Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-50 of 50
- Hopkins' career has spanned several decades, which is why we will also use many interviews that he gave throughout his life, allowing us to put him back into the context of each period and will be helpful in understanding his role in the history of cinema, because he was far from following the trends. He never belonged to any film movement; he is a chameleon that has always preferred natural acting, 'non-acting' when method acting was the fashion.
- Exploring the archetype of the witch in Hollywood cinema from the 1930s to the present and how it is linked to the social history of female power.
- The history of sexual mores in America and as shown in Hollywood films is examined, from early cinema through the Hays Code. The 1960s and the sexual revolution were a turning point in society, as reflected on screen.
- A history of anti-Asian racism and yellowface in Hollywood after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.
- The dashing and dazzling Douglas Fairbanks was the movie star who "swash buckled in Zorro, dueled exuberantly in Robin Hood and soared magnificently in The Thief of Bagdad". He was the "First King of Hollywood". His life story unfolds with American history and the emergence of the film industry as backdrop. His style made him the perfect American icon. At a time when the country did not have any self-doubt, he represented America like no one else: strong, confident, heroic, smiling and conquering. He was "Everybody's Hero". He married the "America's Sweetheart"; Mary Pickford, he also started, with Pickford, Chaplin and Griffith, the United Artists Studio which is still a Hollywood player today. This film is the life of Douglas Fairbanks in a first person narration.
- Gene Tierney's life story would perfectly lend itself to a screenplay for a successful Hollywood movie with herself starring in it. She grew up in a well-to-do middle class family and began to write poetry at an early age. On a trip to Los Angeles she was taken on a tour through the Warner Studios. When Anatole Litvak spotted her, he said to her mother : she ought to be in pictures. This was the beginning of a long career with masterpieces as Laura, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Leave Her to Heaven. For Martin Scorsese, she is maybe the most underrated actress of our time.
- Mary Pickford's name remains inseparable from the legend of American cinema. She invented the star system at the beginning of the 20th century, and was the biggest star ever known, not just in Hollywood, but worldwide, at a time when actors didn't even have their names on movie posters. She was more than a pioneer, she was a jack-of-all-trades: world-famous star, producer and formidable businesswoman, screenwriter and director in the shadows, studio boss, Mary Pickford alone embodied the entire legend of cinema and the advent of women in that particular era.
- Dorothy Arzner was Hollywood's most powerful director, though History has forgotten her. She began working in the film industry at 19 as a "cutter" before the advent of editors, and gradually worked her way up through the studio system. Determined and ambitious, she was accepted as a director at Paramount, as the first woman to direct a talking picture for the star Clara Bow. A true pioneer of the cinema, she was the only woman director at a major Hollywood studio in the 1930s and 1940s, openly lesbian, dressed like a man, making movies "avant-gardiste" about women condition.She was a mentor for Francis Ford Coppola, who considers her as one of the most important woman director of Hollywood.
- During the 1930s anti-Semitism was rampant not only in Germany but also in America. There was a German American Bund and pro-Nazi rallies even filled Madison Square Gardens in New York City. And the US was isolationist. Until Pearl Harbor, then, everything changed. Spymasters throughout the 20th century, and particularly during times of conflict, thought it advantageous to enlist the services of celebrities who had high level and powerful "fans" in various industries, many with easy access to politicians and high ranking government officials. Hollywood, as we now know from declassified National Archive documents, aided in the mobilization for war and its people contributed as spies, combatants, propagandists, documentary and fund-raisers, entertainers, and morale- boosters. Hundreds of celebrities eagerly answered the "call to arms" and brought their talents and patriotism to the intelligence services, military and war information offices. In the wake of Pearl Harbor President Franklin Roosevelt by executive order formed in June 1942 the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the National Archives we discover that stars as Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Leslie Howard, Josephine Baker, John Ford and many more, were spies for the Allies, and changed the curse of the war. They did amazing things, dangerous things, and their fame was their asset. This untold story is very accurate and relevant still today.
- A portrait of the great film maker Orson Welles, with interviews with himself, his daughter and other film personalities.From the TCM-series "This is...".
- A documentary about John Ford's bond with Monument Valley, presented by Peter Cowie with comments by Ford's long time collaborators such as John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart...
- The True Story of Cary Grant: From Acrobat To Icon. Explore the meteoric rise of 'Archibald' Leach', better known as 'Cary Grant', from his life as a young acrobat on Broadway to one of America's most beloved actors in Hollywood.
