In 1945, two young American soldiers, brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg, are commissioned to collect filmed and recorded evidence of the horrors committed by the infamous Third Reich in order to prove Nazi war crimes during the Nuremberg trials (1945-46). The story of the making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, a paramount historic documentary, released in 1948.
Between June 1940 and March 1943, the 1,200 kilometer long demarcation line broke France in two. For almost three years she controlled the daily newspaper of 40 million French people. In the north the zone occupied by Hitler's soldiers, in the south the zone administered by Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime. This film lifts the veil in this theater on the shameful mistakes of the collaboration, but also on the most courageous and noble deeds. Archive images and film recordings at places where the border used to be crossed are alternated with interviews with the last witnesses of this time.
The story of the cross destiny of George Orwell (1903-50) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the genius authors of the two most groundbreaking novels of anticipation of the 20th century: 1984 and Brave New World; two lucid witnesses of the maledictions of the modern world whose novels have found a considerable echo with our time.
From her personal experience, Marie Labory sets out on the trail of the lesbians who lived in Europe in the twentieth century. One hundred years of fighting for freedom, told through archives and testimonies.
Fifty years ago, on Sunday, 2 March 1969, Concorde flew for the first time. Starting from this inaugural flight, the film goes back in time to the origin of the conception of Concorde.
In June 1940 nothing was written. The appeal of June 18 by General de Gaulle was a hope but also a start. The start for an essential page of the History of France, written by De Gaulle and his followers, without whom nothing would have existed in the Resistance to the German tyranny and this film wishes to honor their memory.
In 1892, Ellis Island, in New York Bay, became the main gateway to the United States for immigrants arriving increasingly from Europe. The story of immigration to the United States from 1892 to 1954, an enthralling polyphonic narrative that embraces both small and great history.
Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.
How only one man all at the same time painted the Mona Lisa, conceived ball bearing and gave the first clinical description of atherosclerosis? On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death, this documentary will answer these questions and much more, gathering clues thanks to research on the field and encounters with the most outstanding specialists on Leonardo Da Vinci. Travelling through time thanks to an imaginary museum, we will track back the Renaissance genius and give you to see Leonardo’s relentless ingenuity!
Ian Nathan, Neil Norman and Stephen Armstrong run through their top 25 sci-films of the last century, including The Matrix and Planet of the Apes.
Between the end of the Second World War and the abolition of the "offence of homosexuality" in 1982, 10,000 sentences were handed down in France. Sentences in correctional courts, fines and sometimes imprisonment, the convictions were mainly against men. The last witnesses of this period speak out and tell of four decades of clandestine life, just before the tragedy of AIDS.
In the 1930’s, the workers of the underground, headed by brigades of writers, are in charge to write in real time "the history of the Moscow Metro". Based on their narratives, partially unpublished, the film recounts the first lines construction of the most beautifiul underground in the world, in the light of this "big literary Utopia", stoped by the purges of 1937-38.
Did Leonardo da Vinci come up with all of his ideas and inventions by himself or did he also borrow some of them from ancient scientists including those who lived 1,700 years before him.
A documentary that traces the lives of men and women persecuted by the Third Reich because of their sexual orientation. Beginning with the social and political context of the 1920s, when European society still "tolerated" homosexuality, it details the mechanisms of repression and brings to life the hell experienced by the victims in the concentration camps. It also recalls the long road traveled by the victims to obtain the decriminalization of homosexuality and recognition of the harm suffered during this dark period in history. While the film traces the martyrdom of homosexuals and lesbians, it does not fail to place this story in a wider perspective and to bring together in a single memory all the victims of Nazi cruelty.
During the 1930s anti-Semitism was rampant not only in Germany but also in America. There was a German American Bund and pro-Nazi rallies even filled Madison Square Gardens in New York City. And the US was isolationist. Until Pearl Harbor, then, everything changed. Spymasters throughout the 20th century, and particularly during times of conflict, thought it advantageous to enlist the services of celebrities who had high level and powerful "fans" in various industries, many with easy access to politicians and high ranking government officials. Hollywood, as we now know from declassified National Archive documents, aided in the mobilization for war and its people contributed as spies, combatants, propagandists, documentary and fund-raisers, entertainers, and morale-boosters. Hundreds of celebrities eagerly answered the "call to arms" and brought their talents and patriotism to the intelligence services, military and war information offices.
The Vatican opened once-secret records on Pope Pius XII on March 2020. This gave researchers a brand new insight into the Catholic Church during the Nazi era. What did the Pope know about the Holocaust?
