American Experience is TV's most-watched history series and brings to life incredible characters and compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today. Acclaimed by viewers and critics alike, American Experience documentaries have been honored with every major broadcast award, including 30 Emmy Awards, 4 duPont-Columbia Awards, and 18 George Foster Peabody Awards.

Now in its 30th year, American Masters has produced an exceptional library of more than 160 television programs, bringing unique originality and perspective to exploring the lives and illuminating the creative journeys of our most enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists and filmmakers – those who have "left an indelible impression on our cultural landscape". Balancing a broad cast of characters and artistic approaches, while preserving historical authenticity and intellectual integrity, these portraits resonate the attention, style and substance each subject deserves. American Masters sustains high audience awareness and loyalty, averaging 2-to-5 million viewers per program.

From the moment the new Reverend climbs the pulpit, Liz knows that she and her family are in great danger.

Friends, enemies, acquaintances, and family of porn star John Holmes recall their experiences with him, from his childhood to his eventual death from AIDS in 1988.

Arena is the BBC's multi award-winning arts strand. Founded in 1975, Arena continues to produce gold standard documentaries for the BBC and world service.

An auteur of science fiction himself, Scott goes from behind the camera to on-air guide to explore the relationship between genre and the constantly-evolving worlds of science and technology. From Isaac Asimov, to Jules Verne, to Robert Heinlein, to George Lucas, the dreams of storytellers often become the inspiration for researchers seeking mankind's next transformative discovery.

A young Cro-Magnon woman is raised by Neanderthals.

Miranda is a crew member of a nightly radio programmme. She and her husband Felix, a cop, are parents of a girl. Miranda's daily dog walking strolls are excuses to pursue sexual encounters with men, who she readily discards afterwards. In order to deal with her sex addiction, she signs up for therapy. Also in the group is Javier, a successful scriptwriter and producer who is a sex-phone junkie. The two misfits hit off and a steamy affair ensues. But things get a little complicated when Javier finds out that this phone sex trysts have been secretly taped and being distributed all over Madrid, and that his ex-wife is living with his business partner. Elsewhere, while investigating a murder case, Felix discovers Miranda's affair with Javier.

In 1943, the year in which the first A-bomb was built, Albert Hofmann discovered LSD, a substance that was to become an A-bomb of the mind. Fractions of a milligram are enough to turn our framework of time and space upside down. The story of a drug - its discovery in the Basel chemistry lab, the first experiments by Albert Hofmann on himself, the 1950s experiments of the psychiatrists, the consciousness researchers, the artists. Could it actually be possible to find a path to the core of our human existence by means of a chemical? Spirituality at the flick of a switch? Do the enigmatic effects of this drug really help us to better understand the human soul? Could LSD be an instrument of contemporary psychiatry? Of modern brain research?

An intense documentary investigating the dark and hidden world of sexual molestation of children by trusted family members or friends.

Jim Jones transforms from a charismatic preacher and champion of civil rights into an egomaniacal demagogue and leads the biggest mass suicide in American history; based on the book "The Road to Jonestown" by investigative journalist Jeff Guinn.

Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein? examines the case around Epstein and his death. Was Jeffrey Epsteins death truly a suicide or was it far more sinister cover up?

Harry S. Truman, a failed farmer, haberdasher, oil prospector, lead miner, banker, law student and county politician, was President of the United States during the country's most troubled times. Widely criticized and constantly embroiled in political battles, Truman departed office in 1952 with one of the lowest approval ratings of any president. However, his intelligence, integrity and decisiveness had a profound effect on world events that continues even now. He faced his trials with homespun candor, humour and wisdom, and a humble belief in hard work. Harry S. Truman - an honest and extraordinary ordinary man, unchanged by power and circumstances, a man that History has now judged one of America's greatest leaders.

In the early 1970s, a young woman passing through rural Tennessee unintentionally gets caught in a feud between two local neighboring clans, the Feathers and the Gutshalls.

The multigenerational saga of the rise and fall of the Corleone crime family.

Gotti is a TV movie starring Armand Assante, Anthony Quinn, and William Forsythe. John Gotti rises to head the powerful Gambino crime family before being convicted in 1992 of racketeering and murder.

David is a young man seduced by a religious cult that uses starvation, exhaustion, and brainwashing to mold recruits into money hustling disciples of a messiah-like leader. Chronicles David's chilling transformation into a gaunt, mindless shadow of his former self...and his ultimate salvation when friends and family launch a plan to kidnap and deprogram him.

A chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.

500 Nations is an eight part documentary which explores the history of the indigenous peoples of North and Central America and their fall to the European conquerors.  

