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Showtime's "In the 20th Century" is a millennium-related strand of feature-length documentaries in which famous directors take on major subjects of their choosing. In the first of the six films, "In Search of the Happy Ending," filmmaker Garry Marshall delves into the institution of marriage as it has evolved in America throughout the past 100 years.

March 27th, 1964. The New York Times published an article headlined '37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police.' For more than half an hour, 37 law abiding citizens in Queens watched their neighbor, Kitty Genovese, being brutally killed outside their apartment building. Florel and Jack Bernstein were among those bystanders. A shirt film.

The first American documentary about Traditional (Non-Racist) Skinheads. Focuses on the 'cross of cultures' that came together to form the Skinhead identity: The origins of the Skinhead scene in England, its roots in Jamaican Reggae and Ska (mid-'60s) to its revival and global impact with 2 Tone, Punk, Oi, and Hardcore (late '70s to present day). Features interviews and live concert footage by current bands across these various musical genres in the United States, England and Germany; discussing their viewpoints on Skinhead, its Working Class values, and its continuing relevance around the world.

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.

The story of John A. MacDonald’s rise to power.

A silent documentary about the Long Beach earthquake of March 10, 1933, which had a magnitude of 6.4, causing widespread damage to buildings throughout Southern California. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach on the Newport-Inglewood Fault. Forty million dollars property damage resulted, and 115 lives were lost. Many of these fatalities occurred as people ran out of buildings and were hit by falling debris.

The life, death, and resurrection of Elvis Presley, as he is transformed from man into product. Composed primarily of an illustrated biography filmed with a microscope camera.

Explorer Marco Polo is assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to China, to try to convert the "pagan" Kublai Khan to Christianity. However, on a dangerous trek through the mountains, the priests decide they don't believe that China even exists, and when Marco tries to argue the point, they abandon him and turn back. He eventually makes it through the mountains and into the fabled land of China, where he is received at the court of Kublai Khan as an envoy. Accompanied by his faithful servant Pedro, Marco spends 20 years in that country, and when he eventually returns to Europe what he brings with him changes the course of history forever.

In Soviet Azerbaijan, a divorced Armenian couple fights over the custody of their daughter, Ashen. Stolen from one parent to another, Ashen's guardians are tragically killed in the bloody war surrounding them. Will the arrival of a new savior finally bring Ashen freedom? Official selection of the Global Lens Collection presented by the Global Film Initiative.

After a brutal battle, two knights wander a field of the dead, searching for the body of a fallen noble. As silence thickens and faith begins to decay, they face not just the weight of death, but the absence of divine order.

Travel back to late 18th century Lowell, MA, now infamous for its textile mills and its "Lowell Girls," the poor, barely-educated waifs who helped turn those mills into sweatshops.

In 1964, Yuwali was 17 when her first contact with white men was filmed. Her group of twenty women and children were the last aboriginal mob living traditionally, without any knowledge of modern Australia, in the Great Sandy Desert. Now 62 she tells the story behind this extraordinary footage.

A young girl living in Salem attracts the attentions of The Puritan. After he's brushed off by the girl, he becomes furious and desiring revenge, declares to a council of elders that the girl and her mother are witches.

An adaptation of Percy Bysshe Shelley's play, The Cenci.

They stood up for their rights by sitting down at the counter of the Rock Hill Five and Dime. Orders of coffee were met with violence, police brutality and unjust imprisonment, turning a peaceful protest into a landmark of the Civil Rights Movement.

This two-hour special reveals the complicated history, extreme politic, and rigid societal standards that have created a legacy of internal oppression and external aggression. As the North Korean people suffered famine, labor camp and public executions, the Kim regime spent three generations relentlessly pursuing nuclear ambitions. They operate as a criminal syndicate, using counterfeit money, drugs and cyber espionage to fund their war machine. Now, with weapons rivaling the world’s superpowers, their aggressive rhetoric has pushed the world to a crisis point.

The Colorado Coal war is described as the bloodiest page of the US labor movement. In this violent confrontation between Rockefeller and the UMWA Trade Union, a vital part was played by 500 Greek miners who became the backbone of the guerrilla army formed by the union to avenge the Ludlow Massacre – the murder of 20 women and children and of the Greek leader Louis Tikas on April 20th, 1914. The documentary tells the unknown story of this conflict, illuminating the special role of the Greeks, with testimonies of descendants of strikers, interviews with historians and with rare archival material (video interviews of survivors, photos, newspaper articles, rare texts and songs).

Even 2,000 years after his death, General Hannibal's battle strategies are still studied today. But of all his military feats, perhaps his greatest was leading his massive Carthaginian army of men and three-dozen elephants across the Alps and into the heartland of Rome in 218 B.C. Until now, the route they took has been a matter of dispute, but thanks to modern-day technology, geomorphologist Bill Mahaney and microbiologist Chris Allen believe they've accurately traced this ancient journey.

This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d’état against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili‘uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as an "act of war."

