11/5/2022
Black Panthers (1968)
28 min | France, USA | English
Director: Agnès Varda
A short documentary filmed during the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California, around the meetings organised by the Black Panther Party to free Huey Newton, one of their leaders arrested for the murder of a police officer. The Black Panthers succeeded in turning his trial into a political debate.
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18/5/2022
The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974)
62 min | Lebanon, France | Arabic
Director: Heiny Srour
In the late 1960s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, feminist guerrilla movement. Heiny Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, to reach the conflict zone and capture this rare record of a now mostly-forgotten war. The Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG)— barefoot, without rank or salary—freed a third of the territory, while undertaking a vast program of social reforms and infrastructure projects—schools, farms, hospitals and roads were built, while illiterate teenage shepherdesses became feminists and eight-year-old schoolchildren learned to practice democracy. A portrait of a liberated society and an exploration of the role of oil in American and British involvement in the Middle East.
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25/5/2022
79 Springs (1969)
25 min | Cuba | Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Santiago Álvarez
An agitprop documentary marking the death of Vietnamese nationalist leader Hồ Chí Minh, using found footage to link his work to worldwide political movements, including the Cuban revolution and resistance within the United States against the Vietnam War.