HARVEST OF DESPAIR is the first documentary to be made about “the forgotten holocaust,” the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine. Archival film footage and the riveting testimonies of survivors now living in the U.S. and Canada point to the appalling cause of the famine – a deliberate genocide plan decreed by the Soviet central government for political and economic gain. While their wheat-fields produced abundant grain for export, 25,000 Ukrainians starved to death daily, totalling 5 to 10 million by the end of 1933. Called “one of the greatest cover-ups in history,” the grisly horrors described are still denied by the government today. The film indicts not only the Soviet Union, but a world that permits such things to exist, even today.
Tag: CANADA
Popular idols of the rock music scene – The Rolling Stones, The Stampeders, Whiskey Howl, Alice Cooper, Muddy Waters – are seen and heard in this film. It is a penetrating look at the whole pop music sub-culture and what keeps it alive, filmed in Canada, on and off-stage, and behind the scenes at record companies, radio broadcasting studios, and board rooms where hucksters plan the sales campaigns. The film includes personal interviews in which some of the stars explain what it’s all about and features Alice Cooper hacking a doll to pieces on stage.
After narrowly escaping death in a violent confrontation, a traumatized young woman flees to the mountains, where she wanders aimlessly for days. She is discovered by a man who helps her regain her strength, and who eventually earns her confidence. Amid this idyllic setting they soon fall in love, but their happiness does not last for long- the police are hunting a young woman accused of murder.
A high school graduate named Homer experiences the pains of the generation gap and the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s while growing up in Schomberg, Wisconsin.
Trapped in an abusive marriage, a lovelorn woman begins an affair with a young artist that results in a baby. Living in fear of what would happen if her husband found out about her infidelity, she becomes increasingly unhappy. But when tragedy strikes her infant, she makes a shocking decision about her future.
The film is based on the true story of a senior member of the Polish Politburo and his wife who are both abruptly banished from the party. While they struggle to figure out why, having unusual encounters with people they do not know in the process, things start to take a darker turn when the wife is sent to a mental asylum and their 15-year-old daughter is kidnapped.
Hibakusha is the Japanese word for the survivors of the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This powerful and moving documentary focuses on a few of the eighty hibakusha who journeyed from Japan to New York in June, 1982, to take part in peace demonstrations held to coincide with the Second United Nations Special Session on Disarmament. They came to urge the nations of the world to prevent nuclear war. Instead of concentrating on the physical suffering of the victims, the film reveals the mental anguish of the hibakusha, who are still haunted by nightmares.
Learning of her mother’s serious illness, Isabel returns to her family’s farm on the Gaspé Peninsula. Her mother dies before she can get there, and when her aged uncle Matthew Asks her to stay on and help him with the farm, she reluctantly agrees. She finds herself haunted by memories of early years (domestic violence, incest and the mysterious deaths of her grandfather, who died in a freak accident, and her father and brother, who both drowned at sea) in a house full of eerie sights and sounds.