Dr. Dudley Duprez is a well-known Louisiana physician. His beautiful but wayward niece, Rose Duprez, is abducted by Paul Crenshaw, a friend of the doctor, and to prevent her shame from becoming known, Rose kills herself. Dr. Duprez learns her secret and determines to make Crenshaw expiate his crime. While traveling on a Mississippi River steamer, the doctor wins Mercedes, a beautiful slave, at cards. He takes her home and, passing her off as a distant relative, arranges it so that Crenshaw falls in love with the girl.

A documentary about Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg.

Epic political fantasy drama, envisioning what would have happened if Dick Cheney had been indicted for ordering torture, which was used to get the false confessions to make a fraudulent case for war.

Credited to one 'D.W. Grippet', this amateur parody film attempts to poke fun at the epic docu-fictions of its day. Apparently adapted from Henry Handel Richardson's novel "The Getting of Wisdom".

Catherine Montour, a striking half-breed Indian princess, and mistress of King George III aspires to become the first Queen of America when the revolution breaks out.

Geoffrey's relationship with his fiancée is threatened by Ameuset, a princess of Egypt awakened after five thousand years. Originally a six reel feature, only short fragments of The Dust of Egypt survive today.

Remember Baghdad is the untold story of Iraq, an unmissable insight into how the country developed through the eyes of the Jews, Iraq's first wave of refugees.

Set in 1942, DECIMATION tells the story of ten Russian soldiers accused of cowardice and their subsequent punishment.

Shot entirely in Southern Utah, this micro-budgeted World War II drama centers around a team of U.S. soldiers who, for one fateful night on a very cold Christmas Eve, hunker down in an isolated location in the center of a woodsy battle zone while across enemy lines.

A Young Pikuni Man, the lone survivor of a deadly curse that decimates his village, joins forces with an unlikely ally to finally face the unknown.

Stuck in the Middle East during a time of incredible uncertainty, we follow a young refugee who has lost his family, his home, and nearly his life. Tested by extreme circumstance, he must survive the harsh wilderness of the Arabah, and learn how to persevere when everything around him threatens his existence. The Exile Road is a story of honour, courage, strength and hope.

Employing archival materials, interviews, and 16mm and digital film, the experimental documentary explores the political and cultural forces that have come to bear on the site—from its halted construction to its imposed abandonment and attempted reappropriations. How has architecture been instrumentalized in the ongoing construction of a national narrative? What is the role of architects in shaping society within corrupt ecologies of power and failed financial engineering? Film becomes a plastic medium to reframe the positivism of urban masterplans and architectural monuments and formulate a social critique. Modern structures under threat of collapse stand in as protagonists to tell the story of a promised metropolis that never came to be, while the fairground acts as a lens to look at implicit collapse beyond the perimeter of the site.

Between love madness, scandals, intrigue and happiness - the stories of German princesses on the Russian tzar's throne were shaped by strokes of fate. Princess Charlotte of Prussia was married on exactly her 19th birthday in 1817 with the future Russian Tsar. She joined a long line of German princesses at the Tsar's court, beginning with Catherine the Great and extending to the last Russian Empress. 200 years later, her descendant Maria in St. Petersburg is searching for the traces of these German women.

Time travel back 100 years through cinema magic and discover America's fascination with the motion picture though the eyes of those who lived it.

A film documenting work shortages during the Depression of the 1930s and the attempts to deal with the unemployed, in particular young men. The film discusses the establishment of relief camps and projects, where men were paid twenty cents per day; the founding of organizations such as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Workers' Unity League, and Relief Camp Workers' Union; general unionization and protest of the unemployed, including the On To Ottawa Trek, Regina Riot, sit-in strike from May to June 1938 at the Vancouver Main Post Office, Vancouver Art Gallery and Hotel Georgia, and the resulting Bloody Sunday of June 19.

For all its talk of racial, spiritual, and physical purity, the self-anointed “Master Race” harbored a secret…theirs was an axis of drug addicts. This two-hour special explores the origin, impact, and lasting effects of the state-sponsored drug use that helped build—and eventually burned—the Third Reich. Incredible new sources of information, including a detailed journal maintained by Hitler’s personal physician, reveal the extent of not just his, but the entire Nazi Party’s reliance on drugs to power their war effort.

At the end of the Victorian era, E. W. Barton-Wright combined jiujitsu, kickboxing, and stick fighting into the "Gentlemanly Art of Self Defence" known as Bartitsu. After Barton-Wright's School of Arms mysteriously closed in 1902, Bartitsu was almost forgotten save for a famous, cryptic reference in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Empty House. Hosted by Tony Wolf and featuring interviews with Harry Cook, Emelyne Godfrey, Mark Donnelly, Graham Noble, Neal Stephenson and Will Thomas, Bartitsu: the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes relates the fascinating history, rediscovery and revival of Barton-Wright's pioneering mixed martial art.

