Documentaries explore Hitler’s propaganda, Chinese labour

Two new documentaries are coming to Toronto and Vancouver in the coming weeks. In Hitler’s Hollywood, director Rüdiger Suchsland examines the more than 1,000 movies churned out by the Nazi propaganda machine overseen by Joseph Goebbels between 1933 and 1945: musicals, military and melodramas, but not much in the way of comedy. Udo Kier narrates the director’s sequel to his 2014 doc about German film during the Weimar Republic. A post-war third part is said to be in the works.

And in Letter from Masanjia, director Leon Lee documents what happened after an Oregon woman in 2012 found an SOS note from a Chinese labourcamp worker in a box of Halloween decorations. Lee worked over Skype with the letter-writer (Yi Sun) to film in China. The director couldn’t go himself after making a 2014 doc (Human Harvest) about the illegal organ trade there.