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On the 5th of March 1985, a crowd gathered in a South Yorkshire pit village to watch a sight none of them had seen in a year. The villagers, many of them in tears, cheered and clapped as the men of Grimethorpe Colliery marched back to work accompanied by the village’s world-famous brass band. The miners and their families had endured months of hardship. It had all been for nothing. The miners had lost the strike called on March 6th 1984. They would lose a lot more in the years to come. But was it a good thing for the country that the miners lost their last battle?

What life was like in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii moments before it was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Portrait of a great lady based on the real life of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, an Austrian architect, who joined the resistance movement against Hitler.

Story of the life of an extraordinary man, who with Lenin, was the symbol of the Revolution of 1917.

Film portraying the life of the German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck.

East Germany, 1988. 19-year-old Franka doesn't really care for politics. She prefers going to the disco and dreaming about seeing Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson live in concert. But beneath her carefree façade, she is scarred by the loss of her baby brother. But then she meets Stefan: He's young, idealistic, and part of an environmental activist group. A mix that makes Franka instantly make fall for him – and his group, which welcomes her with open arms. But this wild, revolutionary influence does not stay unnoticed: Her mother, who's with the Party, is worried about Franka. As Stefan's group loses the support of the church, leaving them vulnerable to the state, Stefan and Franka are soon in the government's line of fire…

Kim Morrison leaves for his trip to the Acid Moon. But instead of rest, he encounters all the decisions of his life. Good ones as well as bad ones.

Via the New York Times: "...a dialogue between found objects... the remarkably calm, somewhat banal wartime journals of Ernst Junger, a German writer and army officer living in occupied Paris in World War II, and newsreel footage of Paris as it really was."

A documentary with and about the legendary Italian Architect Carlo Scarpa.

The heart of Islam beats on the Arabian Peninsula. For there lies Mecca, the holy city of the Muslims. Almost 100 years ago, one of the peninsula's many clans founded a kingdom there: Saudi Arabia. The rule of the Al Saud is based on a pact that combined, and still combines, strict religious zeal with political calculation.

1969. Nine-year old Caro lives on a pig farm in a small town with her four other siblings and another on the way. She is curious and determined to understand the mysteries of the world around her. But her devout catholic father can't explain the new world and her mother is too busy for philosophy so she converses to God. One day at school she is horrified to learn that man will soon set foot on the moon. In her eyes it's not possible that God would allow anyone to get so close to Heaven. Her clowning father agrees and, unable to cope with modern-day progress, hits the bottle. Caro is preparing for her first holy communion to become 'a bride of God' but before that she seals a pact with her father to overcome her fear of swimming in exchange, he will not touch a drop of alcohol.

In August 1944, in a Maquis of the south of France, a group of resistance fighters has the mission to prepare and to make easier the landing of the Allies in Provence. In this difficult context, a father tries to protect the innocence of his son, devastated by tragic events that he just lived through and to make him glimpse that there is a life after war.

With the armies of the Liberation at the gates of Paris, station manager Kurt Heyzmann receives an order from his superiors to withdraw. As a farewell, he decides to prepare one last prestigious program, to be filmed and broadcast live. Kleischter, a Gestapo lieutenant, emerges to try and spoil the show, by antagonizing Heyzmann and his employees. He believes that the war is not over, and continues to hunt down potential Jews and STO deserters on the TV premises.

A look at the life and work of Spanish filmmaker Mario Camus (1935-2021).

Clara Mingueza, an actress from Barcelona, sets out to move the mortal remains of Elena Jordi (1882-1945), vaudeville star, actress and the first woman director of Spanish cinema, to her hometown, while trying to find a copy of Thaïs, the only film she directed.

In September 2011, Sikhs from all over Britain gathered in Parliament Square to protest. The focus of their concern was the turban. Since the terrorist attacks of the 21st century Sikhs believe their turbans have singled them out for discrimination. In a case of mistaken identity the Sikhs claim they've been wrongly regarded as religious terrorists and subjected to increased airport security searches. This documentary traces the history of the turban in the Sikh religion, from its roots in Moghul India, through the battlefields of Europe, to the fight for British Sikhs to wear it without fear. It reveals that the turban is a crucial symbol of the Sikh faith - one that Sikhs will even risk their lives for.

A staging of Jacques Attali's play "From Crystal to Smoke" by Daniel Mesguich.

April 1939. Fascist Italy occupies Albania. Thousands of Italian workers, settlers and technicians are transferred to the country. November 1944, Albania is liberated. The new Communist government closes the borders and places dozens of conditions on Italy for the repatriation of its citizens. In 1945 27,000 Italian veterans and civilians were still held in Albania. Among them there is a cameraman, Alfredo C. An operator of the Fascist propaganda effort, he has been traveling around Albania with his movie camera for five years. Before that, for almost two decades, he had immortalised the great machine of the regime. Now, by a twist of fate, being the only cameraman around, Alfredo has been asked to work on behalf of Communist propaganda. Shut up in his storeroom, surrounded by thousands of reels of film, Alfredo watches what he has shot again on an old Moviola. It is his film that we are watching. And perhaps, not his alone.

