In the first decades of the 20th century, when life was being transformed by scientific innovations, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine. Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations routinely tested employees’ honesty and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.” But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector too often became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. Written and directed by Rob Rapley and executive produced by Cameo George, The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.
With the passing of his estranged father, Russell inherits the only asset to his name: a bar. As relationships form and Rusty finds himself right at home, he'll soon learn that his inheritance holds a dark secret.
Despite Blacks making up only 7% of Madison WI's population, they are leading in so many important areas from education to politics, and are launching so many multi-million dollar projects that people describe this period as a "Black Renaissance."
Musamoni Panigrahi (1920s–2017), fondly called “Nani Ma” by her neighbours, appears in the centre of this first film in the Baleswari dialect of India's Odia language. The story revolves around folklore and folk songs narrated by Nani Ma. Born in the 1920s in pre-independent rural India in a coastal village in the Balasore district of Odisha, she never got to go beyond the first few days of school. The film is an alternate history of a society broken through colonization, Brahminical patriarchy and a post-famine (Orissa famine of 1866, killing nearly 5 million people, one-third of the population), and the dominance of formal writing over spoken tongues. Three academics -- Damayanti Beshra, PhD (recipient of India’s fourth civilian award, “Padma Shri”), Panchanan Mohanty, PhD (noted linguist), and Laxmikanta Tripathy, PhD, DLitt (anthropologist and author) -- also appear in the film to provide contextual commentary on patriarchy, oral history and the sociolinguistic diversity.
Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.
Six Jewish women, from different countries and different backgrounds, found themselves deported to the notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, during the Holocaust. This film attempts to chronicle that experience through those same female eyes. While subject to the same physical hardships as men, these women do not dwell on that. Instead, they speak of camp families and faith, uplifting one another while trying to remain human. It was this path of spiritual resistance that, while not responsible for their direct survival, led to their ability to survive with healthy minds and spirits despite the constant barrage of their surroundings. Swimming in Auschwitz gives us a perspective of the camp, its surroundings and the Holocaust that we need to understand and remember, so that we never forget.
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.
Maidan Massacre is an investigative documentary into the shootings which occurred on February 20th, 2014, when nearly 50 people were gunned down on the streets of Kyiv's Independence square. The massacre was the result of a massive three month long protest against the former Government of Viktor Yanukovich and his decision to reject a trade deal with the EU. Although no thorough investigation had been conducted, the blame was immediately placed on the officers who served under Yanukovich. This program investigates the scene of the crime, interviewing those who were there when the shootings occurred, and seeks to answer the questions as to who really was shooting that day on Kyiv's Independence square - a place known to the people of Ukraine, as Maidan.—John Beck Hofmann
In an age when disinformation muddles the truth, a newly discovered voice cuts through the historical haze. She is Rhea Clyman, a young Canadian reporter who traversed the starving Soviet heartland when Stalin’s man made famine was just beginning in Ukraine. Clyman’s newly discovered newspaper articles for Toronto and London newspapers in 1932 show her remarkable resourcefulness and courage. After she was banished from the USSR for writing about the Holodomor and the Gulag, this brave woman went on to cover Hitler’s early lethal years in power.
These film reels had vanished for decades and no one knew about the secret passion of Hitler's second man Hermann Goering. This footage from his private collection shows for the first time how he preferred to see himself: at the height of his power, acclaimed by the masses - as in the annexation of Austria in 1938, as Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe.
A young Calabrian woman just back from Gorizia tells a friend about her trip: what prompted her to go to Friuli-Venezia Giulia was her discovery of the poems and novels by one Carlo Michelstaedter, an author and philosopher who had died young, in 1910. What was the reason for his tragic death? And that odd yet familiar figure glimpsed on the beach, at the end of the trip, as the woman told it: who did it belong to?
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!
To historians, physicist Lise Meitner deserves to be placed on a par with Einstein, Heisenberg and Otto Hahn. In the 1930s on the verge of World War II, she led a small group of scientists who discovered that splitting the atomic nucleus of uranium releases enormous energy. This extraordinary film tells the story of a woman who was far ahead of her time as a scientist and a pioneer of feminism.
Almost 1 million people in 22 countries carried out the unprovoked murder of 11 million innocent men, women and children. The Allies knew where a great many of the murderers could be found - Germany, Austria, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and numerous countries in South America. The Allies unanimously agreed to prosecute those responsible when they drew up The London Agreement in August 1945, but, after the late 1940s, these very same Allies did almost nothing. Why were so many were actively permitted to get away with their crimes?