On 27 March 2007 a Pan Africanist named Toyin Agbetu challenged the British Government, Monarchy and Church as they gathered to hold a religious celebration for the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in Westminster Abbey, England. Toyin, who condemned the service as an insult and disgrace, halted the proceedings with words that gave a voice to the collective view of millions around the world. As Maafa truths were revealed he was demonised and misrepresented in the British media as a ‘lone madman’. Watch the restored uncensored footage of what happened that day and afterwards when the African community in Britain stood beside him - from his arrest and incarceration to the eventual dropping of all criminal charges. Directed by Toyin Agbetu Produced by emma pierre
9.0The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba
5.0Using historically-accurate, battle-filled re-enactments and interviews with expert historians and noted authors, this two-part documentary series brings to vivid life the captivating true stories behind Britain's bloody civil wars.
5.6An excellent comprehensive look at all the music that came out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati "Rock Legends" "James Brown" "King Records" "Pure Prairie League" "Lemon Pipers" "Syd Nathan" WEBN "Bootsy Collins" "Lonnie Mack" "The Who concert 1979" "Rick Derringer"
Kathy's family left on a Saturday morning in 1965. The rumble of bulldozers echoed through the neighborhood, and her block was empty. Federally-funded urban renewal had arrived in Charlottesville, scattering dozens of families like Kathy's. The once-vibrant African American community, built by formerly enslaved men and women who had secured a long-denied piece of the American dream, disappeared.
10.0How the Monuments Came Down is a timely and searing look at the history of white supremacy and Black resistance in Richmond. The feature-length film-brought to life by history-makers, descendants, scholars, and activists-reveals how monuments to Confederate leaders stood for more than a century, and why they fell.
6.6Follows the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices.
6.4A short documentary about the making of "The Great Dictator."
6.0Haunted by uncanny similarities between Nazi stage techniques and the showmanship employed by modern entertainers, a filmmaker investigates the dangers of audience manipulation and leader worship.
The film Crustaceans treats itself like an impressionist picture or a Japanese Haiku. Crustaceans is a matter of reflection on an instance in life with the social-economical crisis as a landscape. The heartbreak in times of crisis. The film was filmed as demonstrations in the streets against crisis and social welfare cuts took place. For two years, it filmed street demonstrations and incorporated actors in the social landscape. The result, is a film in which the collective and the intimate come together. Both the characters and the people in the street, like identical crustaceans, take to the street to express their shame and rage for what is happening and try to find a solution. A time of anxiety, uncertainty and protest that conforms the landscape in which the characters, such as crustaceans hide their wounds under their hard shell is seen.
7.4Nikola Tesla is considered the father of our modern technological age and one of the most mysterious and controversial scientists in history.
6.8The story of Hitler’s final hours told by people who were there. This special features exclusive forgotten interviews, believed lost for 65 years, with members of Hitler’s inner circle who were trapped with him in his bunker as the Russians fought to take Berlin. These unique interviews from figures such as the leader of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, have never before been seen outside Germany. Using rarely seen archive footage and dramatic reconstruction, this special tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.
An account of the victims of the Sierra Leone Civil War and depicts the most brutal period with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels capturing the capital city on January 1999.
8.0Kyra Gardner's loving tribute to growing up in the world of the psycho killer doll, Chucky.
6.3Archival footage of an American Nazi rally that attracted 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II.
6.4It’s the hit musical that changed Broadway forever and brought the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda to the attention of legions of fans across the world. A story of how a group of mavericks made an unlikely marriage of hip-hop and history to create the biggest show in America…and are getting ready to conquer the world. Featuring interviews with Miranda, as well as the cast and crew of Hamilton.
8.0To mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Janina Ramirez tells the story of three books that defined this radical religious revolution in England.
7.0July 1969. America made history and sent the first humans to the moon. High-quality NASA footage and extensive news broadcasts bring this sensational moment in history bursting back into life. Live news footage from every corner of the globe recreates the excitement and elation that surrounded the event, as 600 million people tuned in to watch Neil Armstrong's remarkable first steps.
8.0This World War II documentary rests on an unusual thesis: it argues that, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the actions precipitated by the U.S.A.F. that truly helped turn the tide were perpetrated not by the widely-ballyhooed U.S.N. aviators or aircraft carriers, but by the American submarines - silent warriors beneath the deceptively placid ocean surface. The subs, after all, were responsible for gravely wounding Japan's industry, all but destroying the Japanese merchant fleet, and therefore preventing reinforcement of Japanese military garrisons. In relaying this story, the program draws on a series of interviews with military veterans, and endless archival footage of naval battles that chronologically tells the gripping story of the Pacific Front of the war.
0.0In the 19th century, China held the monopoly on tea, which was dear and fashionable in the West, and the British Empire exchanged poppies, produced in its Indian colonies and transformed into opium, for Chinese tea. Inundated by the drugs, China was forced to open up its market, and the British consolidated their commercial dominance. In 1839, the Middle Empire introduced prohibition. The Opium War was declared… Great Britain emerged as the winner, but the warning was heeded: it could no longer depend on Chinese tea. The only alternative possible was to produce its own tea. The East India Company therefore entrusted one man with finding the secrets of the precious beverage. His mission was to develop the first plantations in Britain’s Indian colonies. This latter-day James Bond was called Robert Fortune – a botanist. After overcoming innumerable ordeals in the heart of imperial China, he brought back the plants and techniques that gave rise to Darjeeling tea.
