Le Monde sous les bombes, de Guernica à Hiroshima

Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.

In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.

In the 1930s, Count Almásy is a Hungarian map maker employed by the Royal Geographical Society to chart the vast expanses of the Sahara Desert along with several other prominent explorers. As World War II unfolds, Almásy enters into a world of love, betrayal, and politics.

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

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.

Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

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.

After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port.

When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad.

The film is set in Karafuto after the radio broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. On August 15, 1945, Soviet forces invaded Karafuto. On August 20, the postal telegraph office in Maoka suspended operations and nine of the twelve telephone operators committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide while the city was being invaded.

National Geographic 2011 Documentary on the World's Biggest Bomb (UK).

Return to Guam is a 1944 short propaganda film produced by the US Navy about the taking and recapture of the island of Guam. The film starts when a convoy of ships nearing the island sees strange lights flashing from the island in Morse code "information". After cautiously investigating the signal, they find that it was made by a white man, George Tweed, the last survivor of the original garrison at Guam. Tweed relates his harrowing story of how he survived in the bush for 31 months with the help of the natives, Chamorros.

Through the Fondren Fellows program, the Rice Media Center Archive Project has spent the past few months sifting through material stored at the now-defunct Rice Media Center. The team has identified several films as especially notable and will be presenting them in conjunction with documentary footage the team shot of people involved with the films. From lectures featuring Roberto Rossellini and Werner Herzog to films from former Rice students and faculty, the film presentation will tell the narrative of the Rice Media Center through the films and filmmakers that passed through its corridors.

During the Turkish artistic revolution of the 1930s, a group of pioneers staged Özsoy Opera, the first opera in the history of Turkish Republic.

A symbol of luxury and adventure, the Orient Express opened a new path between the West and the East. Mata Hari, Josephine Baker and Agatha Christie, who dedicated a novel to it, contributed to its legend. Delve into the secrets of a legendary train.

In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.