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St Valentine Day Massacre

   2016    History
Al Capone moves back to Chicago and takes over two floors of the city's finest hotel, the Lexington. With a thriving business and Chicago politicians in his back pocket, Capone soon reaches a level of celebrity normally reserved for athletes and entertainers. As Capone's profile grows, he begins to indulge in all that the Roaring '20s have to offer, including cocaine. While Capone enjoys his reign at the top of the Chicago underworld, Irish gangster Bugs Moran seeks to take him down as revenge for the deaths of his partners Dean O'Banion and Hymie Weiss. On March 7, 1928, Moran orders a hit on one of Capone's top associates, Jack McGurn, the man who took out Hymie Weiss. McGurn survives but Capone decides to retaliate by taking out Moran and as many of his men as possible - all at once. On February 14, 1929, Capone's men dress as law enforcement and raid the liquor buy. They order Moran's men to face the wall for handcuffing, but while their backs are turned, Capone's men shoot all of them. Firing 70 rounds of ammunition in less than 10 seconds, the assassins carry out the biggest gangland hit in American history that will come to be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Through a stroke of luck, Moran avoids the massacre, but knows he's been defeated.
Series: The Making of the Mob

Sweden: A Gangster Paradise

   2023    Culture
The once-quiet suburbs of Sweden's major cities are the epicenter of a vicious turf war between rival gangs competing for the drug trade. The fierce competition has resulted in a series of tit-for-tat killings with almost daily shootings and bombings. More than 45 people have been shot dead so far this year. Paraic O'Brien steps onto the frontline of Sweden's deadly gang war, as the country becomes one of the most lethal for gun crime in the whole of Europe.
From the front line of its lethal drug wars, a look at how Sweden has become one of Europe's deadliest hot spots for gun crime, with shootings often committed by children.

The Act of Killing

   2012    History
The filmmakers challenge former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers. Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodeling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.
Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.
The Act of Killing is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike ageing Nazis or Rwandan génocidaires, Anwar and his friends have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries. The Act of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. And The Act of Killing is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.

The Empire Strikes Back

   2021    History
In 1717, the seas of the Caribbean are ruled by the Flying Gang: Black Sam Bellamy, Edward Thatch and Benjamin Hornigold. From their base in the Bahamas, these pirates steal a fortune from the wealthiest empires in Europe and disrupt the lucrative slave trade. English authorities tap Woodes Rogers to put a stop to the pirate attacks. He is on a mission to destroy the Flying Gang of the Caribbean.
Series: The Lost Pirate Kingdom

The Joy of Mozart

   2015    Art
Tom Service plunges into the life and times of Mozart to try and rediscover the greatness and humanity of the living man in his moment. Mozart's prodigious output and untimely death have helped place him on a pedestal that can often blind us to the unique brilliance of his work in the context of his life and times. Service visits the key cities and rooms in which Mozart lived and worked, plays some of Mozart's original instruments and scores, and gradually uncovers the brilliance and originality of his work." There is the prodigious childhood when Mozart was feted as an infant phenomenon around Europe's most glittering courts, and his golden decade in Vienna in which masterpiece followed masterpiece - operas, symphonies, piano concertos, string quartets - as if this short, high-voiced man-child must have been taking dictation from some divine source, until his death at the age of just 35 in 1791. Even more than the music, Mozart's tragic demise sets the seal on his myth. The trajectory of Mozart's life sets the template for the romantic paradigm whose throes we are still in today, which requires our creative heroes to die young to prove that they were too good for this madding world, whether it be Wolfgang Amadeus or Jimi Hendrix. Service travels from London to Vienna and Salzberg, unpicking the living, breathing genius that was Mozart. With Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nicola Benedetti, Paul Morley and others.

The New Latinos

   2013    History
Until World War II, Latino immigration to the United States was overwhelmingly Mexican-American. Now three new waves bring large-scale immigration from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. As the Puerto Rican government implements a historic overhaul over a million Puerto Ricans are encouraged to leave for the US mainland, to alleviate the economic pressure. A young Juanita Sanabria arrives in New York, works hard in the garment district, but encounters hostility and discrimination. Ethnic tensions explode in youth gang warfare depicted in films like West Side Story, etching the stereotype of the knife wielding Puerto Rican in the American consciousness.
Series: Latino Americans
The Rehearsal

The Rehearsal

2022  Culture
Ancient Apocalypse

Ancient Apocalypse

2022  History
Cosmos

Cosmos

1980  Science
Order and Disorder

Order and Disorder

2012  Science
P.U.L.S.E

P.U.L.S.E

2006  Art