01 Sep 1964
Action on the Beach
Behind the scenes look at the D-Day special effects created in filming The Americanization of Emily (1964).
Doolittle's Raiders pull off a one-way bombing run over Tokyo and ditch their planes in and along the coast of China, where they are rescued by Chinese villagers, guerrillas, and missionaries. That generosity triggers horrific retaliation by the Japanese that claims an estimated quarter-million lives and prompts comparisons to the 1937-38 Rape of Nanking. The memory of the Raiders and their rescuers is kept alive by their children and grandchildren.
01 Sep 1964
Behind the scenes look at the D-Day special effects created in filming The Americanization of Emily (1964).
01 Jan 1976
No overview found
06 Jun 2014
James Holland moves beyond the D-Day beaches to reassess the brutal 77-day Battle for Normandy that followed the invasion. Challenging some of the many myths that have grown up around this vital campaign, Holland argues that we have become too comfortable in our understanding of events, developing shorthand to tell this famous story that does great injustice to those that saw action in France across the summer of 1944.
01 Jun 2005
Compiled from the Imperial War Museum Official Collection, this film collects rare and previously unseen film material shot by official cameramen on behalf of the RAF before the formation of the RAF Film Production Unit in September 1941. It tells the story of the RAF in the early years of the Second World War through the "phoney war", the Blitzkfreig and the Battle of Britain, capturing everyday life for those who served as wel as the RAF's frontline aircraft of the period. Other highlights include a fillmed account of a Blenheim raid on Northern France, a Sunderland flying boat sortie over Norway and Winston Churchill inspecting the new American aircraft for the RADF including the B-17, Douglas Boston and P-40.
02 Feb 2021
How did Nazi Germany, from limited natural resources, mass unemployment, little money and a damaged industry, manage to unfurl the cataclysm of World War Two and come to occupy a large part of the European continent? Based on recent historical works of and interviews with Adam Tooze, Richard Overy, Frank Bajohr and Marie-Bénédicte Vincent, and drawing on rare archival material.
07 May 1985
George Stevens's remarkable film is acclaimed by historians as the most important colour footage taken during the war. Milestones covered include the liberation of Paris, the link-up between the Russian and American armies on the River Elbe and the Allied capture of the Dachau concentration camp.
06 Jan 2017
On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team – which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock – to complete the film from hours of shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).
27 Apr 1959
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
02 Jun 2003
This documentary is a captivating account of the defense of Wake Island by a small contingent of United States Marines and civilian contractors. From December 8th until December 23rd, 1941 the defenders thwarted an aerial attack and an attempted amphibious landing from a naval task force before finally being overwhelmed by the third attempt by the Japanese Imperial Navy.
01 Jan 2009
French film and WWII historian Sylvie Lindeperg analyzes Alain Resnais's seminal 1956 film, "Night and Fog", and attempts to place it in the context of the historical treatment of WWII, and specifically of the Holocaust, in the decade following those harrowing events. Oddly, she argues that the images of Resnais's famous film are "powerless", in her words.
21 Sep 2020
No overview found
14 Mar 1944
Return to Guam is a 1944 short propaganda film produced by the US Navy about the taking and recapture of the island of Guam. The film starts when a convoy of ships nearing the island sees strange lights flashing from the island in Morse code "information". After cautiously investigating the signal, they find that it was made by a white man, George Tweed, the last survivor of the original garrison at Guam. Tweed relates his harrowing story of how he survived in the bush for 31 months with the help of the natives, Chamorros.
12 Sep 2001
Romanian documentary about the Struma disaster in 1942.
16 Jan 2022
On January 26, 1950, a US Airforce troop plane left Anchorage for Montana with 44 people on board. The crew of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster #2469 was supposed to check in every half hour along the route. As the aircraft crossed into Yukon, they radioed the tiny outpost of Snag to say that there was ice forming on the wings, but otherwise all was well. After that, the Skymaster disappeared. And to this day no sign of the aircraft or its passengers has ever been found. This fascinating Yukon-shot documentary tells the stories of the victim’s families and an intrepid group of Yukoners striving to give those families closure by searching every summer in hopes that the Skymaster will finally turn up.
27 Nov 2023
No overview found
08 Aug 1995
Drawing upon eye-witness accounts from survivors and participants in the bombing of Hiroshima, this programme shows how both Japan and the United States are still facing enormous problems in coming to terms with the legacy of that fateful August day.
07 Jun 1945
A documentary covering the actions of the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa during WWII.
13 Dec 2020
The Black Book, drafted during World War II, gathers numerous unique historical testimonies, in an effort to document Nazi abuses against Jews in the USSR . Initially supported by the regime and aimed at providing evidence during the executioners’ trials in the post-war era, the Black Book was eventually banned and most of its authors executed on Stalin’s order. Told through the voices of its most famous instigators, soviet intellectuals Vassilli Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, the documentary, provides a detailed account of the tragic destiny of this cursed book and puts the Holocaust and Stalinism in a new light.
01 Jan 1982
The final days of 617 Squadron based at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. The famous Dambusters squadron faces an uncertain future as the plane they fly, the Avro Vulcan, is withdrawn from service.
14 Aug 2006
This documentary profiles the major jets used by the RAF between 1945 and the mid-1950s, the period when the British air force was the second largest in the world