Eastern Europe

Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with sculptors, art historians, gallery and museum directors, this video examines how monuments connect us with the past, how they are destroyed and new ones raised at times of social cataclysm, and how every turning point in society has begun history anew in a struggle with old monuments.

Filmmaker Steven Bognar documents the story of his father, Bela, who, as a young Hungarian idealist, took up arms against Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest in 1956.

Portrays a summer camp on a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea for Bosnian and Croatian children traumatized by the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Predictions of Fire is a revealing study of the controversial and internationally acclaimed Slovenian arts collective NSK, as seen through the lens of 20th century European history.

Chronicles the 500-year history of the Stroganoff family in Russia, showing how the Stroganoffs cultivated their style in everything from architecture, icon painting, and applied art, to home life and even cuisine.

Portrays the efforts of independent journalists in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina who have been fighting for the democratic ideal of a free press during the war which has devastated the former Yugoslavia.

Traces the struggles of five Soviet Jewish Refuseniks and their families, from the origins of their desire to emigrate from the Soviet Union to their recent resettlement in Israel.

In order to facilitate the destruction of Poland's three million Jews, the Nazis forced them to establish Jewish Councils responsible for administration of the Polish ghettos.

Tells the story of the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, which was used by the Nazis during WWII in an elaborate hoax to deceive world opinion about the Third Reich's extermination campaign against the Jews.

Through interviews with contemporary Viennese Jews and rare archival film, this video traces Jewish life in the Austrian capital, chronicling a history of alternating toleration and expulsion dating back to the tenth century.

This historical documentary examines the persecution of Jews in Slovakia during WWII. Surviving members of The Sixth Battalion, a military unit comprised of young Jewish men compelled to do forced labor, recount their own experiences and the persecution of the entire Jewish community during the war in the Slovak State. Records drawn from the archives reveal the extent of the collaboration between the Slovak government and the Nazis.

This compelling docu-drama about the Holocaust, based on the memoirs of Eva Erbenova, recounts from a child's-eye view her experiences as a thirteen-year-old girl in Czechoslovakia during World War II, the only one from her family to survive the war.

Examines the remarkable career of Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), one of the world's greatest inventors, with over 1,000 patents registered in his name.

Examines the life and work of one of the century's most important and original bio- medical scientists, and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Offers a fascinating overview of artistic activity in Croatia during the recent war in the former Yugoslavia, revealing the diversity and vitality of its artists as well as how their work was profoundly influenced by the conflict.

This video offers a fascinating tour through the world's largest repository of Russian art, comprising some 400,000 exhibits covering the thousand-year period of Russian history.

This video features candid interviews with the filmmakers- including Vera Chytilova, Jiri Menzel, Jan Nemec, Ivan Passer, and Jan Sverak, among many others-who created the Czech New Wave.

This video chronicles a crucial period in the life of the great Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), when he left Moscow during WWII for the Kazakhstan capital to film Ivan the Terrible (1943).