The term 'free cinema' was coined by critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson in early 1956 when he, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti showed a programme of their short films at the National Film Theatre. Although the name was intended only for that screening, it proved so successful that five more programmes were shown under the same banner between 1956 and 1959. find out more...

A portmanteau film including documentary, dramatised vignettes and archival footage from Fassbinder and ten other directors that holds a mirror up to the Germany of 1977 wrought with political unrest and the terrorist activites of the Red Army Faction. find out more...

The Symbionese Liberation Army may not be immediately recognisable to most of us, but the young woman they kidnapped back in 1973 is. Patty Hearst has become ingrained on the public conscience, the naïve heiress who turned to the dark side, a convert to anti-capitalist revolution. What this fascinating documentary reveals is largely obvious; unrealistic ideals, egos, amateurism, exploitation and this last has little to do with the SLA themselves. You've seen the movie, read the relentless blurb, find out more...

I Am Cuba is an epic poem to Communist kitsch - a dramatic journey though the decadence of Batista Havana set against the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people. find out more...

Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy, master filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's 'Notre Musique' is a lyrical reflection on war through the ages. The film is structured into three Dantean Kingdoms: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The journey begins in Hell, modern warfare represented by images of battle and devastation gleaned from movies, TV and newsreels. Purgatory consists largely of discussions between writers and journalists drawn to Sarajevo for a literary conference. Finally, Paradise is con find out more...

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The film is based on the life of John Reed, the Communist, journalist, and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days that Shook the World. The film works both as a history of the American left and as an epic romance, between Reed and Louise Bryant, an important feminist and radical journalist in her own right. After involvement with labour and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the 1917 October Revolution and, inspired, return to the US, hoping to find out more...

In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally murdered in Rwanda, the victims being Tutsi and moderate Hutus. One man was tasked by the United Nations with ensuring that peace was maintained in Rwanda - Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire. But unsupported by UN headquarters and its Security Council far away in New York, Dallaire and his handful of soldiers were incapable of stopping the genocide. After ten years of mental tort find out more...

A little known passage of British history - the fate of the black men who volunteered for the King's Men in the American War of Independence. At least the Empire didn't abandon them to the slaver George Washington and his thugs, instead dumping them on the desolate Novia Scotia coastline. But where there's life there's hope and enter the radical Thomas Clarkson's brother, a young naval officer named John, who, energised by their living conditions, collected the remnants and shipped them to Freet find out more...

The extraordinary life of Jean Dominique, an educated Haitian who ran Radio Haiti, which, by broadcasting the truth, provided the focus of opposition to various venomous and corrupt regimes, Papa Doc, Baby Doc, the US run military et al, across a period of over 30 years. Jean is a charismatic protagonist, his personal history colourful not only for his long, evidently satisfying career, his family and his similarly courageous and committed wife Michèle Montas, but for how it intersects with and find out more...