Laugh It Off

A brief history of Stan Kenton's musical career from taxi-dance gigs to his successful big band orchestra.

In the years before World War II, a tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey is hired as a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children and brings a new love of life and music into the home.

This fantastical movie inspired by the music of Michael Jackson features imaginative interpretations of hit tracks from the iconic 1987 album “Bad”.

A man searches for his childhood best friend, a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust, who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

Three World War II buddies promise to meet at a specified place and time 10 years after the war. They keep their word only to discover how far apart they've grown. But the reunion sparks memories of youthful dreams that haven't been fulfilled -- and slowly, the three men reevaluate their lives and try to find a way to renew their friendship.

Can a girl from Little Rock find happiness with a mature French planter she got to know one enchanted evening away from the military hospital where she is a nurse? Or should she just wash that man out of her hair? Bloody Mary is the philosopher of the island and it's hard to believe she could be the mother of Liat who has captured the heart of Lt. Joseph Cable USMC. While waiting for action in the war in the South Pacific, sailors and nurses put on a musical comedy show. The war gets closer and the saga of Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque becomes serious drama.

A Marine Sergeant wounded in overseas combat requires an operation, and the Navy psychiatrist recommends that ‘Sarge’ be given a few weeks’ rest before hospitalization. Through the Dean of San Juan Junior College, Sarge enters on a temporary basis. Meanwhile, the Teen-Agers are rehearsing a show and Freddie's worried as they have no band.

The documentary follows Chilly Gonzales from his native Canada to late '90s underground Berlin, and via Paris to the world's great philharmonic halls. Diving deep into the dichotomy of Gonzales' stage persona, where self-doubt and megalomania are just two sides of the same coin.

Most people don't think about singing when they think about revolutions. But song was the weapon of choice when, between 1986 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. During those years, hundreds of thousands gathered in public to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence. "The young people, without any political party, and without any politicians, just came together ... not only tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands ... to gather and to sing and to give this nation a new spirit," remarks Mart Laar, a Singing Revolution leader featured in the film and the first post-Soviet Prime Minister of Estonia. "This was the idea of the Singing Revolution." James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty's "The Singing Revolution" tells the moving story of how the Estonian people peacefully regained their freedom--and helped topple an empire along the way.

Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.

His filmmaker son probes the professional and private lives of his remote but fascinating father: bandleader, composer, inventor, and electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott.

When a Jewish songstress is plucked from the stage and sent to Auschwitz, she and other musicians find themselves assigned to a terrible task—using their talents to soothe fellow prisoners who are sentenced to die in the gas chambers.

In a French nightclub, choreographed song and dance routines are performed, rather than a streamlined narrative. They tell the story of Parisian culture and politics from the 1920s—1980s. A disparate, anachronistic series of characters, including an ordinary waiter, a Nazi collaborator, resistance fighters, and 1960s student protestors gather to celebrate and satirize 20th century France's icons, demons, and social changes.

Academy Award-honoree Peter O'Toole stars in this musical classic about a prim English schoolmaster who learns to show his compassion through the help of an outgoing showgirl. O'Toole, who received his fourth Oscar-nomination for this performance, is joined by '60s pop star Petula Clark and fellow Oscar-nominee Michael Redgrave.

Prades, France, 1940s. The exiled Catalan cellist Pau Casals decides not to perform any more in public until the fall of the dictatorship that oppresses Spain. Pierre, a young Frenchman studying with Casals, tries to convince him to celebrate an extraordinary concert as a tribute to freedom.

Set in wartime Belgium, two brothers—Staf (or Louis) and Dirk Segers—grow up inseparable, only to find their bond torn apart during WWII when one joins the Resistance and the other sides with the occupiers.

A group of Russian partisans hiding within a remote forest attempt to destroy a nearby German airfield, all the while assisting a downed French pilot who happens to fall madly in love with a local girl.

The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazis begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.