A series of interviews are conducted concerning people's beliefs towards the possibility of an afterlife. The interviews are filmed against a set of strange backdrops, and are intercut with clips from classic films and a variety of stock footage.

This special sees Louis travel to America to investigate the story of a man who has become one of the most controversial and captivating icons of recent times: the gun-toting, self-described 'gay hillbilly' and 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic.

Disillusioned Vietnam veteran Lloyd Dubeck travels back to Southeast Asia in search among thousands of war orphans for the son he left behind.

Unable to purchase a $50,000 digital projector, a group of film fanatics in rural Pennsylvania fight to keep a dying drive-in theater alive by screening only vintage 35mm film prints and working entirely for free.

An anthology of original animated shorts in the style and theme of Gary Larson's Far Side comics.

When the going gets really tough, we need ordinary people of extraordinary strength and courage to jolt us into action and offer us hope. In December 1994 Alison Botha became such an individual. She needed a hero that night, so that's what she became.

Biopic of notorious Mitchell Brothers who opened up a successful San Francisco strip club and thriving porn business that led to a downward spiral of power and greed.

The Medieval and Renaissance blade, a profound and beautiful object handcrafted by master artisans of old. An object of great complexity, yet one with a singular use in mind- it is designed to kill. The truth of the sword has been shrouded in antiquity, and the Renaissance martial arts that brought it to being are long forgotten. The ancient practitioners lent us all they knew through their manuscripts. As gunslingers of the Renaissance they were western heroes with swords, and they lived and died by them. Yet today their history remains cloaked under a shadow of legend.

A Catholic Priest and an English teacher get stranded in a school in Kigali during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Ian Struan Dunross is chairman of Struan & Co, the oldest and largest of the British-East Asia trading companies. To the Chinese, that also makes him "Tai-Pan" ("supreme leader") of the "Noble House". Unfortunately, with his power, he inherits ancient promises, dark secrets and deep financial problems on a small island full of people who want to see Struan's fall so they can become the Noble House. Dunross' worst enemy is the vicious Quillan Gornt, a lesser tai-pan, and he's doing everything in his power to bring the Noble House to ruin. Drawn into the fight between Gornt and Dunross is an upstart American billionaire who tries to gain a foothold on the Hong Kong market and has made a deal to steal something that will give him power, even over the Noble House. Unfortunately, that something has fallen into the hands of a powerful Chinese overlord. "Everybody was watching [and cheating on] everybody." Who will succeed in the end?

A series of Gary Larsen's "Far Side" gags are turned into short animated gags, such as a Frankenstein cow; an insect airline's in-flight movie; deer, hunters, and UFOs; wolf home-movies; egg horror flicks; and cowboys & aliens.

Mark Cousins offers hope and optimism while he explores different movies and talks about how technology is changing the course of cinema in a new century and how Covid continues the process.

In 1846, a large wagon train left Springfield, Illinois for California. In July of that year, following the advice of The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California written by a pro-emigration promoter named Lansford Hastings, the Donner party left the main body of emigrants to take a never before tried "shortcut" across the Great Basin. The Donner Party arrived at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, the last mountain pass before California, weeks behind schedule and short of food. The first blizzard of the season started only one day before they planned to head up and over the Sierra Nevada. With 95% of their journey already completed, they would be forced to wait months to make the final push, enduring the most unfavorable Sierra Nevada winter in history. The group was trapped on the eastern side of the Sierra for five months, culminating in death and cannibalism. Of the 87 men, women, and children in the Donner Party only 46 survived to reach California.

During the 1960s, a Caribbean sailor and his tomboy daughter search for buried treasure but run into unsavory characters and a cute lawyer who's after romance.

The true story of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict. In 1822, Pearce and seven fellow convicts escaped from Macquarie Harbour, a place of ultra banishment and punishment, only to find a world less forgiving.. the Australian wilderness. Abandon all hope you who enter.

A young American woman is kidnapped by an Arabian sheik who holds her captive in his harem. At first, she frantically tries to escape, but as they slowly get to know and appreciate each other, the difference between captor and captive dissolves.

A cinematic portrait of the life and career of the infamous American execution device designer and holocaust denier.

A documentary by Simone de Vries on Dutch actor Rutger Hauer.

The Blues anchors a multi-media celebration that raises awareness of the blues and its contribution to American culture and music worldwide.Under the guiding vision of Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, seven directors will explore the blues through their own personal styles and perspectives. The episodes in the series are motivated by a central theme: how the blues evolved from parochial folk tunes to a universal language.

