On 9 September 1971, a prison riot broke out at Attica State Prison, New York, which was brutally suppressed by the National Guard after four days, resulting in the deaths of 43 people. “Teach Our Children” sides passionately with the rebellious prison inmates and investigates the inhumane conditions that provoked the revolt. The statements of the inmates recorded on film denounce the open racism of the prison system and the exploitation in the form of work measures. On the other side is the “clear conscience” of those who gave the order to shoot, first among them prison warden Oswald: “Do you have any sense of guilt at all?” – “No.”

In 1974, the Maternity Center, located in a low-income Chicago neighbourhood, is acutely threatened by lack of financing from its funding body, North Western University. Resistance begins to form in the predominantly Black community, since this is an institution with a 75-year-old history that has provided countless woman with safe and affordable home-births. “The Chicago Maternity Center Story” uses this civil protest as a starting point to tell the story of the rampant commercialisation of medical care in the USA, including its sexist and racist connotations. A film that approaches the issue sometimes gently, sometimes with agitprop vigour.

In life, people do things they are proud of, and others they are not proud of – but it is impossible not to be proud of having participated in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), even if the Spanish Republic and its alliance of International Brigades lost. This is one of the American veterans whose war memories – bitter, but marked by self-respect – are honoured by this film. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade consisted of US volunteers who fought against Spanish and German fascism and for democracy under adverse conditions and without party affiliations until 1939, while the US government pursued a strict and ultimately fatal policy of appeasement. A refreshingly undogmatic document with a wealth of fresh archive material.

The programmatic sub-header of this film is “a black & white movie”. In “Trick Bag”, young people from a variety of origins talk about peer pressure and power struggles in Chicago neighbourhoods that used to be regarded as ethnically homogenous but are now centres of many cultures. Whites, Blacks, Latinos and Latinas appear on camera. They are Vietnam veterans, gang members and factory workers who try to organise peaceful coexistence. Instead of fighting each other, the tenor goes, they should all become aware of their situation as segregated and precariously employed. An entertaining and feistily presented plea for solidarity and coexistence in Chicago – representative of many American metropolises of that time.