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The Age of Revolution

   2016    History
Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged. The film begins in Canton with the meeting of a US missionary and a Chinese student. Inspired by the Christian story and calling himself God's second son, Hong unleashed the bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Taiping Rebellion.
As imperial China weakened, foreign influence grew. Treaty ports expanded, bringing growth and wealth, trams, railways and western sensibilities. But this provoked another surge of violence, the Boxer Rebellion, an attack against the foreigners, which was crushed by those same foreigners, who extorted a huge indemnity - $60 billion in today's money.
Then in 1912, the empire fell, and many groups contested China's future. In World War I, China sent 100,000 men to the western front, only to be humiliated at Versailles when German colonies in China were handed to Japan. Between the two world wars, the disparity between rich and poor, city and countryside increased. We visit Hong Kong's Peninsular Hotel in the jazz age and then follow Mao on the Long March to Yan'an, the heartland of revolution.
World War II came to China two years earlier than it did in the west. Wood talks to a survivor of the Japanese massacre of Nanjing in 1937 and then charts the triumph of the communists, before ending the story with Mao's death and the boom time of the last 30 years. The series ends with the warmth of the Chinese family and, at Beijing's Altar of Heaven, a final haunting glimpse of eternal China.
Series: The Story of China

The Bloody Hundredth

   2024    History
The film recounts the story of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II and follows bomber crews on dangerous missions to destroy targets inside German-occupied Europe. The Documentary honors the heroes of the Group and portrays the intensity of war, the dangers that the airmen face, and the friendships and relationships that develop. This unit from the Eighth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress suffered tremendous losses in combat, with 177 aircraft missing in action, flying its last mission on 20 April 1945.
Meet the airmen who inspired the tv series 'Masters of the Air' as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group. The interviews with the real-life heroes are revealing, and the wealth of newsreel footage compiled in the documentary is utilized with a sharp eye for detail.

The Mission Begins

   2017    Art
The wartime contributions of five prominent Hollywood film directors during World War II are profiled. The documentary focuses on five directors – John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens – whose war-related works are analysed by modern filmmakers, respectively Paul Greengrass, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, and Lawrence Kasdan. In the first episode, John Ford's The Battle of Midway was approved directly by President Franklin D. Roosevelt while Frank Capra fights to get Why We Fight made.
Series: Five Came Back

The Spirit of forty five

       Culture
The film is focused on and celebrating the radical changes in postwar Britain under the Labour government of Clement Attlee, which came to power in 1945. Relying primarily on archive footage and interviews, and without a narrative voiceover, the documentary recounts the endemic poverty in prewar Britain, the sense of optimism that followed victory in World War II and the subsequent expansion of the welfare state, founding of the National Health Service and nationalisation of significant parts of the UK's economy.
The film documents the extent to which these achievements, as the filmmaker Ken Loach sees them, have since been subject to attack in the decades that followed, particularly under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s

War and Peace

   2013    History
World War II is a watershed event for Latino Americans with hundreds of thousands of men and women serving in the armed forces, most fighting side by side with Anglos. In the Pacific, East L.A.'s Guy Gabaldon becomes a Marine Corp legend when he singlehandedly captures more enemy soldiers than anyone in US military history. But on the home front, discrimination is not dead: in 1943, Anglo servicemen battle hip young "Zoot suitors" in racially charged riots in southern California
Series: Latino Americans

Which Universe Are We In

   2015    Science
Imagine a world where infinite copies of you are playing out every storyline of your life. It sounds like a plot stolen straight from Hollywood, but far from it. This is the multiverse. Until very recently the whole idea of the multiverse was dismissed as a fantasy, but now this strangest of ideas is at the cutting edge of science. And for a growing number of scientists, the multiverse is the only way we will ever truly make sense of the world we are in. Do multiple universes exist? And if so, which one are we actually in?" Imagine a world where dinosaurs still walk the earth. A world where the Germans won World War II and you are president of the United States. Imagine a world where the laws of physics no longer apply.