History

Outstanding director Steven Okazaki is set to shoot 'Mifune: Last Samurai,' a high-profile feature documentary on Toshiro Mifune, the most prominent actor of Japan’s golden age of cinema. The film weaves together film clips, archival stills, and interviews with such luminaries as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Narrated by Keanu Reeves.

Professor Brian Cox examines how it was that in a universe made of stars, rocks and endless space, a conscious civilisation was born. His latest adventure takes him from a submerged space station in Star City on the outskirts of Moscow, to Ethiopia, high above in the Great Rift Valley, where he encounters the geladas, mankind's distant ancestors. Despite once being Africa's most successful primate, a species who at one time roamed across the entire continent, these days they are found in one just place in the remote Ethiopian Highlands. Cox investigates why these ancestors retreated, yet modern mankind has expanded across the planet.

The film explores the life and the mystery surrounding the death of American actress and cultural icon Marilyn Monroe through archival footage and previously unheard interviews with her inner circle. The filmmaker Anthony Summers spent three years collecting 650 tapes recorded with people who either knew Monroe in her lifetime or had knowledge concerning her death.

What was the Wehrmacht? A group of obedient yeasayers? A murdering band of thugs? An army of millions of abused young men? This series in 5 parts provides differentiated and conclusive answers based on the latest historical and comprehensive investigative research, bringing many new facts to light – among them documents proving for the first time ever, what many among the officers actually thought. Blitzkrieg, the lightning war, in German incorporate modern weapons and vehicles as a method to help avoid the stalemate of trench warfare and linear warfare in future conflicts. The first practical implementations of these concepts coupled with modern technology were instituted by the Wehrmacht in the opening theatres of World War II. The strategy was particularly effective to Germany in the invasions of Western Europe and initial operations in the Soviet Union. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to German offensive operations.

The Battle of Little Bighorn lasted nearly 24 hours on June 25, 1876, but the stage had been set decades earlier as settlers, prospectors, and business people began encroaching on Native Americans' sacred land. From the Lakota Sioux facing broken treaties to the attacks that ultimately led up to Bighorn, follow these events unfold. Then, see how this pivotal moment in history marked the beginning of the end of freedom on the Great Plains, the birth of an American cliche, and an ongoing fight for identity against the tyranny of progress.

The story of America's most notorious gangster, Al Capone, starts on the streets of Brooklyn. In 1913, at the age of 14, Capone starts running errands for local gangsters - just one of many immigrants struggling to survive. One day, young Al Capone gets caught in a police raid. He quickly grabs what money he can, evades police, and runs to the headquarters of mob boss Johnny Torrio. Torrio rewards Capone for his quick-thinking. When Torrio recognizes Capone's intelligence and drive, he takes him under his wing.