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London Calling: Cold War Letters (2019) #1268
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1 hour. BBC. For over 25 years, the BBC gave voice to the silenced people of East Germany by inviting them to secretly write in to a radio programme called Letters without Signature. Broadcast on the BBC’s German Service, the programme gave voice to ordinary East German citizens who wrote about life under the repressive communist regime. On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this documentary explores an unknown story of the Cold War. It looks at the impact of the Letters without Signature series on both the letter writers in East Germany - who faced jail if discovered - and the producers of the show in London, particularly its mysterious presenter, Austin Harrison. Using never-before-seen Stasi files and recordings, London Calling: Cold War Letters documents the tit-for-tat propaganda war between the Stasi and BBC. It reveals a fascinating world of spies, secret state subterfuge and individual acts of bravery. |
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall with John Simpson (2019) #1268
DOCUMENTARY
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1 hour. BBC. It’s said that journalists write the first draft of history. To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor and longest-serving correspondent, goes back to his reports on what he believes is the most important story he ever covered – the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Back in 1989, John thought this event would change the world for the better, forever. But history has not turned out quite the way he expected. Russia is yet again an enemy of the West, and the Cold War battle that built the Berlin Wall has been replaced with other destabilising global power struggles - even more dangerous and much harder to understand. Three decades on, John wonders if he was wrong to have been so optimistic. Using the anniversary as an opportunity to re-examine how he told the story, John watches the BBC’s extensive archive and talks with historians and other experts to try and understand just how accurate his reporting was. At the heart of the documentary is an intense and personal interview with John. He begins by describing how he grew up in the shadow of the Cold War battle between the capitalist West and the communist East, and how he - like everyone else - believed that this global stand-off would continue for many more decades, ending sooner or later in nuclear war. On 9 November 1989, John, like the rest of the world, in shock at reports that the Berlin Wall’s checkpoints had been opened up, rushed to Berlin to cover the incredible story. With great emotion, John recalls his happiness as he reported from in front of the Wall as Berlin’s people tore it down, until his broadcast was cut off midway by technical failure – giving him by far the most humiliating moment of his long career. After the technical meltdown, John describes how he walked into the crowd feeling utterly depressed. But, surrounded by the thousands of people who had streamed through the checkpoints from East Berlin, untouched by the once trigger-happy border guards and greeted with delight by West Berliners, he could barely believe his own eyes and found himself overwhelmed with joy. So, why has the legacy of the Wall not turned out the way John hoped and expected? He examines why he did not predict that the pace of change across Europe would lead to the terrible war in Yugoslavia, nor that Russia, with Vladimir Putin – a former KGB agent – as its president, would find a new guise in which to become a bitter enemy of the West. John also reflects on the terrifying uncertainty of global politics today, which has left him with a certain nostalgia for the decades of the Cold War – a period that was certainly frightening, but arguably less so than the uncertainty and complexity of global politics that we live with today. |
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Cold War (2018) #1308
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Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. With Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza. In the 1950s, a music director falls in love with a singer and tries to persuade her to flee communist Poland for France. |
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The Real Doctor Zhivago (2017) #1215
DOCUMENTARY
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1 hour. BBC. Dr Zhivago is one of the best-known love stories of the 20th century, but the setting of the book also made it famous. It is a tale of passion and fear, set against a backdrop of revolution and violence. The film is what most people remember, but the story of the writing of the book has more twists, intrigue and bravery than many a Hollywood blockbuster. In this documentary, Stephen Smith traces the revolutionary beginnings of this bestseller to it becoming a pawn of the CIA at the height of the Cold War. The writer of the novel, Boris Pasternak, in the words of his family, willingly committed acts of literary suicide in being true to the Russia he loved, but being honest about the Soviet regime he hated and despised. Under Stalin, writers and artists just disappeared if they did not support the party line. Many were murdered. Writing his book for over 20 tumultuous years, Boris Pasternak knew it could result in his death. It did result in his mistress being sent to the gulag twice, but he had to have his say. This is the story of the writing of perhaps the bravest book ever published. It is the story before the film won Oscars and its author, the Nobel Prize. It is the untold story of the real Dr Zhivago - Boris Pasternak. |
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Atomic Blonde (2017) #1285
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Directed by David Leitch. With Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Eddie Marsan. An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents. |
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Despite the Falling Snow (2016) #1435
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Despite the Falling Snow: Directed by Shamim Sarif. With Sam Reid, Rebecca Ferguson, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Charles Dance. In Cold War Moscow, a female spy steals secrets from an idealistic politician - and falls in love with him. |
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Bridge of Spies (2015) #687
FILM
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Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, Amy Ryan. During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers. |
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How Britain Won the Space Race: The Story of Bernard Lovell and Jodrell Bank (2015) #1000
DOCUMENTARY
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1 hour. BBC. The unlikely story of how one man with some ex-WWII army equipment eventually turned a muddy field in Cheshire into a key site in the space race. That man was Bernard Lovell, and his telescope at Jodrell Bank would be used at the height of the Cold War by both the Americans and the Russians to track their competing spacecraft. It also put Britain at the forefront of radio astronomy, a new science which transformed our knowledge of space and provided the key to understanding the most mind-bending theory of the beginnings of the universe - the Big Bang. |
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Pawn Sacrifice (2014) #1267
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Directed by Edward Zwick. With Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg. Set during the Cold War, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer finds himself caught between two superpowers and his own struggles as he challenges the Soviet Empire. |
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) #386
FILM
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Directed by Tomas Alfredson. With Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong. In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6. |
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Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes (2011) #1316
DOCUMENTARY
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1 hour. BBC. Documentary that reveals the secret story behind one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II, a feat that gave birth to the digital age. In 1943, a 24-year-old maths student and a GPO engineer combined to hack into Hitler's personal super-code machine - not Enigma but an even tougher system, which he called his 'secrets writer'. Their break turned the Battle of Kursk, powered the D-day landings and orchestrated the end of the conflict in Europe. But it was also to be used during the Cold War - which meant both men's achievements were hushed up and never officially recognised. |