The relationship between The Beatles and the BBC has always been a special and fascinating one. This special looks back at some key moments that saw the BBC document the band’s journey as they went from Merseybeat heroes with mop-tops and MBEs to seeing out the sixties as long-haired heroes of the counter-culture.
Documentary about the famous Polish director Agnieszka Holland and her relationship to Czechoslovakia, based on two storylines: one depicting the life of Agnieszka Holland during her studies in Prague towards the end of the 1960’s, her friends, her participation in a student strike and her arrest for supporting the dissident movement and anti-state tendencies, and the second one - following her return there.
2022 marks the 25th anniversary of ABC airing Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” (1997), a revolutionary TV musical that embraced racial diversity in casting and has impacted generations over the years, starring an all-star cast led by Brandy Norwood as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as her fairy godmother. ABC News is producing a news special dedicated to the legacy of this film, reflecting how the idea of a princess has evolved and what makes the film still relevant today.
In 2007 the legendary American duo White Stripes toured Canada. Besides playing the usual venues they challenged themselves and played in buses, cafés and for Indian tribal elders. Music video director Emmett Malloy followed the band and managed to capture both the special tour, extraordinary concert versions of the band's minimalist, raw, blues-inspired rock songs and the special relationship between the extroverted Jack White and the introspective Meg White - a formerly married couple who for a long time claimed to be siblings. The film makes striking use of the band's concert colors: red, white and black.
The film explores the “acute suffering” and transcendent glory experienced by current and former members of King Crimson, allowing the audience an intimate and sometimes uncomfortable insight into the musicians’ experience as they confront life and death head on in the world’s most demanding rock band.
A funny walk through the life story of Billy Wilder (1906-2002), a cinematic genius; a portrait of a filmmaker who never was a boring man, a superb mind who had ten commandments, of which the first nine were: “Thou shalt not bore.”
The life of Bruce Springsteen has been told many times, from the angle of the adored rock star, American icon.
After a career spanning fifty years, nearly 130 million albums sold, concerts lasting over three hours in sold-out stadiums, fans including Sean Penn, Bono, Sting, Prince and Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen is now, at 73, one of rock’n’roll’s major icons. The American weeklies Time Magazine and Newsweek made no mistake in featuring the singer on their front pages in 1975, prophesying his inevitable success.
A multimillionaire singer, the “Boss” has always sung about the little people, the workers who get up early in the morning, the people left behind by the American dream.
On stage and in song, he continues to embody the American working class from which he sprang, and for which he remains the unapologetic spokesman. As in a Frank Capra film, anyone can become a hero in a Bruce Springsteen song.
The capture of Naples, the first great European city to be liberated, revealed the magnitude of the tasks involved in re-creating the means of livelihood and the machinery of government in a devastated, starving and disease-ridden city.
Most of us think of death as something clear-cut, and that medical science has it neatly figured out. This feature documentary explodes such assumptions through its exploration of a phenomenon that blurs life and death to an unprecedented degree. In what Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, advanced meditators die in a consciously controlled manner. Though dead according to our biomedical standards, they often stay sitting upright in meditation; remarkably, their bodies remain fresh and lifelike, without signs of decay for days, sometimes weeks after clinical death. Following ground-breaking scientific research into tukdam and taking us into intimate death stories of Tibetan meditators, the film juxtaposes scientific and Tibetan perspectives as it tries to unravel the mystery of tukdam.
A behind-the-scenes look at the cast-album recording session of the 1992 Tony-winning Broadway revival of the Frank Loesser musical. Originally broadcast as part of the PBS series "Great Performances" (season 21, episode 4).
FRONTLINE investigates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clashes with multiple American presidents as he’s tried to rebuild the Russian empire. Veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk (Putin’s Revenge, Putin’s Road to War) and his team trace the miscalculations and missteps of U.S. presidents over five administrations, culminating in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Following Karen Carpenter's meteoric climb to stardom in the 1970s and the little-known anorexia nervosa diagnosis that resulted in her untimely death.
In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the sensational event.