Social & External
The people behind it
During The Blitz, the British government had plans in place to evacuate approximately 3.5 million people, but only around 1.5 million left towns and cities for the countryside, with the majority of those being children. Children of the Blitz tells the stories of those who remained at home, often to help their families, or because their parents couldn’t bear to send them away. Through the eyes of survivors who were children at the time, the film will explore how The Blitz contributed towards our sense of national identity and how the ‘Blitz Spirit’ is still held up as a defining characteristic of Britishness today. The film will also examine the starker reality for children whose homes were destroyed, including those who lost parents, and some who were left to fend for themselves - many grew up with their stories unheard.
Filmed in the skies above France and the United States, The Lafayette Escadrille tells the story of the American volunteers who flew and fought for France in World War 1, becoming the founding squadron of American combat aviation.
With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.
An RAF airfield in Burma in 1945, during World War II. Canadian bomber pilot Bill Forrester is a bitter man who lives haunted by a tragic past. He has became a reckless warrior, and is feared by his comrades, who consider him a madman. Dr. Harris, the squadron physician, is determined to help him heal his tormented soul.
The film begins in a WW II training depot of a British Guards armoured regiment where recruits from many walks of life learn to survive the strict discipline and training together before going into battle in tanks. There is a cameo appearance by the real Sgt. Major Brittain who was famous in the British guards regiments.
The riveting biography of 102-year-old CIA spymaster Peter Sichel, who unpacks the obscured roots of conflicts that plague today’s world and the toll espionage took on his personal life.
A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.
Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.
The Nazis knew it was their last chance. The British knew it was the deadliest threat they'd ever face. And the Americans knew it could fall into the wrong hands. The V2 rocket quickly became Hitler's greatest deadly weapon and beacon of hope to turn the course of World War II in his favor. Watch Nazi Germany's desperate attempt at victory as the Allies race to stop them and see how the V2 miraculously went from deadly weapon to amazing feat of space technology.
Bernard Miles and Percy Walsh play two members of the Home Guard, on duty by a windmill, discussing the causes of the war and the issues at stake.
Stefan Radetzky, a Polish pilot and famous concert pianist, is hospitalised in England from injuries sustained while in combat, and having lost his memory. As Radetzky plays the piano in a trance-like state, the story moves back in time to war-torn Warsaw. During an air-raid, Radetzky meets American journalist Carole, and there is a mutual attraction. Following the fall of Poland, Radetzky and Irish pilot, Mike, escape to Rumania and then on to America. Radetzky continues his musical career in America and meets up again with Carole.
Branded a traitor by her countrymen, French national Marie DuJardin is rescued by American soldiers on one condition: to survive, she must lead them to a cache of gold - before the Nazis return to claim it for themselves.
This two-hour special looks back at Dec. 7, 1941 - the date that has indeed lived in infamy, as President Franklin Roosevelt promised - when imperial Japan attacked the U.S. naval forces in Hawaii, ushering America into World War II. The attack killed more than 2,400 people, wounded 1,000 and damaged or destroyed nearly 20 American ships and over 300 airplanes.
The Obersalzberg was an ordinary Bavarian mountain until Adolf Hitler discovered it in 1923. There at the Berghof, the Nazi leader spent his time surrounded by his most faithful lieutenants and his mistress, Eva Braun. Though mostly destroyed, remnants of the vast building complex still exist.
Meet the real-life airmen who inspired Masters of the Air as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
WWII from Space delivers World War II in a way you've never experienced it before. This HISTORY special uses an all-seeing CGI eye that offers a satellite view of the conflict, allowing you to experience it in a way that puts key events and tipping points in a global perspective. By re-creating groundbreaking moments that could never have been captured on camera, and by illustrating the importance of simultaneity and the hidden effects of crucial incidents, HISTORY presents the war's monumental moments in a never-before-seen context. And with new information brought to the forefront, you'll better understand how a nation ranked 19th in the world's militaries in 1939 emerged six years later as the planet's only atomic superpower.
Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.
Over a period of two years, Mark Cowen and his crew travelled to thirty U.S. states and ten European cities, to interview the veterans of Easy Company. The stories told by the veterans themselves, create a history of the Second World War from the point of view of this heroic company of men, made famous in the mini-series Band of Brothers.
Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.
The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.
A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.
A documentary examining possible historical and modern conspiracies surrounding Christianity, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Federal Reserve bank.
Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
A collection of restored prints from the Lumière Brothers.
Director Peter Joseph examines examples of economic subjugation and offers solutions based on alignment with nature.
Former United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, discusses his career in Washington D.C. from his days as a congressman in the early 1960s to planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
An account of the extraordinary life of film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938) and the amazing story of the copy in color of his masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (1902), unexpectedly found in Spain and restored thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of true cinema lovers.
A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"
Documentary on the Shackleton Antartic expedition. A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance', which was trapped in the ice floes and frigid open ocean of the Antarctic in 1914. Shackleton decided, with many of his crew injured and weak from exposure and starvation, to take a team of his fittest men and attempt to find help. Setting out in appalling conditions with hopelessly inadequate equipment, they endured all weather and terrain and finally reached safety. Persuading a local team of his confidence that the abandoned team would still be alive, he set out again to find them. After almost 2 years trapped on the ice, all members of the crew were finally rescued.
Michael Moore comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
