History

Shula Cohen, the true story of a Jewish Lebanese woman living, in the 1940s, in Wadi Abu-Jmil, an area in Beirut that used to gather a big community of Lebanese Jews. In her late thirties, she was a total beauty, with great intelligence; and called: “The Pearl”.

One last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over. A deep geography. What is above and what is below. What came before and what will come after. Agrarian fantasies, sacrificial rites, and excavations. A story told with maps, dreams, and prayers. A map lesson in three parts. A history of the State of Georgia - or Anywhere.

Based on the life stories of the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jackie Onassis raised as Park Avenue débutantes but who withdrew from New York society, taking shelter at their Long Island summer home, "Grey Gardens." As their wealth and contact with the outside world dwindled, so did their grasp on reality.

The tale about last years of the legendary Home Army commander, General August Emil Fieldorf "Nil".

This heartwarming and at times touching documentary chronicles the preparation, experience, and aftermath of the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Black Studies Department, students, and community persons as they embark upon the inauguration of President Barack Obama. A mixture of cinema verity and interview, this documentary provides an eyewitness accounting of the event through emerging primary stories representative of a broad array of cultural and occupational backgrounds. It is the cinematic documentation of the joy, the laughter, and the tears as 55 passengers board a bus and travel over 2,000 miles for an experience of a lifetime.

July 1936. Leon Blum's (Daniel Mesguich) left-wing coalition government is facing one of the hardest strikes paralyzing the whole country's economy. But one man alone is about to get the French people back to work, and peacefully: Roger Salengro (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu).

The story is set in the Sengoku period. A rounin called Nanashi saves a young boy Kotarou at an abandoned temple. Kotarou has no family, is pursued by a mysterious militia organization from China and hires Nanashi as his bodyguard.

Even though bringing in cameras to the internment camps was prohibited, one man managed to smuggle in his own camera lens and build a camera to document life behind barbed wires, with the help of other craftsmen in the camp. That man was Toyo Miyatake, a successful issei (first generation immigrant) photographer and owner of a photo-shop in the Los Angeles Little Tokyo district, and of one of the many Americans who was interned with his family against his will. With his makeshift camera, Miyatake captured the dire conditions of life in the camps during World War II as well as the resilient spirit of his companions, many of whom were American citizens who went on to fight for their country overseas. Miyatake said, "It is my duty to record the facts, as a photographer, so that this kind of thing should never happen again."

Genjuro’s crime was assassination, his punishment was to survive a faked execution and lose his home, lose his identity, and emerge as Maboroshi Shinigami, the Phantom Assassin. When his wife is kidnapped and tortured to reveal his whereabouts and dragged to the executioner for crucifixion by corrupt clan officials, Genjuro faces an army of swords to save her. Evil men aim to frame Genjuro for another murder. For their scheme they need only one thing, Genjuro’s dead body. Genjuro will have to cut down their swordsmen and challenge Sarashina Gunpei, deadliest blade in Japan in a final blood-soaked battle.

May 1968. Charles de Gaulle is 77. His great career is behind him. Obsessed by France's prestige, he's looking with distance to the student demonstrations. An intimate portrait of the General through the tale of 68'events.

Jerusalem: Center of the World tells the epic story of the world s most incredible city, capturing the rich mosaic of the city s Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities. Covering a sweeping history of over 4,000 years, the film explores the founding of the city; the birth and convergence of the world s three major monotheistic religions; and the key events in Jerusalem s history as described in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Talmud, the Hagaddah, the Koran, and the Hadith. Highlights include: Mount Moriah, the site of the First and Second Temples; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; the Dome of the Rock; and the Western Wall. Directed by Andrew Goldberg, and hosted by Ray Suarez (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer), the film includes interviews with locals, top scholars and clergy.

Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar. She's both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.

Born in a village in Sudan, kidnapped by slavers, often beaten and abused, and later sold to Federico Marin, a Venetian merchant, Bakhita then came to Italy and became the nanny servant of Federico's daughter, Aurora, who had lost her mother at birth. She is treated as an outcast by the peasants and the other servants due to her black skin and African background, but Bakhita is kind and generous to others. Bakhita gradually comes closer to God with the help of the kind village priest, and embraces the Catholic faith. She requests to join the order of Canossian sisters, but Marin doesn't want to give her up as his servant, treating her almost as his property. This leads to a moving court case that raised an uproar which impacts Bakhita's freedom and ultimate decision to become a nun. Pope John Paul II declared her a saint in the year 2000.

The film presents the last days of Gen. Sikorski, right before the Gibraltar catastrophe. The commander is accompanied by his daughter Zofia and a group of closest collaborators. They are all guests in the palace of the Governor of Gibraltar, Mason Macfarlane, who is supposed to persuade Sikorski to give back documents on the murder of Polish officers in Katyn. When Sikorski refuses, a plan of attempt on his life comes into action. Who stood behind it? Who executed it and how? Was Zofia on board of Liberator too?

At the close of the Cultural Revolution, a group of young idealists battle for the right to return home and restart their lives after years of toil on a state run re-education farm in China.

A 2009 Cuban drama by Rebeca Chávez taking place in Santiago de Cuba at the beginning of revolution. In the late 1950s, the city of Santiago de Cuba was afire, the site of some of the fiercest resistance to the murderous dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The film's narrative unfolds over 24 hours in the lives of several youthful members of the underground as they confront their own uncertainty about the morality of armed struggle and the necessity of severing bonds that had seemed unbreakable.

Set in the 16th century, this is a story about Ukraine's Cossack warriors and their campaign to defend their lands from the advancing Polish armies.

Huw Edwards presents a documentary examining the relationship between Victorian prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, whose bitter personal rivalry dominated British politics for 40 years.

In the spring of 2005, a mother living in Hanoi receives a diary of her late daughter, a young doctor working at a field hospital during the war. Kept for over thirty years by an American veteran, the diary is an account of her life spanning two years, from April 1968 until her death in June 1970.