Documentaries

Mao's death was followed by a very short period of freedom of expression in China. Known as the "Beijing Spring", it was part of Deng Xiaoping’s desire to distance himself from the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution.

A brick wall near Tiananmen Square in Beijing briefly became the site of a democracy movement after Mao's death in 1976. People travelled from all over China to put up posters on this "Democracy Wall". They demanded accountability for the tens of thousands of people murdered and imprisoned during Mao's Cultural Revolution.

At the same time, a group of former factory workers founded the art group "Stars" — among them, the young Ai Weiwei. They exhibited critical works on the wall, including abstract paintings and sculptures in which they settled accounts with the Cultural Revolution. Wei Jingsheng was arrested for publishing an essay in which he called Deng Xiaoping a dictator. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The members of the artists' group Stars, however, succeeded in recording the secret trial on tape. They published the trial‘s transcript on the Wall of Democracy, garnering worldwide attention: even the New York Times reported on it.

When the traditional National Day military parade was canceled because the country was still officially mourning Mao's death, the Stars art collective decided to organize a parade on their own. They bid goodbye to their families and friends, as they risked their lives to fight for freedom of expression and art. Deng Xiaoping used violence against the protesters and increased censorship. The Wall of Democracy was abolished, and many of the activists and artists were sentenced to prison or forced into exile. It was the end of the "Beijing Spring".

Filmmaker Chi Xiaoning documented this period of revolt on 16mm film. When he was arrested, he managed to save the material by destroying blank film reels in front of the police instead of the originals. Chi's family and friends hid the footage for decades. In this documentary, the footage is shown publicly for the first time.

The project is a 360-degree VR documentary created as a co-production between Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The film was co-directed by Ukrainian film producer Ivanna Khitsinska and Dutch filmmaker Sjoerd Swierstra. It was produced by Justin Karten from the Netherlands-based Scopic Lab, a Virtual Reality Studio, Bram Crols from Belgium, the Associate Director, and Khitsinska’s WAYA Production.

Filmed across Ukraine in 2024, “Shelter” provides an intimate look at life during wartime through the space of bomb shelters. The film immerses viewers in locations where people hide from shelling, give birth, listen to music, prepare for battle, and say goodbye to loved ones.

TURN IT AROUND: THE STORY OF EAST BAY PUNK spans over 30 years of the California Bay Area’s punk music history with a central focus on the emergence of Berkeley's inspiring 924 Gilman Street music collective. Directed by Corbett Redford, narrated by Iggy Popand executive produced by Green Day, Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk is a sprawling telling of this vibrant story, drawing from a wide variety of voices and viewpoints and featuring the music of many of the most famous and infamous punk bands ever.

The URL is a magnetic link to a torrent I grabbed off of The Pirate Bay. You'll need a BitTorrent client for that. You can also watch it from The Internet Archive. There are many uploads of the film on youtube.

The film is Creative Commons-licensed.

A Chinese company builds a road in Congo. Lots of interesting intercultural exchanges and insights into how development aid works in practice.

HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that following the global economic crises of the 1970s, governments, financiers and technological utopians gave up on trying to shape the complex "real world" and instead established a simpler "fake world" for the benefit of multi-national corporations that is kept stable by neoliberal governments.

Deserved it! just watched and it was really good!

Mr Nobody against Putin follows Talankin in his job at a school in Karabash a poor mining town near the Ural Mountains. While recording his students, Talankin also documents the Putin administration movements to control public perception during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Nobody_Against_Putin