When World War II broke out, John Ford, in his forties, commissioned in the Naval Reserve, was put in charge of the Field Photographic Unit by Bill Donavan, director of the soon-to-be-OSS. During the war, Field Photo made at least 87 documentaries, many with Ford's signature attention to heroism and loss, and many from the point of view of the fighting soldier and sailor. Talking heads discuss Ford's life and personality, the ways that the war gave him fulfillment, and the ways that his war films embodied the same values and conflicts that his Hollywood films did. Among the films profiled are "Battle of Midway," "Torpedo Squadron," "Sexual Hygiene," and "December 7."
1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten…
A group of American pilots from Alaska ferry Airacobra fighter planes across the ocean on Lend-lease. The orderly course of life is disrupted when it becomes clear that the American pilots are attractive and charming young women. The feelings of the Russian young men collide into barriers of culture and language resulting in a host of awkward, funny, and sometimes tragic situations.It is the story of Russians, Americans, and natives of the Far North. It is the story of man and woman in war. Love and death are squeezed between the hills as human fates are destroyed and born.
12 American military prisoners in World War II are ordered to infiltrate a well-guarded enemy château and kill the Nazi officers vacationing there. The soldiers, most of whom are facing death sentences for a variety of violent crimes, agree to the mission and the possible commuting of their sentences.
Bored with the limited and tedious nature of provincial life in 19th-century France, the fierce and sensual Emma Bovary finds herself in calamitous debt and pursues scandalous sexual liaisons with absolute abandon. However, when her volatile lifestyle catches up to her, the lives of everyone around her are endangered.
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Can a language save your life? Yes it can, even an ancient one from the 15th century. Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a Partizan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps. By speaking in Ladino to a Spanish-speaking US pilot in 1944 he was able to survive and lead the pilot, along with his American and British colleagues, to a safe Partizan airport.
A couple sets up an African game preserve, only to have British and Italian armies fight over the waterholes.
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.
Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.
The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.
Tomka is a boy who likes playing football with his friends. When the German army captures his town, the German soldiers establish their camp in the town stadium. Tomka with help from his friends and their parents organizes sabotage actions against the soldiers.
At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.
Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.
Displaced by the Second World War, a troop of Polish soldiers form an inseparable bond through an orphaned bear they name Wojtek.
An unconventionally seen story from the period of the Slovak National Uprising will especially interest you with the character of the village lad and brawler Vince Kucek, played by Ivan Romančík. Hours and hours spent in the pub, riots with friends, scenes of jealousy towards his old rival Petr Chuťek, now a partisan commander, hostile memories of the strict teacher Machoň – all this fills the seemingly carefree days of the self-confident farmer, father of two small children, husband of the faithful, devoted Eva. However, the situation in the village is getting worse. Some of the men go to fight in the mountains, but the stubborn Kucek refuses to go with them.
Centrales nucléaire : démantèlement impossible
Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story is a documentary about the life and work of Michael "Mick" Ronson, the guitarist, songwriter, producer and arranger who, in the early part of his career, performed with David Bowie as one of the 'Spiders from Mars'.
A documentary on the life and career of one of the most influential film directors of all time, Steven Spielberg.
The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba