Michael Murphy
Description
Recounts the assassination and excruciating final months of President James Garfield's life. A brilliant scholar, courageous general, and fervent abolitionist, Garfield never wanted the job of president. But once in office, he worked tirelessly to reunite a nation still divided 15 years after the Civil War. As he lay dying, the North and South came together to pray for his recovery.
Description
In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad, led by the company's president, Alexander Cassatt, successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and eventually, via the Hell Gate Bridge, to New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. But just fifty-three years after the station'sopening, the unthinkable happened.
3) Space men
Description
On an August morning in 1960, Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger stepped out of a helium balloon twenty miles above Earth, hurtling down at over 400 miles per hour. The little-known story of the men whose scientific experiments laid critical groundwork for NASA's manned space program, a decade before President Kennedy committed the nation to sending a man to the moon.
Description
In 1881, 25 men led by Lieutenant Adolphus Greely sailed from the harbor of St. John's, Newfoundland. Their destination was Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world's surface that had been described by a British admiral as a 'sheer blank.' Three years later, only six survivors returned, with a daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny, and cannibalism.
Description
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the most famous criminal couple in U.S. history. Newsreels in movie theaters across the country flashed images of a pixyish Bonnie and handsome Clyde, turning them into the underworld's dark prince and princess of crime. In reality, as this film reveals, Bonnie and Clyde grew up in the slums of West Dallas and had little in common with their glamorous media images.
Description
At the beginning of the 20th century, coal was the engine of American industrial progress. Nearly three quarters of a million men across the country spent ten or twelve hours a day underground in coal mines. The Mine Wars brings to life the struggle that turned the coalfields of southern West Virginia into a blood-soaked war zone where basic constitutional rights and freedoms were violently contested.
7) The feud
Description
Discover the real story behind the most famous family conflict in American history - the bloody backwoods battle between Appalachian clans, the Hatfields and McCoys. This new film goes beyond the myth to show how the feud was ignited.
8) The circus
Description
A four-hour mini-series that tells the story of one of the most popular and influential forms of entertainment in American history. Drawing upon a vast and rich visual archive, the film follows the rise and fall of the gigantic, traveling tented railroad circus, recounting the era when Circus Day could shut down a town, and circus stars were among the most famous people in the country.
9) Tesla
Description
Profiles the life and career of engineer and inventor Nikolai Tesla, whose work would be eclipsed in the public eye by Edison and Marconi, best known during his lifetime from the flamboyant displays of his prototypes and fertile but undisciplined scientific imagination.
10) Tanner '88
Description
During the 1988 presidential campaign, Democratic hopefuls spiritedly canvass the country, jostle for their party's nomination and the honor of opposing Republican Vice President George Bush. Then Senator Jack Tanner suddenly emerges from the shadows of a lengthy political hiatus to challenge candidates such as Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Michael Dukakis. Tanner is a fictitious presidential candidate who goes out on the campaign trail to...
12) Shocker
Description
Condemned unrepentant murderer Horace Pinker (Pileggi) refuses to die, survives the electric chair, and goes on a rampage of high-voltage serial killings. Athlete Jonathan Parker (Berg) tries to stop him.
13) Nashville
Description
A cornerstone of 1970s American filmmaking from Robert Altman. It is a view of the country's political and entertainment landscapes set in the nation's music capital. It weaves the stories of 24 characters--from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress--into a cinematic tapestry that is equal parts comedy, tragedy, and musical. It showcases Altman's ability to get to the heart of American life via its eccentric byways, and barrels forward to...
14) Tanner on Tanner
Description
Features 1988 Democratic candidate Jack Tanner's daughter, Alex, in her quest to make a documentary about her father's failed '88 nomination bid. Includes appearances by modern day politicians, pundits and celebrities, and shot in part during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, this piece offers a sharp and funny spin on "politics as usual."
15) The front
Description
Howard Price, a restaurant cashier, poses as a writer so that blacklisted authors can submit their work through him, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand when he is forced to testify at an investigative congressional committee hearing.
17) The gold rush
Description
At the end of 1853, San Francisco was a city on the move. It had twelve daily newspapers, nine insurance companies, consulates of twenty-seven foreign governments, and six-story buildings where sand dunes once stood. A few years earlier, San Francisco was just a sleepy little town. But the sight of gold in the rushing waters of the American River sent a ripple around the world and set the stage for an event that would forever change a city, a fledgling...
Description
Guy Hamilton, an ambitious Australian reporter on his first overseas assignment, is befriended by a Eurasian cameraman, Billy Kwan, with connections in high places. Hamilton soon gains an entree to Indonesian Communist Party leaders, as well as insight into Jakarta's grim realities on the eve of a major political upheaval.
Description
Charismatic but dumb John McCabe arrives in a turn-of-the-century Pacific Northwest town to set up a whorehouse/tavern. Shrewd Mrs. Miller, a professional madam, arrives soon after construction begins. She offers to help McCabe run his business and the whorehouse thrives. McCabe and Mrs. Miller draw closer, despite their conflicting intelligences and philosophies. Soon, however, the mining deposits in the town attract the attention of a major corporation,...