The Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897-1944) was always there where the news broke out: in the fratricidal Spain of 1936, in Bolshevik Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, in occupied Paris or in the bombed London of World War II; because his job was to walk, see and tell stories, and thus fight against tyrants, at a time when it was necessary to take sides in order not to be left alone; but he, a man of integrity to the bitter end, never did so.
Over 80 years after her death, Marie Curie remains by far the best-known female scientist. In her lifetime, she became that rare thing - a celebrity scientist, attracting the attention of the news cameras and tabloid gossip. This multi-layered film reveals the real Marie Curie, an extraordinary woman who fell in love three times, had to survive the pain of loss, and the public humiliation of a doomed love affair. It is a riveting portrait of a tenacious mother and scientist, who opened the door on a whole new realm of physics, which she discovered and named - radioactivity.
On May 5th, 1862, a few thousand Mexican soldiers put their lives on the line against the world's largest and most powerful army in one legendary battle for freedom and for Mexico.
Baghdad Outside Baghdad is based on the Gilgamesh Sumerian legend, set in the first decades of the 20th century and told with a realistic and human hold. The story portraits six different stories that in different ways reflects the intellectual and cultural life in Iraq in that period, a period that fostered great poets and singers. The film presents six figures from this period through easy going as well as melancholic perspectives, while they live as strangers in their homeland and slowly move towards death. Gilgamesh is constantly present in the story, and as set in the historical epic portrayal, watchful and fearful of the death. Baghdad Outside Baghdad is outermost a historical portrait of Iraq.
As archaeologists excavate a mass grave of British sailors, Sam Willis explores Antigua's ruins and sees how the Caribbean's sugar islands were a kind of hell in Nelson's time.
In 'Nefandus' two men travel by canoe down the Don Diego river in the Colombian Caribbean, a landscape of 'wild' beauty. The men, an indigenous man and a Spanish speaking man, tell stories about 'unspeakable sins' and 'abominable crimes'; acts of sodomy that took place in the Americas during the conquest. It has been documented that Spanish conquistadors used sex as a weapon of domination, but what is known about homoerotic pre-Hispanic traditions? How did Christian morality, as taught by the Catholic missions and propagated through war during the Conquest, transform the natives' relationship to sex? 'Nefandus' attentively looks at the landscape for clues of stories that remain untold and have been stigmatized in historical accounts.
The 1st queen of the king dies in child birth, the prince survives. After the 2nd queen, gives birth to a new prince, she plots to kill the 1st prince, so that her son would get the crown after the king. A soldier senses this danger and ousts the prince to a rural village for survival. The village headman adopts the child without knowing the origin of the child. The prince gradually forgets his royalty, and grows up as a skillful and handsome farmer. After the death of the king, the soldier and religious leaders plan to bring the real prince to the crown.
Alfred Roch, member of the Palestinian National League, is a politician with a bohemian panache. In 1942, at the height of WWII, he throws what will turn out to be the last masquerade in Palestine. Inspired by an archival photograph, A Sketch of Manners (Alfred Roch’s Last Masquerade) recreates an unconventional bon vivant aspect of Palestinian urban life before 1948. Posing silently for a group photo, the unmasked and melancholic pierrots accidentally personify the premonition of an uncertain future.
Compelled by the inheritance of a mysterious box of letters, American aesthete Felix Pfeifle begins the journey of a lifetime to reach the source of the correspondence: the last heir of the Holy Roman Emperors, aging Archduke Otto von Habsburg. The quest takes Felix across America , over the Atlantic and beyond.
A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.
Savannah is the true story of Ward Allen, a romantic and bombastic character who rejects his plantation heritage for the freedom of life on a river. Ward navigates the change of early 20th century America on the wrong side of the law and society, his long-time friend, a freed slave named Christmas Moultrie, at his side. Master of Shakespeare, and the shotgun that provides Savannah's markets with fowl, Ward fights for his rights as a hunter. His charisma and eloquent rhetoric win the heart of a society woman who defies her father to marry him. An elderly Moultrie tells the story of life on the river with his friend to a little boy, who passes the legendary Ward Allen down to the next generation.
Since 9/11, the Israeli arms industries are doing bigger business than ever before. Large Israeli companies develop and test the vessels of future warfare, which is then sold worldwide by private Israeli agents, who manipulate a network of Israeli politicians and army commanders, while Israeli theoreticians explain to various foreign countries how to defeat civil and para-military resistance. All based on the extensive Israeli experience.The film reveals The Lab, which has transformed the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank from a burden to a marketable, highly profitable, national asset.
When a pair of young lovers are discovered dead, a tangled web of deception unravels revealing that behind the passionate tragedy lies a dangerous truth.
The extraordinary story of Edward VIII's first love affair, involving a murder trial, a secret cache of vanished letters, and a cover-up to save the reputation of the future King.
Suffering from a fatal malady as a child the future great physicist, Nikola Tesla, promised his parents that he would recover under the sole condition...if they allowed him to become an engineer. And he kept his promise. Never ending yearning for knowledge, research practice, creative endeavor, discoveries that have unfixed all established notions - that's what was the characteristic of the great physicist. Nikola Tesla would always remain a scientist whose life was a sort of mystification rather than pure reality.
The Watergate case was the original game changer of America politics. How has Watergate changed the Presidency? What effect has the scandal had on our political leaders? And has hope and optimism forever been replaced in our national dialogue by doubt and cynicism? In 1973, Watergate's most pivotal year, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doggedly investigated the scandal exposing the long, twisted trail of cover-ups and lies.