tank production plant for weeks without a day off, her mother had no one to help care for her child. However, the train Irina was commuting in came under Nazi shelling. She was under the rubble for a day before she was rescued. Thus, the girl remained with her mother, enduring the most terrifying months in a city besieged by the Nazis. This is just one story among thousands of heroic Leningrad citizens. Despite hunger and constant shelling, they managed to donate 144 tons of blood over the years of the blockade to aid injured soldiers on the front lines, and never ceased the production of guns, which the soldiers of the Soviet Army desperately needed against the Nazis. In our new documentary, commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade, witness the unwavering resilience of Leningraders like Irina and her mother.
In 1948, a group of World War II pilots volunteered to fight for Israel in the War of Independence.
In August 1961, a few railway cars and barbed wire divided East Germany from West. It was a barrier that would be extended and become increasingly more sophisticated, a technological counter to each escape attempt. Computer imagery reconstructs how the Berlin Wall grew from a meager obstacle to a 97 mile barrier of concrete slabs, watchtowers and guards.
The gripping story of Britain's most extraordinary double agent; Eddie Chapman. Chapman duped the Germans so successfully he was awarded their highest honour, the Iron Cross, the only UK citizen ever to have received one.
The sinking of the German fleet interned at Scapa-Flow (Orkney Islands), June 21, 1919. We know that one of the stipulations of the armistice signed with Germany on November 11, 1918 was that that power's surface warships were to be "immediately decommissioned and interned in neutral or Allied ports, and remain there under the supervision of the Allies and the United States, guard detachments only being maintained on board". In fact, all the ships designated by the Allies - 11 battleships, 5 battlecruisers, 7 light cruisers and 50 destroyers - had, a few days after the armistice, been assembled in Scapa-Flow Bay, in the center of the Orkney archipelago, i.e. north of Scotland, and had remained there ever since, under the supervision of the English naval authorities, but under the effective authority of German Admiral von Reuter.
A famous documentary about the Peugeot factory in Sochaux in the 1970s. In this region, everything is owned by Peugeot: homes, stores, schools and leisure - there is no escaping it. The production line dictates the rhythm of everyday life: a horrible machine, draining workers' energy and hope.