On the 29th of August 1949, the USSR set off their first atomic bomb, just four years after the Americans. The speed with which they achieved this surprised the world. What nobody knew was that it was the result of espionage. At the centre of the operation was a very unusual female spy, Elizabeth Zaroubin, in a story worthy of the best spy novels ever written.

A staging of Olivier Py's play "Adagio (Mitterrand, le secret et la mort)" by himself.

French writer Jean-Claude Carrière traces the life and work of Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

Broadcasters Lenny Henry and Suzy Klein celebrate black classical composers and musicians across the centuries whose stories and music have been forgotten in a 90-minute special.

A tragic tale in which love and filial sentiment battle in a political intrigue around the fascinating character of Simon, a privateer become doge: Simon Boccanegra is one of Verdi’s greatest operas, over which floats the shadow of his admiration for Shakespeare. For this captivating and moving score, the Dijon Bourgogne Orchestra has called upon one of the great Verdi specialists, Roberto Rizzi Brignoli, whose Traviata in 2011 demonstrated his intimate and precise knowledge of the Italian master’s style, and the German stage director Philipp Himmelmann, a regular at Unter den Linden in Berlin and the great European stages.

The story of how, thirty years ago, Camarón de la Isla's “La leyenda del tiempo,” an experimental album mixing very different musical styles, revolutionized the world of flamenco music.

This programme tells the story of the private steam railway company the Strathspey Railway, which was engineered and run by a group of rail enthusiasts in Scotland.Through the use of restored locomotives the company was started purely to preserve steam passenger trains, as their fading presence across British rail networks, due to the introduction of diesel engines, was keenly felt among steam enthusiasts.

Documentary telling the unexpected story of how arguably the greatest work of English prose ever written, the King James Bible, came into being. Author Adam Nicolson reveals why the making of this powerful book shares much in common with his experience of a very different national project - the Millennium Dome. The programme also delves into recently discovered 17th-century manuscripts, from the actual translation process itself, to show in rich detail what makes this Bible so good.

A fictionalized military documentary.

As BBC Two premieres its lavish new drama set in the sumptuous surroundings of Versailles, Lucy Worsley and Helen Castor tell the real-life stories behind one of the world's grandest buildings. They reveal the colourful world of sex, drama and intrigue that Louis XIV and his courtiers inhabited. Lucy untangles Louis's complex world of court etiquette, fashion and feasting, while Helen delves into the archives and unpicks the Machiavellian world of court politics that Louis created. We meet the people behind the on-screen characters and discover what drove Louis to glorify his reign on a scale unmatched by any previous monarch, examine the tension between Louis and his brother Philippe, a battle hero and overt homosexual, and they meet the coterie of women who competed for Louis's attention. We see that Louis was ruthless in his pursuit of glory and succeeded in defeating his enemies. In his record-breaking 72-year reign, France became renowned for its culture and sophistication.

Tracy Borman and Jason Watkins explore the mystery of what happened to the two young princes that were brought to the Tower of London in 1483 by their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester. A few weeks later, the two boys vanished without a trace. Jason treads the boards as Shakespeare's greatest villain, Richard III, to try to get inside his mind, while Tracy investigates the discovery of the bones of two children found at the Tower in the 1600s.

How does a politician – assassinated more than 50 years ago – gradually become a public figure? An extremely vibrant image which shows up where you least expect it. It served as figurehead for the Arab Spring revolutions, from Rabat to Sanaa, whereas we had thought it had been relegated to t-shirts and cigarette lighters. Why has this image become so universal that we are no longer surprised to find it in drawings, graffiti, tattoos and prints on all types of media in all sorts of contexts the world over? How can this image be used to advertise luxury automobiles and also be brandished angrily by indignant agitators? What is the formula that made this figure go viral? This documentary is a journey to investigate and decode a piece of iconography.

When Spanish Civil War ends in 1939, some of the women who played a leading role in the creative and literary boom known as Generation of 1927, stay in Spain, freely or not, sacrificing the spirit that had enlightened them, adapting themselves —or pretending to do so— to the new feminine role imposed by the victors, who were determined to cage these free souls at home, to live just as wives and mothers.

The debate in France about the abortion laws in 1974.

The director Mario Gallo made the first film with an argument from Argentina, although the opinions of scholars are not coincident as to their temporal order.

A documentary about John Halas, the Hungarian-Jewish emigre who became the father of British Animation. John is a key figure in British cinema and his contribution goes far beyond making Animal Farm in 1954, Britain's first animated feature-film. He produced more than 2000 films between 1938 and 1995, launched the careers of hundreds of British animators and was a visionary who wanted to create a post-WWII utopia through Socialism, animation and international understanding. The film was commissioned and produced by his daughter Vivien Halas who runs the Halas & Batchelor archive.

Short film about "Yuyanapaq", the photo exhibition of the armed conflict in Peru, at Casa Riva Agüero, Chorrillos, Lima-Peru.

Follow from the amazing restoration process of one of the most cherished and mysterious pieces of History: an Egyptian sarcophagus covered with hieroglyphics (painted wood). With exclusive interviews of experts, art curators and restorators, discover everything about the story of the Isetenkheb coffin of Ancient Egypt dated from around 664-500 BC !