The Insurrectionary People's Picture Show Theater

The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. The group's goal was to "bring the (Vietnam) War home" through acts of militant tactics.

Anarchism has historically gained the most support and influence in Spain, especially in the seventy or so years before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Here is the history of the Spanish anarchist movement from the words of those who where involved.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War were major watersheds of the 20th Century. Now, for the first time, the story of this bloodsoaked time is being told in full color. New footage from the battlefields, expert testimonies, and exciting colorized archives help to unfold the dramatic story of the Communist rise and seizure of power in 1917.

This powerful two-part series argues that the Russian Revolution was not so much perverted by Stalin, as it was rotten from the start. This was no idealistic uprising of the masses, but a brutal coup d’etat carried out by a handful of megalomaniacs. Almost overnight an entire society was destroyed and replaced with one of the biggest and most radical social experiments ever seen. Within a generation, millions would be killed and almost 1/3 of the world’s population would be living in the shadow of communism.

The film focuses on the sailors from the island naval base of Kronstadt, who took up the revolutionary cause with bloody enthusiasm in 1917 only to have their dreams shattered when Lenin creates a brutal police state. The sailors denounce their former ally and face the Red Army in a final desperate battle. Much of the history relating to the role of these sailors has been recently unearthed and is told here on film for the first time.

The National Film Board of Canada (well, what's left of it anyway)
has started a new website, nfb.ca that showcases its back catalog of films in the you tube format.

The following film is among many to be found on the site.

Titled "Bethune" it covers the life of the famous lung surgeon and communist. It is a Donald Brittain film, from 1964 and has a run time of 58min 38 sec.

The Ten Point Program was as follows:

1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities' education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
2. We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people.
3. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, and all oppressed people inside the United States.
4. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.
5. We want full employment for our people.
6. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community.
7. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
8. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.
9. We want freedom for all black and oppressed people now held in U. S. Federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology.

The beginning of this video, is an audio narrative by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, with images of her, as well as a quote of hers about women in the I.W.W. This Narrative is commonly used on recordings to introduce the song "The Rebel Girl" in which Joe Hill dedicated to Elezabeth Guley Flynn. The second part, is the song "The Rebel Girl" Writen by Joe Hill, and performed by Hazel Dickens. I have used images of women who were (or are) members of the IWW. Only two were "supporters" and not members of the I.W.W. (Emma Goldman and Charlotte Anita Whitney).

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), directed by Errol Morris, is an American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The original score is by Philip Glass.

Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts his life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to his being employed as Secretary of Defense and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson — emphasizing the war's brutality under their regimes, and how he was hired as secretary of defense, despite limited military experience.

This organic grocery store in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada is a thriving business with no bosses at all! Find out what they like about being a worker co-op and how the joys and sacrifices make every day worthwhile.

Thanks to Heather H for this.

This film, shot by 100 amateur camera operators, tells the story of the enormous street protests in Seattle, Washington in November 1999, against the World Trade Organization summit being held there. Vowing to oppose, among other faults, the WTO's power to arbitrally overrule nations' environmental, social and labour policies in favour of unbridled corporate greed, protestors from all around came out in force to make their views known and stop the summit. Against them is a brutal police force and a hostile media as well as the stain of a minority of destructively overzealous comrades. Against all odds, the protesters bravely faced fierce opposition to take back the rightful democratic power that the political and corporate elite of the world is determined to deny the little people.

Hat-tip to Roig i Negre Videos for this.

On a July day in 1990, a confrontation propelled Native issues in Kanehsatake and the village of Oka, Quebec, into the international spotlight. Director Alanis Obomsawin spent 78 nerve-wracking days and nights filming the armed stand-off between the Mohawks, the Quebec police and the Canadian army. This powerful documentary takes you right into the action of an age-old Aboriginal struggle. The result is a portrait of the people behind the barricades.

A Place Called Chiapas is a Canadian documentary of first-hand accounts of the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN or the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or Zapatistas) and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the south west Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.

The Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union (Free Worker's Union;abbreviated FAU) is an anarcho-syndicalist labor union initiative in Germany. It is the German section of the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT).

