THORNAPPLE ‘Fire Watching’ 10th Anniversary Documentary

For parts of five decades, the immortals of America's National Pastime trained on baseball diamonds and "boiled out the alcoholic microbes" of winter in the thermal baths of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1886, The Chicago White Stockings were the first to trek south to Hot Springs, when the team's owner and manager decided the boys needed a place to practice and get ready for the season ahead. Other teams soon followed, including the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburg Pirates, Brooklyn Dodgers and many others. Hot Springs was "wide open" in those days, frequented by famous and infamous characters. And so came the greatest of the great, to play ball, for a month or so in late winter and early spring, including more than a third of all players enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Cy Young, Honus Wagner-the best who ever played the game-all worked out here.

A shock wave started as Stalin's daughter Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva fled to the West. During her childhood, she remained at the center of power and was her father's favorite child. However, her life was overshadowed by death and violence. Her mother and brother died, family members were murdered, and her partner was exiled by Stalin. The Iron Curtain was an obstacle in her family dream. This documentary shows for the first time interviews with friends and relatives, exclusive photos and documentation, as well as the last and never broadcast interview with Alliloejeva.

A documentary about the life of Manolis Diamantidis, a boy who was born blind and abandoned by his parents. We will see how blind children perceive the world they have never seen, as well as how they manage to survive.

This feature documentary offers a glimpse of contemporary Cuba’s rich musical culture through the experiences of renowned Canadian soprano sax player and flautist Jane Bunnett. Jane and her husband, trumpeter Larry Cramer, are surrounded by the charm of Old Havana as they connect with some of the city's finest musicians—like singers Bobby Carcasses and Amado Dedeu —for a recording session. Bunnett and Cramer then venture to small towns like Cienfuegos and Camaguey, where they hook up with local musicians and visit music schools. Global music fans will be captivated by the performances of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, a celebrated Afro-Cuban rumba group, and Desandann, a 10-member a cappella choir that sings in Haitian Creole.

Behind the myth of Alexander the Great, romanticized by centuries of history, the reality of the character tends to fade. Here's a rereading of the story of a multi-faceted conqueror.

How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'

A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. Between March 13 and August 2, 1939, Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept quiet about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. Winton was a successful 29-year-old stockbroker in London who "had an intuition" about the fate of the Jews when he visited Prague in 1939. He quietly but decisively got down to the business of saving lives. We learn how only two countries, Sweden and Britain, answered his call to harbor the young refugees; how documents had to be forged and how once foster parents signed for the children on delivery, that was the last he saw of them.

A BBC-produced docudrama reconstructing the trial of the Chicago Eight, using courtroom transcripts as its primary source. Directed by Christopher Burstall, the film dramatizes the prosecution of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and incitement, presenting the proceedings as a precise trial reenactment grounded in documented testimony rather than fictionalized narrative.

The last western heretic is a timely and enthralling insight into the ideas and philosophies of the New Zealander described by the BBC as “the last living heretic”. New Zealand’s very own Lloyd Geering, now 89 and still deeply involved in the debate of ideas about life and religion, and latterly, the very survival of human beings and the planet to which we belong. The documentary explores his world view in a series of controversial and richly illustrated statements, and in doing so, makes simple and comprehensible the powerful theological and cultural ideas underpinning western civilisation.

Industrial food production has provided the public with an abundance of food at very low prices. But with obesity and diabetes at record levels in Europe, there is clearly a problem with the food we eat. This documentary puts the spotlight on the agri-food industry and reveals how low-cost ultra-processed foods are really made.

A collection of The Undertaker's most memorable and intense matches.

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

The detailed timeline of events surrounding the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol and violence in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.

Documentary about the Yale Puppeteers. A bit eccentric, certainly off beat and creative, the puppeteers and their story - as well as their place in history - is meticulously documented and tugs at the heartstrings.

A documentary four years in the making that highlights the wondrous Ogasawara Islands, where 65-year-old Miyagawa Noritsugu resides. A surfer that draws in artists of all kinds to the beautiful island in which he resides.

Ella Fitzgerald was a 15-year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. Over the next six decades, her sublime voice would transform the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy. JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS retraces this extraordinary journey.

Documentary that outlines the 1990s and the decade the changed the world.

A documentary overview and ideological critique of the South African film industry and cinema's historical relationship with apartheid.

Maria Iliou documents the ethnic cleansing and violent expulsion of Greeks from the Ottoman Empire. In the first compulsory "exchange of populations" in the modern world, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox and 400,000 Muslims were forcibly relocated from Turkey to Greece and Greece to Turkey respectively.

Few movements in music have gained as much critical mass as house music. Pump Up The Volume: A History of House Music is a fantastic 2001 documentary about one of the biggest music groundswells in history, which began in basements and ended up at the forefront of pop culture. The film traces house music from its early days as New York disco to its takeover of Europe’s dance scene through fascinating interviews with the people who propelled the movement and rare footage of the clubs where it came of age.