May 10th, 1981. François Mitterrand is elected President of the Republic. The “soviet tanks” supposedly coming upon the Champs-Élysées dressed in red, feared by some, did not march. Serge Moati takes a personal look at this episode, focusing on the relationship the president had with television, that he witnessed and played a role in.
In 1943, the Imperial Japanese Secret Service made a film called Calling Australia! to show the "exemplary conditions" under which prisoners of war were kept, and to "soften up" the Australian public for the anticipated occupation of their country by Japanese forces. Prisoners of Propaganda tells why the film was made, and how it came to be forgotten.
Part of the documentary series looking at the course of the First World War. This volume examines the events of 1917, when the Allies launched desperate attacks on the German lines with huge casualties, but with little result. By the end of the year, the Russians had withdrawn from the conflict following the Revolution, while the Americans were slowly becoming involved.
Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.
Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In the heart of the Camargue region, in the south of France, Jawad and Belka find freedom in their love of Camargue races. For these young Maghrebi men, the event is more than a simple tradition. Facing off with a bull is an opportunity to establish their place in the arena—and in French society. But at what cost?
A story about the clash of two cultures, two worlds - traditional Tajik culture and the new, invading and imperialist in its nature, Soviet culture, about the formation of self-awareness of the Tajik dekhkanin in the 1920s-1930s.... Poor Hasan thinks and experiences a lot before he is able to comprehend the changes in his life, to realize that old traditions and customs are no longer valued. Bent by need and disenfranchisement, he finds the strength to stand up against the Basmachi.
In 18th century France, the Chevalier de Fronsac and his Native American friend Mani are sent by the King to the Gevaudan province to investigate the killings of hundreds by a mysterious beast.
The background to, events of and consequences of the Battle of Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940. In that battle, Royal Navy ships fired on the French Fleet in order to prevent it from falling into German hands. A French battleship was sunk and several other ships damaged. Nearly 1,300 French sailors were killed.
In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man.
Vatel is the cook of Prince Condé. When the prince invites Louis XIV to hunt, he has to give lavish banquets in order to fall in his favour. But when Vatel falls in love with the king's mistress, love and duty conflict.
In Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, a school teacher and her would-be-fiancé link up with Chinese guerrilla fighters, forging their own path to freedom.
In David Grubin's NAPOLEON watch Napoleon's rise from obscurity to victories that made him a hero to the French people and convinced him he was destined for greatness. Learn of his love for Josephine Beauharnais, and his rise to Emperor. Witness his extraordinary achievements and ultimately his fall, his final battles, his exile to Elba, and his defeat at Waterloo. For nearly two decades he strode the world stage like a colossus -- loved and despised, venerated and feared. From his birth on the rugged island of Corsica to his final exile on the godforsaken island of St. Helena, NAPOLEON brings this extraordinary figure to life.
A look at the recently discovered fascinating behind the scenes footage shot by the legendary Hollywood director John Ford at Pearl Harbor in 1942 while filming his popular World War II documentaries December 7th and The Battle of Midway.
Vivre dans l'Allemagne en guerre
A Texas congressman sets a series of events in motion when he conspires with a CIA operative to aid Afghan mujahideen rebels fighting the Soviets.
Une chance sur un million
Vanessa Paradis, la soirée
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Documentary detailing the successful Operation Mincemeat in 1943, which led to the Allies successfully invading Sicily and the war turning in their favour.