Session One: The revolutionary spirit, for better or worse.

The Battle of Algiers gave us a film that still feels almost unnervingly immediate, with its pseudo-documentary style and its depiction of insurgency, repression, public messaging, and political violence. We were amazed at how the filmmakers achieved the filmed, realistic-seeming scenes.

Danton was theatrical, and personal, built around the clash between Danton's earthy populism and Robespierre's cold moral certainty.

Colonel Redl gave us a political tragedy, centered on ambition, identity, and vulnerability inside a decaying imperial system, its protagonist destroyed by the system he tried hard to serve.

Session Two: Class, etiquette, and money still matter during revolutions

The Conformist gave us Fascist architecture, cold geometry, and emotional repression using Storaro's groundbreaking approach to colors, framing, and composition.

Barry Lyndon showed us the surfaces of aristocratic life, with incredible detail and authenticity, and every frame composed like an 18th-century painting.

Farewell, My Queen took us inside Versailles from "downstairs", giving us a literate servant's-eye view of a world ending through whispers, panic, rumor, and denial.

Session Three: Justice becomes a weapon when the State starts to crack.

A Man for All Seasons had great performances, interesting historical information, a worthy exploration of resistance through silence in the context of what was at heart a too-stagey courtroom drama.

Paths of Glory gave us one of the most devastating portraits of institutional callousness in cinema, Kirk Douglas at the top of his acting game; a devastating story that made the battlefield of war secondary to how individual integrity and conscience are entirely powerless against the administrative machinery of war.

Spartacus was a technical feat in terms of epic filmmaking; Laughton and Ustinov were highlights, as was the central battle scene.

Session Four: When the State feels threatened, paperwork becomes a weapon too

Brazil gave us bureaucratic terror as nightmare comedy, a world where paperwork becomes destiny and imagination may be the only remaining escape. Kafka? 1984? A disturbing but visually striking mixture of both.

The Madness of King George explored monarchy as performance, where the King's private illness becomes a public constitutional crisis, and the humanity of people in power is irrelevant.

The Lives of Others brought the series to a fitting close, comprehensively combining all the elements of stellar artistry with a complex theme of State control told through the intersecting lives of four individuals - the writer, the actress, the Stasi officer, and the Minister whose jealous desire set the surveillance in motion..