East of Paradise (2005)
• December 10th, 2005 • 1h 48min
Documentary
Overview
Filmmaker Lech Kowalski explores his belief that struggle is "the epitome of living" in this documentary which compares the wildly different life experiences of himself and his mother. Kowalski's mother came of age in Poland during the early stages of World War II, and after failed attempts to outrun both Nazi and Russian forces she and her family were sent to a Soviet concentration camp, where inmates were tortured, mistreated, and starved to the point where some ate their own lice in a desperate struggle to survive. Kowalski also depicts his own self-inflicted season in hell during his years on the New York City punk rock scene as he wallowed in the sordid underbelly of drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, and streetwise decadence. On both stories, Kowalski finds a message of hope and strength in the midst of almost certain peril.
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
Man with a Movie Camera
Released on: 1929-05-12
Documentary
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzli...
The Paper Brigade
Released on: 2018-03-15
Documentary, History
Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by th...
The Russian Cracker
Released on: 1999-08-12
Documentary
Russia is grappling with a critical issue: they have become the country with the most at large seria...
Leninland
Released on: 2013-11-30
Documentary
At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, afte...
Rich Hall's Red Menace
Released on: 2019-11-05
Documentary, History
2019 marks the 30th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Rich Hall ex...
The KGB Connections: An Investigation into Soviet Operations in North America
Released on: 1981-06-08
Documentary
Documentary - This 1982 film explains the KGB infiltration of America. Who they are, what they are d...
There is the Metro!
Released on: 1935-05-17
Documentary
Early documentary about the Moscow metro: the early project, the development and the people working ...
Chernobyl 30 Years On: Nuclear Heritage
Released on: 2015-05-06
Documentary, History, TV Movie
Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes...
Paradise
Released on: 2023-08-30
Documentary
In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a n...
Little Potato
Released on: 2017-03-11
Documentary
Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his...
Target... Earth?
Released on: 1980-07-28
Documentary, Science Fiction
Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibi...
Rasputin: Murder in the Tsar's Court
Released on: 2016-12-10
Documentary, History, TV Movie
St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humb...
The Scientist, The Imposter and Stalin: How to Feed the People
Released on: 2018-07-31
Documentary, History, TV Movie
The documentary tells two very different human fates in the 1920s Soviet Union. Nikolai Vavilov was ...
The Bounty Hunter of Mongolia
Released on: 2021-10-30
Documentary
In the Darhat valley in northern Mongolia, the horses of nomadic tribes are stolen by bandits who th...
The Gulag Archipelago: The Book That Changed Russian History
Released on: 2023-11-24
Documentary, History
The story of Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) and his masterpi...
How we built the Moscow metro
Released on: 2014-03-18
Documentary
In the 1930’s, the workers of the underground, headed by brigades of writers, are in charge to write...
National Geographic: The Volga
Released on: 1977-03-08
Documentary
Film cameras cruise the Soviet Union's mighty Volga River, providing a view of the Russian people al...
Braguino
Released on: 2017-11-01
Documentary
In the middle of the Siberian taiga, 450 miles from the nearest village, live two families : the Bra...
Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party
Released on: 2020-12-12
Documentary, History, TV Movie
Big Bang in Tunguska
Released on: 2008-06-27
Documentary, History
At 7:14 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated thr...