As the United States recovered from the bloody aftermath of the Civil War, Congress passed the Reorganization Act in 1866, that created the first-ever all-Black peacetime regiments. These six regiments would be reduced to four – the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry – and soon earn the moniker Buffalo Soldiers. Although they never received the true and full recognition they deserved, Black Patriots: Buffalo Soldiers, will tell their remarkable story of their valor, bravery, and service. From the complicated skirmishes in the Southwest against Native Americans to the heroic battles on foreign soil to the ongoing fight to be treated as first-class citizens, the Buffalo Soldiers served with pride, dignity, and belief in defending a free America.
The American composer and author Paul Bowles was a man with a great deal of charisma and influence. When he moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1949, half the world followed him to the enigmatic city. His marriage with author Jane Bowles was a loving relationship of opposites, even though both were homosexual. Based on exclusive interviews with Bowles shortly before his death interwoven with anecdotes recounted by his friends and co-workers, the film portrays a daring and visionary life as well as a relationship shaped by an interdependency that encompassed much more than sexuality.
This program presents the life and ministry of George Muller, who cared for thousands of orphans in 19th century England. He never asked anyone for money. Instead he prayed, and his children never missed a meal.
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
The War on Disco explores the culture war that erupted over the spectacular rise of disco music. Originating in underground Black and gay clubs, disco had unseated rock as America’s most popular music by the late 1970s. But many diehard rock fans viewed disco, with its repetitive beat and culture that emphasized pleasure, as shallow and superficial. A story that’s about much more than music, The War on Disco explores how the powerful anti-disco backlash revealed a cultural divide that to some seemed to be driven by racism and homophobia. The hostility came to a head on July 12, 1979, when a riot broke out at “Disco Demolition Night” during a baseball game in Chicago.
Elton John's career has spanned decades, but his legacy is more than just his music. Reginald Dwight's early debut was in the band Bluesology - there he would meet lyricist Bernie Taupin whom he would go on to write over 30 albums with. After parting ways with the band and his birth name, the Rocketman was born.
Jewish aesthete Cioma, 21, does not let anyone take away his joy of life, especially not the Nazis. In 1942, he has to find new ways to make his living in Berlin and escape deportation. In the process he discovers his talent for forgery: not only with passports, but also his own identity.
Part jazz history, part true-crime tale, Kasper Collin’s new documentary employs extensive archival footage and new interviews to tell the tragic story of the magnificently talented trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen, who murdered him in a New York bar in 1972.
Thom Andersen's hour-long documentary adroitly combines biography, history, film theory, and philosophical reflection. Muybridge's photographic studies of animal locomotion in the 1870s were a major forerunner of movies; even more interesting are his subsequent studies of diverse people, photographed against neutral backgrounds.
Narrated by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman, "JFK: A President Betrayed" uncovers new evidence that reveals how JFK embarked on secret back channel peace efforts with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro and was determined to get out of Vietnam despite intense opposition inside his own government.
16th July 1969: America prepares to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of kilometers away, a ragtag group of Zambian exiles is trying to beat America to the Moon.
The unbelievable story of Leonid Bernshtein, a young Jewish soldier who rose to become the leader and led the operation to destroy the secret facility of the notorious Nazi V2 ballistic missiles.
In 1918, when New York City hired its first scientifically trained medical examiner Charles Norris. Over the course of a decade and a half, Norris and his extraordinarily driven and talented chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, would turn forensic chemistry into a formidable science, sending many a murderer to the electric chair and setting the standards that the rest of the country would ultimately adopt.
As the debate over the state of America's public school system rages on, one thing everyone agrees on is the need for great teachers. Yet, while research proves that teachers are the most important school factor in a child's future success, America's teachers are so woefully underpaid that almost a third must divide their time between a second job in order to make a living. Chronicling the stories of four teachers in different areas of the country, American Teacher reveals the frustrating realities of today's educators, the difficulty of attracting talented new teachers, and why so many of our best teachers feel forced to leave the profession altogether. But this wake-up call to our system's failings also looks at possibilities for reform. Can we re-value teaching in the United States and turn it into a prestigious, financially attractive and competitive profession? With almost half of American teachers leaving the field in the next five years, now is the time to find out.
May 1939, 3 months before the outbreak of WWII, the future US President, John F. Kennedy, visits Estonia. There his path crosses with two very different girls – a call girl, willing to abandon everything and a sweet local, who is in desperate need of money. The future of the world is crashing around him as he must figure out which is the spy when comes to find out one is working for the Nazis!
Follow-up to the TV trilogy “Heimat”, this time for cinemas, set again in the fictional village Schabbach in the Hunsrück region of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Druids have existed far longer than hitherto assumed, since the 4th century BC. Their traces are found all over middle Europe: from the northern Balkans to Ireland. Their cultural achievements were equal in almost every way to those of the Romans and Greeks: They could read and write and spoke Greek and Latin - for centuries, they were the powerful elite of their culture. Only one single Druid is known by name to history: Diviciacos - an aristocrat of the Aedui and personal friend of Julius Caesar. Diviciacos was a politician, a judge and a diplomat, but he lived at a time when the Celtic lands of Gaul were conquered by the Romans. Greek and Roman contemporaries distrusted the actions of this forbear of the famous comic book druid Getafix: They imagined him in bloody rituals in somber woods.