Hugo Chavez was a colourful, unpredictable folk hero who was beloved by his nation’s working class. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and proved to be a tough, quixotic opponent to the power structure that wanted to depose him. When he was forcibly removed from office on 11 April 2002, two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace.
Cruz Quinal, "the mandolin king," lives near Cumana in a mountain valley surrounded by sugarcane fields. Perpetuating 16th century Spanish traditions of guitar-making, Cruz fashions such musical instruments as cuatros, marimba, escarpandola, and his own creation, a mandolin with two fretboards. He is an accomplished musician as well. In this moving portrait, Cruz compares himself to a decaying colonial church across the street: revered yet neglected, the village altar stands, paint peeling, under the open sky.
Imagen de Caracas was an experimental film spectacle, directed by Jacobo Borges and Mario Robles in 1968 for the 400 anniversary of the foundation of Caracas. It needed more than 48768 meters of film and 5000 actors.
In 1969, the Renovación Universitaria movement and the subsequent raid on the Central University of Venezuela by the government of Rafael Caldera, triggered a strong wave of protest in the Institutes of Higher Education in Venezuela. This documentary collects part of the events that took place in the city of Mérida, Mérida State, where the University of the Andes is located.
Trade union leader Manuel Taborda, a pioneer of workers' organisations in the oil industry, recounts his experiences and those of his colleagues from 1920 to 1936, with an emphasis on the struggles against foreign companies and the government.
Río Negro is the struggle of two men, Osuna and Funes, hungry for power and wealth in a small town in Venezuela, during the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez
1780, a group of slaves flee from a sugar cane hacienda. As they are pursued by Don Manuel Aguirre, obsessed landowner who has fixed his eyes on Azu, the beautiful slave with an ancestral destiny.
First they were called 'Guest-workers', then, foreigners and now 'Allah's Daughters Without Rights'. BERLINER is a documentary film that exposes assumptions about, and issues for, women of Turkish background living in Berlin: navigating wearing (or not wearing) the headscarf, a classist education system and sensationalist media stories about their lives. BERLINER explores the lives of first, second and third generation women and their real struggles, as Muslims, and as part of the largest minority group in Berlin: post-war, post-Wall and post 9/11.
A true icon of British history, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) laid the foundations of modern nursing. A beautiful tribute to a pioneer whose integrity, selflessness and zeal are to be admired.