De Cinema offers a carefully curated selection of compelling recent, restored, and often overlooked documentaries: films that remind us of what’s happening in the world around us. With a preference for music documentaries and politically and socially charged storytelling, each week we dive into the wonderful world of essayistic and documentary cinema.

HIGHLIGHTS

What remains when ancient memories of culture become the target of war strategies? THE DESTRUCTION OF MEMORY takes you into a gripping battle: the war, or rather the strategic or deliberate destruction of a society’s cultural identity. The screening on February 3 will be introduced by Janno Martens, moderator of the -cide series.

IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY traces the rise of an artist who set the Nineties ablaze. With his breathtaking voice, raw intensity, and legendary debut Grace, Jeff Buckley became a phenomenon overnight — a talent who, like his father Tim, left the world far too soon, yet never fades from our collective memory.

In ORWELL: 2+2=5, Peck interweaves Orwell’s life and texts with images from the present. Archival footage, excerpts from film adaptations of 1984, and contemporary news footage seamlessly blend together. With Damian Lewis’s understated voice-over, an essayistic film emerges that aims to be less a biography and more a reflection on how authoritarian systems work, then and now.