Alberto Marquardt

Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?

In 1945, two young American soldiers, brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg, are commissioned to collect filmed and recorded evidence of the horrors committed by the infamous Third Reich in order to prove Nazi war crimes during the Nuremberg trials (1945-46). The story of the making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, a paramount historic documentary, released in 1948.

The story of the making of Soylent Green, a masterpiece of social science fiction, released in 1973. Directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, it deals not with an exogenous threat, such as an extraterrestrial attack, but with the dire consequences of an irreversible environmental catastrophe for which mankind alone is responsible.

In 1991, American Psycho, the third novel by controversial writer Bret Easton Ellis, provoked heated discussions among critics and readers alike; an extraordinarily disturbing book that transported its readers into the mind of Patrick Bateman, a cynical mergers and acquisitions executive obsessed with brands, inconsequential details, pop culture and brutal murder.

On July 5th, 1922, Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen creates a passport with which, between 1922 and 1945, he managed to protect the fundamental human rights as citizens of the world of thousands of people, famous and anonymous, who became stateless due to the tragic events that devastated Europe in the first quarter of the 20th century.

An analysis of The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell's controversial novel, published in 2006, which dissects the ruthless mechanisms of the Shoah from the detached point of view of Maximilian Aue, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

Immortality and eternal life: Will this great human dream come true? In any case, cryonics is making ever greater progress, human cloning no longer seems impossible and research is being carried out into the digital reproduction of the brain. Taking stock in the USA, Canada, Europe and Russia. The documentary delves into a world in which all-too-human people refuse to simply be wiped out by death. It shows how difficult it is to resist the promises of eternal life and also highlights the economic interests behind such endeavors. Google's push is just one sign of a possible two-tier society of the future: on the one hand, the rich who have access to such "offers", on the other, the rest of society.