Category: History

History

  • Barefoot Gen

    A story about the effect of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on a boy’s life and the lives of the Japanese people.

  • Storm – Letter of Fire

    The film is set in 1521 Antwerp, in a Europe ravaged by religious wars, and during the early years of the Reformation. It tells the story of the twelve year old, Falko Voeten – a printer’s son. When Falko’s father, Klaas Voeten, a printer of forbidden literature, is caught by the Inquisition for printing a letter written by Maarten Luther; Falko is unwittingly propelled into helping his father and into searching for the letter. Threatened by the Inquisition but aided by Marieke, a Catholic orphan girl from the underground sewers, Falko is faced with a race against time if he is to save his father from being executed for heresy.

  • Voices from the Grave

    The story of the Northern Ireland Troubles through the unflinching testimony of two men who played key roles on opposite sides of that bloody conflict. Nearly ten years ago the two paramilitary leaders told their stories on condition that they could never be revealed while they were still alive. The stories told by the Irish Republican Army’s Brendan Hughes and Ulster Volunteer Force’s David Ervine tell us of the motivations of the participants, the planning of campaigns of violence, the misery of a hunger strike, the tracking and killing of informers and the duplicity that ended a conflict that had lasted too long. It is also a narrative of the fate of combatants when their wars are over.

  • The Best of Men

    Ludwig Guttmann, a renowned German neurosurgeon who fled Nazi Germany in the early days of WWII, takes a position at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England in 1944 and begins to transform the lives of his patients, paralyzed soldiers that have been written-off and who are facing death from neglect. A breakthrough comes when Dr. Guttmann introduces sport into their rehabilitation, a breakthrough that leads to the founding of the Paralympic Games.

  • The Fog of War

    Using archival footage, cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the 85-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts his life, from working as a WWII whiz-kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company’s president, to managing the Vietnam War as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

  • Selma

    “Selma,” as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

  • The Day They Dropped The Bomb

    On August 6 1945, one plane dropped one bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In an instant, the city was destroyed and 80,000 people were dead. But the dropping of the Atomic bomb also launched the Nuclear age, shaping all of our lives and changing the world for ever. For this film we have tracked down people who made the bomb, people who dropped the bomb, and people who were in Hiroshima – some less than half a mile from ground zero -when the bomb fell on their city. Many of the witnesses are in their 90s and this will be the last time they will be able to tell their extraordinary stories. The Day They Dropped The Bomb is told through witness recollections, rare archive film and photographs shot at the time. The documentary will be broadcast for the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima next year by ITV and in America by the Smithsonian Channel.

  • The Last Drop

    Different factions in WWII-era Holland race to find a stash of Nazi gold.

  • The Abduction Club

    A group of Irish noblemen kidnap girls in order to marry into their fortune and avoid becoming priests or soldiers.

  • The Bang Bang Club

    In the early to mid ’90s, when the South African system of apartheid was in its death throes, four photographers – Greg Marinovich, Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva – bonded by their friendship and a sense of purpose, worked together to chronicle the violence and upheaval leading up to the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela as president. Their work is risky and dangerous, potentially fatally so, as they thrust themselves into the middle of chaotic clashes between forces backed by the government (including Inkatha Zulu warriors) and those in support of Mandela’s African National Congress.