Sophie loved Edmund, but he left town when her parents forced her to marry wealthy Octavius. Years later, Edmund returns with his son, William. Sophie's daughter, Marguerite, and William fall in love. Marguerite's sister, Marianne, also loves William. Timothy, a lowly carpenter, secretly loves Marianne. He kills a man in a fight, and Edmund helps him flee to New Zealand. William deserts inadvertently from the navy, and also flees in disgrace to New Zealand, where he and Timothy start a profitable business. One night, drunk, William writes Octavius, demanding his daughter's hand; but, being drunk, he asks for the wrong sister.
The story of the rise of the Rothschild financial empire founded by Mayer Rothschild and continued by his five sons. From humble beginnings the business grows and helps to finance the war against Napoleon, but it's not always easy, especially because of the prejudices against Jews.
Rudolf, the only heir to Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, is trapped in a loveless marriage to a Belgian princess. As he seeks to flee his stifling environment, he meets the beautiful Maria, and the two enter into a scandalous affair. Despite the interference of the Emperor, the couple refuse to give each other up.
The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt is brewing, and Catherine is poised to ascend to the throne as the country's new empress.
The film follows the life of Napoleon from his early life in Corsica to his death at Saint Helena. The film is notable for its use of location shooting for numerous scenes, especially at the French estates of Malmaison and Fontainebleau, the Palace of Versailles, and sites of Napoleonic battles including Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Documentary about Fidel Castro, covering 40 years of Cuban Revolution. Rare Fidel Castro footage: he appears swimming with a bodyguard, visiting his childhood home and school, playing with his friend Nelson Mandela, meeting kid Elián Gonzalez, and celebrating his birthday with the Buena Vista Social Club group.
Amu is the story of Kaju, a twenty-one-year-old Indian American woman who returns to India to visit her family and discover the place where she was born. The film takes a dark turn as Kaju stumbles against secrets and lies from her past. A horrifying genocide that took place twenty years ago turns out to hold the key to her mysterious origins.
A documentary propaganda film produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps about the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II. The film opens with a map showing the strategic importance of the island, and the thrust of the 1942 Japanese offensive into Midway and Dutch Harbor. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Set in 1944, the Lapland War is a story of survival. A story of forgiveness on a national and personal level. The film seeks answers to the question of what man is and what his role is here.
A crazy Facebook deal and trouble over the "Gruscheln": studiVZ rose at an incredible pace in the 2000s to become Germany's largest social network. This drove its US competitor Facebook crazy. So much so that studiVZ founder Ehssan Dariani and his co-founders met Mark Zuckerberg in Silicon Valley and were presented with an offer that would go down in history. But a rise in ecstasy was followed by a dramatic fall - of the network and its most important founder. The documentary is about scandals, personal stories of loss and the question: did the studiVZ founders just steal everything?
In the last years of the Ottoman Empire, a poor little Anatolian town named Saripinar is hit by a minor earthquake which has neither destroyed nor left it with many casualties. However, a telegraph sent to the central government exaggerates the situation and mentions that the governor of the town has been severely wounded, making the event a nationwide matter.
Thom Andersen's remarkable and sadly neglected 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.
On the eve of 1987's Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, surviving families and friends of people who have died of AIDS prepare panels to be added to a large-scale memorial quilt project. Drawing from the sea of names memorialized, director Robert Epstein focuses on the lives of six people. Alongside the intimate profiles offered, through news footage and interviews, Epstein puts the AIDS crisis in the larger context of social and government response to the disease.