Ageless Friends

Happy Skies: The Making of The Night Witches

The story of the making of "The Night Witches: the amazing true story of how Russian woman pilots helped win World War II" at UNW Theatre.

In the Heart of the Thunderstorm

This documentary about WW II, composed of clandestine Allied film takes and German Wochenschaubilder, focuses on the French Resistance, especially the heroic but disastrous battle of the Vercors plateau in July 1944, where German troops mercilessly slaughtered the Maquis and the inhabitants.

Spyball

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once told the head of the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA), “Give my regards to the catcher.” The catcher was Moe Berg, who spent 15 seasons in the majors before taking up espionage for the government. Spyball tells the extraordinary story of Berg, a linguist/Ivy-educated lawyer/.243 lifetime hitter whom manager Casey Stengel called “the strangest man to ever play the game of baseball.” Berg walked in eclectic circles, counting Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein, and the Marx Brothers among his friends, but it was his service to his country that truly distinguished him. His surreptitious filming of Tokyo during a 1934 baseball tour helped develop strategies for the eventual bombing of the city during World War II, and his cloak-and-dagger mind games involving a German scientist helped prove that the Nazis were failing in their attempts to develop an atomic bomb.

Death of a Nation

Parallels are drawn between Abraham Lincoln's presidency and the presidency of Donald Trump. Not since 1860 have the Democrats so fanatically refused to accept the result of a free election. That year, their target was Lincoln. They smeared him. They went to war to defeat him. In the end, they assassinated him.

Hitler's Mega Plane

In January 2012 Italian divers discovered the wreck of a massive plane off the coast of Sardinia. At a depth of 65 meters (213 feet) lies a Messerschmidt `Gigant', the biggest aircraft to fly in WWII.

Return to Hardwick

Sons, daughters and grandchildren of the greatest generation travel to England to uncover the history of a disappearing World War II air base.

The Tramp and the Dictator

A look at the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler and how they crossed with the creation of the film “The Great Dictator,” released in 1940.

Jean Moulin, lettre à un inconnu

Battle Diary: A Day In The Life of Charlie Martin

An extraordinary journey into the past to that fateful day, June 6, 1944. Relive the event of D-Day on the beaches of Normandy with Company Sergeant-Major Charlie Martin of the Queen's Own Rifles. Experience an emotional and intensely personal account of D-Day through a combination of interviews, archival film and Charlie Martin's diary excerpts.

National Geographic: The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal

Explorer follows Bob Ballard and veterans from both America and Japan as they search for ships that were sunk during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

L'Exode

Mad, une héroine de l'ombre

Hostages of the SS

April 1945. In a dramatic operation the SS transports 139 special prisoners, and kin of the prisoners, into the Alps. The plan: to use the prisoners as bargaining chips in possible negotiations with the Allies. During the journey a number of prisoners plan their escape and experience six days between liberty and death, their fates in the hands of ruthless and increasingly nervous criminals. But the hostages band together and turn the tables with a clever ploy: they call in the Wehrmacht to aid them…

Open Secrets

This provocative documentary uncovers a lost chapter in Canadian military history: how the Armed Forces dealt with homosexual behaviour among soldiers, during and after World War II. More than 60 years later, a group of five veterans, barely adults when they enlisted, break the silence to talk about how homosexual behaviour "was even more unmentionable than cancer." Yet amidst the brutality of war, instances of sexual awakening among soldiers and officers were occuring. Initially, the Army overlooked it, but as the war advanced, they began to crack down: military tribunals, threats of imprisonment, discharge and public exposure. After the war, officers accused of homosexuality were discharged. Back home in Canada, reputations and careers were ruined. For the young men who had served their country with valour, this final chapter was often too much to bear. Based on the book Courting Homosexuals in the Military by Paul Jackson.

Bandite

Lost Airmen of Buchenwald

Chronicles the little-known story of Allied airmen imprisoned at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in the waning months of World War II. In the summer of 1944, 168 airmen from the US, England, Canada and other Allied countries were captured in Paris by the German Gestapo and sent to the infamous "Koncentration Lager Buchenwald" in Germany. Falsely accused of being "terrorists and saboteurs," the airmen faced a terrifying fight for survival and a race against time to escape their execution. A controversial moment in history that their home countries tried to hush-up, Lost Airmen of Buchenwald tells this harrowing story through interviews with seven surviving members of the group, including their heroic commanding officer. The film follows them from their days hiding with the French Resistance to the darkest corners of the Holocaust, where they struggled to survive as Germany collapsed under the weight of the advancing Russian and Allied armies

The Eichmann Trial

In 1961, history was on trial... in a trial that made history. Just 15 years after the end of WWII, the Holocaust had been largely forgotten. That changed with the capture of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina. Through rarely-seen archival footage, The Eichmann Trial documents one of the most shocking trials ever recorded, and the birth of Holocaust awareness and education.

He Has Seen War

He Has Seen War is a documentary featuring surviving veterans of Easy Company and the 1st Marine Division, whose stories are told in Band of Brothers and The Pacific. From their initial steps at reintegrating into civilian life to the lasting impact the war had on each of their lives, He Has Seen War features veterans and their families relaying their own unique stories. Complemented by renowned historian and author Donald L. Miller, as well as rarely seen archival and documentary footage, it captures the struggle and ultimate triumph of a generation who, after helping rescue the world from unprecedented calamity, reclaimed their lives and re-forged a country

In the Year 2000

A utopia about Finland in the year 2000, when man is finally the master of himself and his world. In the imaginary year 2000, a historical documentary series is created to provide a look at the irrational history of man in the 20th century, with all the wars and all that. The setting is an ascetic futuristic home, outside of which people move around in personal helicopters. The optimism about the future culminates in a school presentation shown simultaneously on giant screens in living rooms across the country, in which rational thinking is shown to have finally reached its fulfillment. On the other hand, faith in the development of humanity and a peaceful future is reflected in this post-war, escapist and dogmatic vision of the future.

Nazi UFO Conspiracy

Where do flying saucers originate? Do they carry aliens from other worlds? Or is the truth actually a lot stranger. During World War II the Nazi's employed scientists to re-imagine the boundaries of scientific thought and practise. Many in the field of advanced weapon design - the programme that produced the V1 and V2 rockets that rained on Britain. But did this same unit produce rudimentary flying saucers? Declassified military documents detail the numerous reports by allied pilots of 'foo fighters', unusual craft with incredible acceleration engaging them in the skies above Germany. In addition there was the Nazi 'Der Glocke' or 'The Bell' project for a vertical take-off vehicle, which resembles eyewitness reports of a UFO crash in Pennsylvania after the war. Thousands of Nazi scientists were brought to the US at the end of the war. Are these men, and the projects they continued to work on in America, responsible to little green men, 400 UFO sightings a month and even the ...