This film chronicles a 1989 trip made by a group of labor historians to Donetsk, Ukraine after the first mass strike in the USSR since the 1920s. Prepared to videotape interviews with retired workers, they unexpectedly gained access to the coal miners who had just concluded their historic strike. PERESTROIKA FROM BELOW presents the miners' story through their own voices. With passion and remarkable candor, the strikers - often Communist Party members - express their dissatisfaction with their corrupt union, providing sharp contrast to the propaganda films edited into this program. At the workers' last meeting, miners challenge their long-time union boss on vacations, housing, even refrigerators. Demanding accountability, workers attack their leaders for abusing privilege. When they show little remorse, the miners take action.
Ref'at is a judge who is ruling on an important case that witnesses a lot of security interference. Rafiq Al-Henawy has him killed and stages it as a suicide before the ruling.
Otto is turning 65 and a big celebration with relatives and friends is coming up. What does life bring? A comfortable retirement, looking after his beloved grandchildren, lamenting the aches and pains of old age.
Andreas, who is ten, has been brought up by his grandmother. When she dies, he removes a putto from the crucifix placed upon her, puts it in his mouth and does not speak again.
As he gradually turns mad, the dancer Nijinsky evokes the important episodes of his life. In costumes and sets of lush beauty, the divine puppet performs in a final show where the secondary characters are named: Diaghilev, Isadora Duncan, Stravinsky, Auguste Rodin, Léon Bakst.
The boisterous good humor of Jurmala, the nickel-mine owner, is, if anything, only barely dented by the raging battles in Finland before, during and after World War Two.
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
