This is the story of a tiny country that made a decision to do something that no other country had ever done -- it decided to abolish its army and declare peace to the world. And this is the story of a young boy who grew up in that country, and how he ended up challenging -- and sometimes even convincing -- the greatest powers in the world to follow Costa Rica's example. "Oscar Arias: Without a Shot Fired" is a Don Quixote-like saga with great historical touchstones -- Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Cold War politics and Communism, Central American War and Peace. It follows a slight, academic, and most unlikely hero over the course of more than fifty years, as he travels the world in a quest to stop the spread of the weapons of war. In the end, it is a story about the triumph of reason, of the sparrow triumphing over the eagle, and how the impossible dream can sometimes come true.
January, 1947. The public receives the news of Al Capone's death with indifference, although twenty years earlier he had ruled Chicago's crime underworld with brute force and corrupting many touchable individuals. Until the day the head of the Untouchables Brigade, Eliot Ness, entered the scene. Since then, a cruel battle between the two of them began, a battle that ended in trial, conviction, disease, insanity and death.
America's Founding Fathers were yearning for a nation of individual liberty. But, the origins of America were overflowing with a deep-seated paradox. The Founding Fathers were rallying the colonists to liberty, while many were slave owners.
John Newton was a troubled young man with a violent temper and a penchant for vulgarity that literally made his fellow sailors blush. Whipped for desertion and sold into slavery, it seemed his life would end early in a West African grave...until he was rescued by a ship captain sent by his father. Following a powerful conversion experience during a storm at sea, Newton would eventually become a pastor in the Church of England and the writer of several of the church's most beloved hymns, including "Amazing Grace".
How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'
In 1968, a white student from Brooklyn finds himself an outsider at Nashville’s legendary black medical school, where he and his peers attempt to battle the mysteries of medicine, demanding professors, and each other in their quest to become healers in the Service To Man.
This ninety-minute film takes audiences on an epic journey across nine countries and over 1,400 years of history. It explores themes such as the Word, Space, Ornament, Color and Water and presents the stories behind many great masterworks of Islamic Art and Architecture. Narrated by Academy Award winning performer Susan Sarandon, this dazzling documentary reveals the variety and diversity of Islamic art. It provides a window into Islamic culture and brings broad insights to the enduring themes that have propelled human history and fueled the rise of world civilization over the centuries
In 1980s Communist Czechoslovakia an emerging generation took inspiration from alternative culture to create their own worldview, politics and eventually, a revolution. 25 years later, this unique generational perspective is explored for the first time.
Ascent of Evil: The Story of Mein Kampf is an autobiographical manifesto written by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler while imprisoned following his 1923 failed coup attempt in Munich. In Mein Kampf, Hitler outlined his political ideology and goals for Germany. Today, Mein Kampf is still available in libraries, on the Internet, at universities and even at bookstores worldwide. Yet much of the history of this 720-page, two-volume screed is now forgotten. Using historical footage, photographs and interviews with scholars, Ascent of Evil plunges deep into the infamous blueprint for evil’s dark secrets and reveals how this book came to be written and its impact on world.
This film examines the mechanisms of Nazi extortion during World War II, and is interspersed with current issues surrounding restitutions. It retraces the incredible stories of 3 major works having belonged to Jewish collectors. From their plundering by the Nazis to their final restitution: Man with a Guitar by Georges Braque, Herbstsonne by Egon Schiele and Sitting Woman by Henri Matisse.