At the height of the Cold War, Gilligan's Island depicted seven Americans living in an analogue of a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors have to rebuild civilization. Remarkably, the society they create is pure communist. Interviews with the show's creator and some of the surviving actors, as well from professors from Harvard, reveal that Gilligan's Island was deliberately designed to be dismissed as low brow comedy in order to celebrate Marxism and lampoon Western democratic constructs.
Hacktivist and blockchain expert Lauri Love fights extradition in TRUST MACHINE—his computer skills a threat to the US government. Tech innovators strike a raw nerve as banks and network pundits rush to condemn volatile cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technology. Why are banks terrified while UNICEF embraces it to help refugee children? Award–winning filmmaker Alex Winter reveals that proponents of blockchain—a verified digital ledger—are already using the technology to change the world; fighting income inequality, the refugee crisis and world hunger.
Hosted by NBC News investigative journalist Stephanie Gosk, this brand new two-hour special will offer an intimate look into the life of Joe DeAngelo, the suspect in custody, through new and exclusive interviews from those who were closest to him and offering a gripping depiction of the prime suspect in a decades-long manhunt. To his family, friends, and former colleagues, DeAngelo lived the life of the classic “average Joe” - a father, grandfather, veteran, and even former police officer. DeAngelo now stands accused of being the man behind one of the most ruthlessly enduring crime sprees of all time and is believed to have raped more than 45 women and murdered at least 12 people. He is currently charged with 12 counts of first degree murder and has so far not entered a plea. Joining Gosk is Bay Area detective Paul Holes, who helped search for the Golden State Killer for nearly a quarter-century and played a key role in the arrest of Joe DeAngelo.
Church & State is the improbable story of a brash, inexperienced gay activist and a tiny Salt Lake City law firm that joined forces to topple Utah’s gay marriage ban. The film’s ride on the bumpy road to equality in Utah offers a glimpse at the Mormon church’s influence in state politics and the squabbles inside the gay community that nearly derailed a chance to make history. Church & State is a story of triumph, setback and a little-known lawsuit that should have failed, but instead paved the way for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay unions nationwide.
Calling All Earthlings explores a mid-century UFO cult led by one-time Howard Hughes confidante, George Van Tassel. Van Tassel claimed to have combined alien guidance with the writings of inventor/physicist Nikola Tesla, and other controversial science, to build an electromagnetic time machine he dubbed “The Integratron.” Was he insane? Or could the dome really break through the boundaries of space, time, and energy? FBI agents worked against Van Tassel and the alternative community that formed out of his work. Would he finish the Integratron before the government finished him?
The life of Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally (Master Class, Ragtime): 60 years of groundbreaking plays and musicals, the struggle for gay rights, addiction and recovery, finding true love, and the relentless pursuit of inspiration.
This lively and intimately-crafted documentary immerses the audience in rock icon Carlos Santana's life and musical trajectory. Filmmaker Rudy Valdez bolsters this personal narrative with pulsating, never-before-seen footage — guided by Santana himself, in his own words.
Circumcision is the most common surgery in America, yet America is the only industrialized country in the world to routinely practice non-religious infant circumcision. Why does America continue to cut the genitals of it's newborn baby males when the rest of the world does not?
Expedition China invites you on location in some of the world's most intense, hard-to-reach environments with the filmmakers of Disneynature's big-screen adventure Born in China.
Jeff Bridges, alongside prominent scientists and authors, weaves evolution, emergence, entropy, dark ecology, and what some are calling the end of nature, into a story that helps us understand our place among the species of Earth’s household.
Join host Michael Keaton to celebrate "Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood," the pioneering children's series that premiered nationally 50 years ago. Celebrities, cast members and Joanne Rogers reveal their favorite memories from the series.
An Irish filmmaker grapples with the legacy of his estranged father, the late documentarian Arthur MacCaig, through MacCaig's decades-spanning archive of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Drawing on over 30 years of unique and never-seen-before footage, 'The Image You Missed' is an experimental essay film that weaves together a history of the Northern Irish 'Troubles' with the story of a son's search for his father. In the process, the film creates a candid encounter between two filmmakers born into different political moments, revealing their contrasting experiences of Irish nationalism, the role of images in social struggle, and the competing claims of personal and political responsibility.
INTO THE CIRCLE ( German: IM INNEREN KREIS) highlights the diverse psychological and political consequences of covert police operations. The undercover police officer, Iris P., investigated the Hamburg left scene as "Iris Schneider" for nearly six years. She had close friendships, and she had several years of intimate relations with people, who at the same she spied upon. After Iris P. was publicly unmasked in 2014, two more clandestine investigators were revealed as well. However, public surveillance can also affect people who would have considered it impossible. This is illustrated by the case of the police officer Simon B., who enrolled in the University of Heidelberg, to spy out peaceful left-wing students.
Disneynature's international team of filmmakers travel to the mountains of China to find and film the elusive snow leopard on the highest plateau on Earth, while enduring brutal weather and unsettled terrain.
Hillary Clinton, Roberto Saviano, Jonathan Franzen and others weigh-in on the Elena Ferrante "craze" and what makes her work - and her mysterious persona - so uniquely captivating.
With the instant reach of social media and explosion in cyber porn, a child sex slave can be purchased online and delivered to a customer more quickly than a pizza. Stopping Traffic: The Movement to End Sex Trafficking starts the conversation on a taboo topic – with raw images of life on the streets, heart-pounding rescues and gut-wrenching, personal stories – ultimately offering a story of hope and empowerment, with the goal of engaging others in launching a movement to end modern-day slavery. With 27 million victims, human trafficking is the 2nd largest criminal enterprise in the world. Not just a back-alley enterprise in underdeveloped regions, it’s also prevalent in the U.S. and industrial nations. Stopping Traffic takes an unflinching, first-hand look at this shadowy underworld, telling the shocking story through the eyes of survivors, veteran activists, front-line rescue organizations and celebrities who support the cause, including Dolph Lundgren and Jeannie Mai.
The corruption runs deeper than you'd ever imagine. A multi-billion dollar industry you've never heard of. This is the world Patent Trolls thrive in: A world created for them by our own U. S. Patent system. You can be sued for clicking on a hyperlink, using your own scanner, or sharing your Wi-Fi! It sounds insane, but the reality is even crazier. Patent Trolls look for obvious ideas, patent them, and then sue anyone they claim is infringing on their idea. People's lives and businesses are being destroyed.. and they have no way out. “The Patent Scam” exposes the underbelly of this system, and the people that commit this practice.
Science fiction has become a reality in our modern criminal justice system. A term originally coined by science fiction author Philip K. Dick, “pre-crime” is a policing technique now used in both the US and Europe to identify “hot people”—those most likely to be victims or perpetrators of a crime. Forecasting software and algorithms that have been criticized as inaccurate and arbitrary are used to collect information, and monitor and flag people. But predictive tools are only as good as the data they’re fed. With scant evidence of the reliability of the data sources or the accuracy of the data crunching, misfires are a guarantee. In this chilling and explosive in-depth examination into the modern age of policing, directors Monika Hielscher and Matthias Heider pose an important question: How much freedom and human awareness are we willing to give to the limited logic of technology?
Freelance female war reporter Alex Quade covers U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) on highly classified combat missions. Since 2001, she has embedded with elite SOF, including the U.S. Army Special Forces or Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy Seals, and CIA clandestine operatives to tell their stories from the front lines. "Danger Close" follows Alex as she lives alongside these highly trained forces on some of the most daring missions ever documented in Iraq and Afghanistan.