Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.
02 May 1979
Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.
04 Oct 1987
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
09 Jul 2004
Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.
09 Nov 2018
When the MV Sewol ferry sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.
11 Dec 1962
The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence's mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements.
23 Dec 1969
Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.
09 Jul 2023
Explore how one man's relentless drive and invention of the atomic bomb changed the nature of war forever, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and unleashed mass hysteria.
03 Mar 2021
Ben Fogle spends a week living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold.
03 Aug 2007
With Gandhi My Father, producer Anil Kapoor and director Feroz Abbas Khan have shed light onto Gandhi the person, rather than Gandhi the icon. Using Gandhi’s political career as a canvas, the film paints a picture of his intricate, complex, and strained relationship with his son Harilal Gandhi.
19 Dec 2019
Following the death of his wife, Ip Man travels to San Francisco to ease tensions between the local kung fu masters and his star student, Bruce Lee, while searching for a better future for his son.
30 Aug 2006
How secure is our future? This eye-opening documentary -- which uses computer-generated imagery to illustrate an asteroid collision, black holes and worldwide plagues, among other threats -- explores seven scenarios that could spell the end of the world. Interviews with noted scientists examine the extent of preparations for these cataclysmic events and what's being done to save future generations from extinction.
29 Sep 2019
In November 1947 forty-one people died in a massive blaze that gutted the huge Ballantynes Department Store complex in the heart of Christchurch’s business district. This is the tragic story of New Zealand’s worst fire disaster.
01 Sep 2023
Based on the murder of nine street peddlers in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake.
08 Oct 2001
Semi-true story of the Hollywood murder that occurred at a star-studded gathering aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924.
17 Sep 2007
The film explores the background and build-up to this final flight to disaster. Using dramatic reconstruction, archive footage and exclusive interviews with leading historians and engineering experts, the special delves into the political and scientific events that led up to the catastrophe.
28 Jun 2017
Based on the life of the Korean anarchist Park Yeol, the film shows his struggle to counter the massacre of Koreans by the government during the 1923 great Kanto earthquake, focusing on his activities as the leader of the anti-Japanese organization Bulryeongsa and his relationship with Japanese comrade Fumiko Kaneko.
01 Sep 2009
An investigation of "disaster capitalism", based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
04 Jun 2002
"Search For The Mothman" is a documentary that explores the unusual disturbances, odd sightings, bizarre occurrences, and strange eyewitness reports connected to a creature known as the "Mothman" (first sighted in the Point Pleasant, West Virginia area in the sixties). Strangely, the sightings and disturbances seemed to reach a peak with several area residents sharing the same nightmare of a river disaster. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge - spanning the Ohio River between Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio - collapsed into the frigid water (sending 46 people to their deaths). Many of those who lost their lives had reported seeing the Mothman. Perhaps most disturbing, there were no reported sightings after the bridge accident.
25 Dec 1981
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
16 May 1955
The story of the conception of a new British weapon for smashing the German dams in the Ruhr industrial complex and the execution of the raid by 617 Squadron 'The Dam Busters'.