When Lady Sheila Boothroyd hears that the planning authorities are determined to drive a road through her grounds, she announces her intention to kill herself at the precise moment that the bulldozers start on their shameful work. As the hour strikes and the bulldozers' roar is heard, her husband General Sir William Boothroyd enters in full regimental regalia, while his old ex-army servant sounds the Last Post. Then, as the whole family stands stricken, the door opens...

During World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were forced into relocation camps across the U.S. This film traces the lives of the 16,000 people who were sent to two camps in southeast Arkansas where racial segregation was at its height.

In the 1800s American Southwest, an Indigenous family witness an extraordinary extraterrestrial event. The family must confront their fear of the phenomenon while also fending off the encroaching American military.

Yasmin was ravaged and murdered on August 23, 1995.

This feature-doc tells the epic story of the Faberge name, from Imperial Russia until the present-day, spanning one hundred and fifty years of turbulent history, romance, artistic development and commercial exploitation. From the bejewel led Easter eggs of the Romanov Tsarinas to the 1970s allure of 'Brut by Faberge' aftershave, and from the Russian revolution to today's high-fashion glitz in New York and London, the film explores a multi-faceted world that began with one man: the prodigiously talented Peter Carl Faberge, Court Jeweler of St Petersburg. Shot at locations across Russia, Europe and USA (including the collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II), the film features interview contributions from the world's foremost Faberge authorities, as well as personal reminiscences from Faberge family members.

The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 innocent people and began the new age of terrorism. Bound together in tragedy, the victim's relatives fought for justice, only to watch it unravel for Libyan oil.

This short tells the story of archery through the ages, mostly using Warner Brothers archive footage. Noted archer Howard Hill demonstrates his skills with various trick shots.

The Seljuk Empire has expanded, and taken over “the Holy Land”. Pope Gregory VIII gets together a band of valorous warriors from across Europe to defeat Saladin.

After being found guilty of a crime he did not commit, “Big Todd” Wade is sent to the gallows.

On the 15th anniversary of the attack, survivors and first responders share their vivid recollections of the day that changed the world.

This look at the contributions of Jim Henson and his early Sesame Street collaborators (including Frank Oz, Fran Brill, and Caroll Spinney) shows what made the Muppets such an integral part of the beloved show. This program is packed with rare clips from TV specials, guest appearances on talk and variety shows, and much more.

A documentary released on DVD alongside the related documentary "Faithful Under Trials—Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union"

A southern gothic drama about a young Black Caribbean Immigrant who attempts to assimilate into an all-white church in 1970s Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 1979, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the country's Islamic Revolution. Forced into exile, he settled in an isolated mansion in Cuernevaca, Mexico and watched as his empire collapsed on television. A powerful examination of dictatorship and its psychological effects on a man, LIBERATION explores a key turning point in Middle-East History and the origins of the Iran we know today.

Academician and piano expert David Dubal narrates this absorbing documentary chronicling the instrument's history and featuring some of the 20th century's finest pianists via archival film clips. Among the keyboard virtuosos are Vladimir Horowitz, Claudio Arrau, Van Cliburn and Glenn Gould. Extras include Arrau's 1983 performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra under maestro Riccardo Muti.

In 1864, the powerful industrialist and engineer George Pullman brought luxury to train travel with his revolutionary sleeping cars, where passengers were served by an army of former slaves who became known as Pullman Porters and Maids. Pullman established a company town for employees that gave him complete authority over every aspect of their lives. Audio-narrated descriptions are available.

An illiterate mountain man, Kit Carson was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages; he twice married Native American women, yet led a brutal war against the Navajo. When the West was a mystery to most Americans, Carson mastered it, and his expertise made him not only famous, but also sought after. Eventually, by helping to spur a migration that would change the West forever, he unwittingly became an agent in the destruction of the life he loved.

A portrait of African-American inventor, engineer, poet, artist, and American Civil War veteran, Lewis H. Latimer told through the experiences of his wife, Mary.

The last year or so of the war in the Pacific during WWII. It picks up at the point where the inevitability of an American victory seems certain--it's only a matter of time. It then discusses the ferocity of the Japanese defense, the American bombing campaign, the kamikaze, the Emperor and his resistance to surrender and the American feelings towards a negotiated peace.

The Obersalzberg was an ordinary Bavarian mountain until Adolf Hitler discovered it in 1923. There at the Berghof, the Nazi leader spent his time surrounded by his most faithful lieutenants and his mistress, Eva Braun. Though mostly destroyed, remnants of the vast building complex still exist.

Marcella Hazan didn’t just teach Italian cooking—she changed the way America eats. Fearless, passionate, and exacting, she introduced authentic recipes to millions. Julia Child called Marcella “my mentor in all things Italian.” Featuring Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, April Bloomfield, and Lidia Bastianich, this intimate portrait reveals the bold woman who forever shaped home kitchens.

Four times governor of Alabama, four times a candidate for president, he was feared as a racist demagogue and admired as a politician who spoke his mind. A lightning rod for controversy, Wallace both reflected and provoked tensions in American society over more than four decades. This film traces the rise of the firebrand politician from his roots in rural Alabama to the assassination attempt that suddenly transformed him.