For the infantrymen, old hands and raw recruits, 36 hours of forced march and a night in pouring rain are followed by a day in a muddy cornfield, facing cannon, cavalry, and infantry. If they're still standing as the day ends, they've won.
Russian front, January, 1943. It's hell: the flurries of sleet take the breath away and Sergeant Bisi can make out nothing in the landscape in front of him.
With Britain's first-ever political leaders' television debate imminent, award-winning reporter Michael Cockerell uncovers what it's like to take part in these contests and how leaders try to win them. He tells the inside story of why it has taken so long for such debates to arrive in the UK. The programme features candid interviews with US Presidents and their advisers on the tricks of the debate trade. Blending new film and behind-the-scenes footage, some never seen before, it's a tragicomic tale of high politics and low cunning. From John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon through to Barack Obama, candidates are seen being prepared for their debates, then in the sometimes funny, sometimes disastrous results on live television. Cockerell shows why for our would-be next Prime Ministers - Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg - the three debate stages across Britain will be what one former US President calls 'Tension City'.
A group of people who have escaped from their condemnation as witches, raid a witch trial. Besides rescuing the condemned witch, however, the leader of the group has a completely different goal. She wants to kill the witch judge who was also responsible for the execution of her family.
On November 17, 2012, Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard joined the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra for a performance of Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake (Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher) at the L'Auditori de Barcelona in Spain, broadcast live on Medici.tv. By Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (1938) is an imposing oratorio. The libretto is a highly original creation by French poet and playwright Paul Claudel, who dramatises the last moments of the martyr's life. Originally written for actress Ida Rubinstein, the oratorio is written as a flashback in which Joan recalls her life, just before she dies. Honegger creates visually evocative ambiances and fills the orchestra with new sounds (saxophones, ondes Martenot). The initial prologue to the piece was added in 1944 as a symbol of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of France: again, Joan goes beyond her own story.
In 2000, as the Hezbollah organization takes over Lebanon, Yossi, a Lebanese soldier, helps his friend Fouad to flee the country in order to avoid punishment, as he’s been working against them for 16 years. Fouad takes refuge in Israel with his daughter, Tanya. A few years later, a new war breaks out in Lebanon, causing tensions at the Israeli border. Yossi’s wife, Myriam, decides to go there and asks for Tanya’s help to look for their soldier son, who hasn’t given sign of life since then. This journey will allow the two women to share their sorrows and heal together.
Long before the arrival of Homo Sapiens, the Neanderthals wandered the vast European plains, and regularly drowned into the Ice Ages. Several discoveries, in France and England, and especially on the island of Jersey, now allow archaeologists to understand the lifestyle of those first great nomads of Europe, that lasted 300.000 years.
Three soldiers moving through the Cuban jungle: combat exercises and camouflage techniques are practised, but the battle never arrives. The nature of their mission becomes an ever-greater mystery, echoing unanswered in the impassive natural surroundings.
A biopic of an influential Serbian political activist, literary critic and philosopher. Svetozar Markovic developed an activist anthropological philosophy with a definite program of social change, which set foundations for socialist ideals in his homeland.
Seeking the true Church of Jesus Christ, 14-year-old Joseph Smith prayed in a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, New York. In answer to his humble prayer, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ visited him and told him that he must not join any of the churches on the earth at that time.
The story of the persecution of homosexuals and intellectuals in Cuba under Fidel Castro's dictatorship, from the beginning of the Cuban Revolution (1953-59) until the early 1980s. Interviews with relevant personalities of Cuban culture who suffered persecution demonstrate that concentration camps for gays existed in Cuba.
The real story of the failed attempt of an independence coup by a group of intellectuals and rich men during Brazil's colonial days, from its beginning to the execution of Tiradentes.
It’s 1942, somewhere in the Pacific: Deadly ambushes by entrenched Japanese in the thick jungles take a heavy toll on American troops. Marine commanders were willing to try anything, including using dogs to sniff out the hidden enemy. But even with their superior senses, nobody anticipated just how effective they would be.
Passions erupt between a German hussar (Jean-Marc Barr) serving with King George III's personal cavalry and the only daughter of an English solicitor (Emma Fielding) in this period tearjerker adapted from a short story by Thomas Hardy. Longing to escape their own personal imprisonments -- he, his service to the king, and she, her engagement to a man she doesn't love -- they find solace in each other's arms.
For the documentary series Les Ascensions Célèbres, Denis Ducroz has created this historical reconstruction of the first ascent of the Meije, exploring etymology, physical geography, and the history of the emergence of mountaineering in the Oisans massif. The first ascent of the Grand Pic was made on August 16, 1877, by Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau with Pierre Gaspard and son; the rope party moved along the Promontoire ridge on the south face to the Glacier Carré, where Jean-Baptiste Rodier, the second porter, separated from the three climbers who managed to overcome ice and granite to open the famous "normal route" to the summit.
More than two decades after it left our screens, BBC Two’s iconic and much-loved music documentary series, Rock Family Trees, is back for a one-off special. The iconic music documentary series returns to examine the real story behind the birth of Britpop and how a handful of like-minded musicians, struggling to find an authentic voice, would pave the way for a revolution in British music. It is an intricately connected story of three of the biggest bands of the 1990s – Suede, Elastica and Blur – and how, for a brief moment in the middle of that decade, they changed British music forever, kickstarting a movement that still reverberates to this day.
We have detected that you are using an ad blocker. In order to view this page please disable your ad blocker or whitelist this site from your ad blocker. Thanks!
