Actively Radical TV — Community television's progressive current affairs program tackles the hard issues from the activist's point of view. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 4pm-7pm.
Movie: The Rat Saviour (1976) — Set in a central European town between the world wars as fascism begins to emerge, Krsto Papic's film deals with an impoverished writer who comes across rats who are able to assume human form and infiltrate society and its political structures. From Yugoslavia in Croatian with English subtitles. SBS, Saturday, March 30, 9.30pm.
Movie: On the Wire (1990) — Afrikaner Wouter Fourie returns from eight years' service in the apartheid army to his strict Calvinist community, where sexual repression, racism and religious fervour are rife. SBS, Saturday, March 30, midnight.
Movie: Life is Beautiful (1987) — Papa Wemba, Zaire's leading pop star, stars as a ragged country boy who arrives in Kinshasa with dreams of fame and success as a musician. SBS, Sunday, March 31, 9.30pm.
Thalidomide: The Drug that Came Back — Thalidomide — the drug that shattered thousand of lives — is quietly finding its way back into medical use around the world. Yorkshire Television has uncovered damning new facts about the continued use of thalidomide, particularly in Brazil, where the drug has been approved and recommended by the World Health Organisation in the treatment of leprosy. The program challenges the Brazilian government's claim that the drug is strictly controlled. SBS, Sunday, March 31, 11.25pm.
The Fire Next Time — The unrest in 1992 after the Rodney King verdicts is the catalyst for Randy Holland's provocative documentary, which is an examination of the underlying social problems and historical currents at work in south central Los Angeles. It includes interviews with Malcolm X's widow, Dr Betty Shabazz, and Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta. SBS, Monday, April 1, 11pm.
Behind Lab Doors — A US documentary that investigates the use of animals in medical research. The program uses as its focus the Johns Hopkins laboratory in Baltimore. Scientists defend the need for testing while animal rights supporters argue that the research is immoral and stress the urgency of alternatives. Annually hundred of pigs, dogs and cats and thousands of mice are experimented on at Johns Hopkins in the name of science, but large cosmetic companies have tested their products there. SBS, Tuesday, April 2, 8.30pm.
One Woman, One Vote — Narrated by Susan Sarandon, this program documents the 70-year struggle for women's suffrage in the US, which began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY, when a handful of women called for the right to vote. ABC TV, Wednesday, April 3, 8.30pm.
Movie: Night of the Pencils (1986) — A gripping, disturbing account set in 1976, during the early times of the Argentine military regime's "dirty war" against subversion, of the kidnapping, torture and ultimate disappearance of six high school students who led a noisy campaign to attain a discount in bus fares. Based on facts told by the only survivor of the group, Pablo Diaz. SBS, Wednesday, April 3, 11.20pm.
Movie Matinee: Anna 6-18 (1994) — Director Nikita Mikhalkov used his daughter as a case study in a home movie (at first illegal). As she from proceeds from age six to 18, the political and social changes in Russia are reflected. SBS, Thursday, April 4, 12.30pm. Strike Me Lucky — Roy "Mo" Rene was Australia's funniest and most popular comedian for nearly 50 years. Mo was a lair, a larrikin, an anarchist. He lampooned authority and thumbed his nose at adversity through two world wars, the '20s, the Great Depression. ABC TV, Thursday, April 4, 9.30pm.
Cinema Classics: The Fifth Horseman is Fear (1965) — During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, a Jewish doctor is asked to remove a bullet from a wounded Resistance fighter. After the operation, he begins a nightmarish search for morphine through the streets of Prague. From Czechoslovakia. SBS, Thursday, April 4, 11.10pm.