The FAU was then founded in 1977 and has grown consistently all through the 1990s. Now, the FAU consists of just under 40 groups, organized locally and by branch of trade. The federal organization exists in order to coordinate campaigns and actions and for communication purposes. There are 250 to 300 members organized in the various groups.

Here is a video from FAU Berlin during Mayday 2009.

This documentary examines the battle strategies of citizens, scientists, loggers, environmentalists and First Nations people who are fighting over the liquidation of public forests and, with it, a way of life

This documentary-drama tells the story of Ethel MacDonald, a remarkable young woman whose name hit the world headlines during the Spanish Civil War. She was hailed as the Scarlet Pimpernel of the workers revolution but has since become something of a forgotten legend.

Ethel MacDonald (24 February 1909—1 December 1960) was a Glasgow-based Scottish anarchist and activist and, in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, a propagandist on Barcelona Anarchist radio.

Andrew Nellis is an anarcho-syndicalist activist from Ontario. He is one of the lead organizers for the Ottawa Panhandlers Union. Denis Rancourt was a professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa, known for his radical pedagogy. This is a very good interview for Denis Rancourt's radio show The Five O'clock Train. Listen and enjoy!

Andrew Nellis Interviewed by Denis Rancourt for The Five O'clock Train.

This 1979 award-winning film airs a provocative look at the forgotten American history of this most radical of unions, screening the unforgettable and still-fiery voices of Wobbly members--lumberjacks, migratory workers, and silk weavers--in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Eerily echoing current times, THE WOBBLIES boldly investigates a nation torn by naked corporate greed and the red-hot rift between the industrial masters and the rabble-rousing workers in the field and factory. Replete with gorgeous archival footage, the film pays tribute to American workers who took the ideals of equality and free speech seriously enough to die for them. Directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, THE WOBBLIES is a rare and challenging invitation to rethink both past and present through the eyes of an organization largely omitted from memory.

The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists is a 1980 documentary by Steve Fischler and Joel Sucher of Pacific Street Films. It memorializes the story of the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime, and the Jewish anarchist movement of the early 20th century. The movie contained a short interview with a very young Joe Conason. Paul Avrich was a consultant on the film.

As of 2006, AK Press has begun distributing it as part of a double DVD release with Anarchism in America, named after the latter.

Breaking the Spell is a 1999 anarchist documentary, directed by Tim Lewis, Tim Ream, and Sir Chuck A. Rock.

Using amateur camera footage recorded by protesters at the scene of the 1999 WTO protests, it documents the events from the perspective of the anarchists, their opinions of fellow protesters, local politicians, and includes footage which aired nationally on 60 Minutes.

The film is currently distributed by CrimethInc. on the CrimethInc. Guerilla Film Series, Volume One DVD.

The Take is a Canadian documentary film released in 2004 by the wife and husband team of Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis. It tells the story of workers in Buenos Aires, Argentina who reclaim control of a closed Forja auto plant where they once worked and turn it into a worker cooperative, or as could be argued, a working model of anarcho-syndicalism.

The plant closed as a result of the economic policies of the Carlos Menem government under the watchful eye of the International Monetary Fund.

While in bankruptcy protection, the company appeared to be selling off property and inventory to pay creditors – a move which further reduced the chances of the facility returning to production. In an effort to establish their own control, the workers occupied the factory and began a long battle to win the right to operate it themselves, as a cooperative.

Here's another one I would love with some English subtitles.

Lucio is a spanish documentary about famed anarchist Lucio Urtubia. Lucico carried out bank robberies and forgeries throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his most famous forgery being the forgery of Citibank travellers' checks in 1977. This criminal undertaking included 8,000 copies of 25 checks worth 100 dollars each and damaged the bank so severely that its stock price fell. The stolen money was used, as always, in the aid of guerrilla movements in Latin America (Tupamaros, Montoneros, etc) and Europe. In spite of the specularity of the forgery, Urtubia was only sentenced to 6 months in jail thanks to an extra-judicial agreement with Citibank, which dropped the charges in exchange for Urtubia's printing plates. All the time working as a bricklayer in France.