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In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is a 2008 PBS documentary film detailing Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's 1993 retracing of Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China.
Part two of the Mysterious China series chronicles Marco Polo's adventures and discoveries along the Silk Road as he heads toward the Mongol Empire in China. This documentary reveals the pivotal trade route as experienced and written about by the 13th-century explorer. Follow the tracks of the Venetian adventurer -- one of the first Westerners to journey into China -- and uncover the mysteries of the Silk Road.
By filming on the actual locations traversed by Marco Polo, the series brings to life the authenticity of the local peoples from the standpoints of ethnology, historiography, culture and economics. We follow the exact route depicted in his book, Il millione, documenting the peoples, customs and cultures along the way to bring into sharp relief the cultural differences within the Asian mainland. Viewers are introduced to their development, becoming familiar with three completely different and, to us, relatively unknown spheres of civilisation and religion - Arabic Islam, Indian Hinduism and Oriental Buddhism. The host takes us through regions and cultures that may seem exotic - and, at times,dreamlike - in our search for the evidence of Marco Polo's passage.
The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.
Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.
In this globe-trotting adventure, Marco Polo (Don Diamont) plays the famous 13th Century explorer who sets out from Italy to find his missing father, and along the way finds danger, excitement, and amazing discoveries at every turn. The supporting cast includes Oliver Reed, Jack Palance, and Herbert Lom.
Assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to convert the court of Kublai Khan to Christianity, Marco Polo is abandoned in the mountains when the priests, doubting the very existence of China, turn back. Polo eventually pushes bravely forth alone toward the fabled country where he is accepted as an envoy into Khan's court. Marooned on the far side of the world, Polo, accompanied by his servant, Pedro, advances as a Mongol grandee for twenty extraordinary years. What he eventually brings back with him to the West is a chronicle that changed history forever.
Set at the time of Italian explorer Marco Polo's historic expedition to China ,during the reign of Monogol ruler Kublai Khan, it stars American actor Richard Harrison as Polo. Taking considerable liberties with the historic record, the film has Polo turning up as an Imperial Inspector assigned to root out Chinese rebles in the south, but eventually being won over to their cause.
The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.
The episode shows the origin of Hundred Eyes and how his relationship with Kublai Khan and Prince Jingim came about. Before losing his sight and before pledging his service to Kublai Khan, who was Hundred Eyes who became a deadly assassin and trained Marco Polo.
Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
The exploding cork. Endless tiny bubbles floating up and up in the glass. An indulgence. A celebration. A seduction. A triumph. This is the essence of Champagne, isn’t it? But it’s not just bubbles in a glass that makes the wine, or the mystique. Only sparkling wine produced within the boundaries of the Champagne region is truly “Champagne.” At first glance, the region is not an obvious source of romance. Champagne’s history is grim and bloody, swept by war and destruction from Attila the Hun to the filthy trenches of WWI and the Nazi depredations of WWII. The environment for winemaking is desperately hard — northerly latitude, chalky soil, copious rain, frost, rot. Yet it’s these difficulties that help make the wine unique.
'9-Man' is an independent feature documentary about an isolated and exceptionally athletic Chinese-American sport that's much more than a pastime. Since the 1930s, young men have played this gritty streetball game competitively in the alleys and parking lots of Chinatown. At a time when anti-Chinese sentiment and laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese restaurant workers and laundrymen to socialize exclusively amongst themselves, nine-man offered both escape and fraternity for men who were separated from their families in China and facing extreme discrimination and distrust. Pivoting between oil-spotted Chinatown parking lots and jellyfish-filled banquet scenes, the film captures the spirit of nine-man as players not only battle for a championship but fight to preserve a sport that holds so much history.
This film explains what James Ensor (1860-1949) meant for the development of art and makes palpable where he got his inspiration from.
Director Kevin Booth navigates through the cutting edge of Cannabis research while becoming a foster parent to a child court ordered to take powerful mind altering drugs.
The carnage in Sarajevo provides the focus of this French documentary which seeks to call attention to the terrible conflict in the hopes of finally ending it. The film is divided into five parts. Each part covers a time frame ranging from April 4, 1992, the beginning of the war, to the present. The major issues that occur are three-fold. It depicts the systematic genocide of Bosnians, the silence of Western countries, and the determination of the Bosnians to resist. They refuse to be seen as victims, even though the filmmakers portray them so. Also included are the origins and political aspects of the war. It offers interviews with participants. It also reveals how the U.S. State Department censored reports about Serbian death camps.
The ideologies underlying the foundation of modern Israel are explored in this documentary, the third of a trilogy (created over a twenty year span) exploring the Jewish experience. The two earlier documentaries, "Porquoi Israel," and "Shoah," have had great effect on the ways documentaries are produced. "Tsahal" zeroes in on the crucial role of the military in Israeli society and politics. The film uses many in-depth interviews to present the many feelings and thoughts about the Israeli military.
The Polish city of Łódź was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entirety of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors are vividly chronicled via newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived–and died–through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing as the film progresses, symbolic of the death of each narrator.
Boston's V66 music video station came and went in the mid-1980s but in the 18 months on the air, it was one of the only over-the-air music video channels ever created. But even popular success didn't mean it was going to last...
MAD AS HELL follows Cenk Uygur's transformation from unknown talk show host on local Public Access TV to an internet sensation with his online news show "The Young Turks," which has amassed over one billion views on YouTube. Once Cenk ventures from the internet into national television and lands the 6 PM time slot on MSNBC, his uncensored brand of journalism is compromised and Cenk becomes the nexus in the battle between new and old media.