Thorvaldsen

Janina Ramirez explores the BBC archives to create a TV history of Leonardo Da Vinci, discovering what lies beneath the Mona Lisa and even how he acquired his anatomical knowledge.

Seeing is to painting what listening is to politics. Survival as an artist demands both. Paint Until Dawn is a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan (1927-1999), who painted all night to push the limits of vision. His life and thought reveal a correlation between art and activism through an interesting angle: the creative process itself.

Mendès la France

Ken Russell revisits the life of Elgar, with musical background provided by the composer's works.

Congrès de Tours 1920: The Birth of the French Communist Party

Oskar Kokoschka : Portraits européens

A photoshoot on the roofs and in the streets of Paris, under the astonished eyes of the inhabitants.

Il mio nome è Battaglia

In the first decades of the 20th century, when life was being transformed by scientific innovations, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine. Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations routinely tested employees’ honesty and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.” But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector too often became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. Written and directed by Rob Rapley and executive produced by Cameo George, The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.

Habermas - Philosoph und Europäer

Short subject on how fashion is created-- not by the great couturiers, but on the street.

Matisse & Lydia

Bacon-Freud, face à face

Close up we see pistons move up and down or side to side. Pendulums sway, the small parts of machinery move. Gears drive larger wheels. Gears within gears spin. Shafts turn some mechanism that is out of sight. Screws revolve and move other gears; a bit rotates. More subtle mechanisms move other mechanical parts for unknown purposes. Weights rise and fall. The movements, underscored by sound, are rhythmic. Circles, squares, rods, and teeth are in constant and sometimes asymmetrical motion. These human-made mechanical bits seem benign and reassuring.

An inside look into the world of taxidermy and the passionate artists from all over the world who work on the animals.

In the 1960s, the suburbs were meant to be modern havens for newcomers from rural France, Portugal, Spain, North Africa, and Africa, helping rebuild post-war France. Large housing complexes symbolized this ideal, offering comfort, heating, and electricity. But by the 1980s, disillusionment set in as economic crisis, unemployment, poverty, crime, racism, and police violence took hold. Mohamed Bouhafsi tells the story of a dream that didn’t last.

A look at the history of the Statue of Liberty and the meaning of sculptor Auguste Bartholdi's creation to people around the world.

A portrait of sculptor Barbara Hepworth revisiting the Yorkshire landscapes that inspired her and her home studio in St Ives, Cornwall.

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Jeff Bridges seemed like a star that did not want to shine, carving out a career as a versatile actor in acclaimed roles without hitting the big time, and without wanting to either. That is until The Big Lebowski (1998), the Coen brothers cult classic, which brought the American actor international fame playing the role of the Dude…