- Joni Mitchell has been called the queen of folk music and one of the biggest pop stars of the 60s and 70s. Even today, her lyrics and unique guitar style continue to inspire new generations of singers and songwriters.
- The first talkie was directed by Alice Guy, the first color film was produced by Lois Weber, who directed more than 300 films over 10 years. Frances Marion wrote screenplays for the Hollywood Star Mary Pickford and won two Oscars, Dorothy Arzner was the most powerful film director in Hollywood. And what do all of them have in common? They are all women and they have all been forgotten. Incredibly, it also took until 2010 for the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, to win the Oscar for Best Director. Even if underrepresented women have always played a big part in Hollywood and it is this part of the film history left untold that this documentary sets out to uncover.
- Great Czech director Milos Foreman talks about his journey from Czechoslovakia to Hollywood. Through humorous stories, Milos Forman explains how he succeeded in Hollywood and the difficulties he faced coming to USA from a communist country where the shooting of a film was a really hard work.
- Michael Mann directed his latest movie Public Enemies, with Johnny Depp as the famous gangster John Dillinger. While the film inspired by the Bryan Burrough's famous best-seller romanticizes the life of the gangster, this documentary wants to tell the true story in the historic context of the time.
- AmaIn the 1950s and 1960s, Ida Lupino was the only woman in Hollywood with a serious career as a director: first in cinema and mainly for her own production company The Filmmakers Inc., and then in television, contributing episodes to some of the most celebrated series of the era. A staunch Democrat and Catholic, Lupino's cinema often tackled subjects considered risky if not outright taboo in her day, ranging from rape and bigamy to the way people suffering from polio were ostracised. Too humble for the vanity fair that is Hollywood, independent producer-writer-director Lupino remained historically a fringe figure in film - when she should have been venerated as one of the most complete and politically responsible filmmakers of all time. With their Ida Lupino: Gentlemen and Miss Lupino, Clara and Julia Kuperberg now offer a concise look at her career, themes, obsessions and achievements, bringing a long-overdue appreciation of this loneliest of path-breakers.
- Martin Scorsese, in New York, talks about the musics in his films and all his influence and great composers as Bernard Herrmann or Bernstein. From Mean Streets to Aviator.
- Exploring the radical changes which hit Hollywood in the 1960s and 70s, with a new breed of director and actor, and the anti-hero very much replacing the all-American hero.
- Portrait of one the most fantastic American cartoonist, author of MAUS, Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
- Biography on the famous writer-director, Billy Wilder.
- "The True Story of the Barrymores" is the story of 3 generations of actors who, from the birth of cinema to the advent of social networking, left their mark on the entertainment industry. It is also the story of a cursed generation and a legacy that will be saved in the early 80s by the cry of a 7-year-old girl. Her name is Drew Barrymore.
- Sophisticated and sexy, yet crazy. Stylish and smart. When New York screenwriters got jobs in Hollywood in the 1930s, both the tempo and the temperature in the studio rose. It was called "screwball" and it only lasted for ten years.
- Dominick Dunne is known for successful novels, as an investigative journalist and writer for Vanity Fair Magazine ans as the presenter of Dominick Dunne's Power Priviledge and Justice on Court TV. His life story could have come straight out of any of these. When his daughter was murdered by her boyfriend in 1982, he covered the trial for Vanity Fair, it was his first article called Justice. In this piece he talked about the rage he felt and how he hated the judge who let the murderer off with only 2 years of a prison sentence, because the murderer had employed one of the top defense attorney. Dominick Dunne understood that money buys you more chances at law. Since he has covered for Vanity Fair most of the celebrity cases as Claus Von Bulow, OJ Simpson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector, the Menendez brothers and Michael Skakel trial for the Martha Moxley murder. Dominick Dunne devoted his life to battle against the legal system and has successfully overcome his own demons.
- A fun documentary about the introduction of the Hays Code and which influence it had on movies made and how the film industry was trying to get around the Hays Code.
- When Sinatra died in 1998, nobody knows that the FBI had a file of 1275 dossiers about Frank Sinatra, by far the largest on any show business personality. What interested the FBI most was Sinatra's relations with organized crime, his friendship with the Kennedys Camelot and specially his links with left wing. He was followed by FBI agents, his phone conversations were taped and the FBI boss J.Edgar Hoover bugged all Las Vegas to watch him, in order to prove his links with mobsters but also with communists.