Dames Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith get together for tea to reminisce and discuss their acting careers.

'The Weight of Chains 2' is a documentary film largely dealing with the effects of the Washington Consensus economic doctrine on the newly established former Yugoslav republics, but also with neoliberalism as an economic concept. Through interviews with Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone and many others, the author, Serbian-Canadian Boris Malagurski, attempts to analyze why so many people in the Balkans are disappointed with the systems imposed after the fall of socialism and how capitalism could be improved. Looking at the examples of Ecuador and Iceland, the film tries to uncover alternatives to the prevailing orthodoxies of Western economic dictates and help developing nations find their own way to shape their economies and their countries.

When the Hutu nationalists raised arms against their Tutsi countrymen in Rwanda in April 1994, the violent uprising marked the beginning of one of the darkest times in African history which resulted in the deaths of almost 800,000 people.

An in-depth look at the director James Ronald Whitney's family history of incest spanning at least three generations and the devastating consequences that include drug abuse and alcoholism.

A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in California to look for his runaway teenage daughter who is making porno films in California's porno pits.

In the opulent St. Petersburg of the Empire period, Eugene Onegin is a jaded but dashing aristocrat - a man often lacking in empathy, who suffers from restlessness, melancholy and, finally, regret. Through his best friend Lensky, Onegin is introduced to the young Tatiana. A passionate and virtuous girl, she soon falls hopelessly under the spell of the aloof newcomer and professes her love for him.

An exploration of the viewpoint that the September 11, 2001 attacks were planned by the United States government.

Twenty-eight-year-old Kansas University doctoral student Omar Razaghi (Omar Metwally) wins a grant to write a biography of Latin American writer Jules Gund. Omar must get through to three people who were close to Gund; his brother, widow, and younger mistress, so he can get authorization to write the biography.

A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.

A television adaptation of Michael Frayn's celebrated and award-winning stage play about the meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941 Copenhagen. At this time the young Heisenberg was leading a faltering German research program into nuclear...

What "In Plane Site" accomplishes that no other video expose' on September 11th has to date, is it exposes the viewer to a barrage of news clips from a majority of the mainstream news outlets. The official story of that day was told on live TV by reporters, policemen, firefighters, and other on-the-scene eyewitnesses, however, that footage was shown only once on live television broadcasts in the first hours of the attacks and then... it was never repeated. The stories changed, information was enigmatically omitted, and what can only be described as officially prescribed propaganda took the place of indisputable reality.

A unique celebration of the Queen's ninety years as she reaches her landmark birthday in April. Film-maker John Bridcut has been granted special access to the complete collection of Her Majesty's personal ciné films, shot by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen herself, as well as by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Much of it has never been seen publicly before. Various members of the Royal Family are filmed watching this private footage and contributing their own personal insights and their memories of the woman they know both as a member of their own close family and as queen. Among those taking part are the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Princess Royal, the Duke of Kent and his sister Princess Alexandra, who has never before given an interview.

A concert film in which Bill Cosby discusses weekends, raising children, dentists, and many other situations.

A 1970s-set comedy centered on three young working class friends in a dreary suburb of Reading.

The lines between reality and perception blur in this comic journey into the life and mind (literally!) of one of sci-fi's most brilliant authors. Paranoid conspiracies of the highest order, drug-fueled interdimensional shifts, and 1970's pop culture combine for the mind-bending adventure of the century.

This spellbinding documentary re-examines the issues raised by JFK and explores the late Jim Garrison's contention that there was a"second conspiracy" to cover up the truth.

House of Hancock tells the epic true story of the Hancock dynasty and the bizarre love triangle that emerged between Lang Hancock, his daughter Gina Rinehart and his beautiful Filipina housekeeper Rose Lacson.

In a small Georgia town in the 1950s, bigoted store owner Paris Trout kills a young black girl when his brother refuses to pay his debts.

Shows uncensored portions of the highly emotional Dec. 1984 videotaped confession of Bernhard Goetz, known as the "subway vigilante", who opened fire on four teenagers he feared were about to rob him on a New York subway train. Also discusses Goetz's attempted murder trial at which he was subsequently acquitted.

A successful 19th century French stockbroker (Sutherland) leaves his profession to become an artist in Paris.

Documentary about serial killers and FBI Behavioral Sciences Profilers. Interviews with Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy as well as crime victims and law enforcement officials. Includes some Dramatic Recreations.

In 1974 Pittsburgh, a high-school history teacher seeking closure tells his class about his experiences as teenager in England during World War II.

Two minor characters from the play 'Hamlet' stumble around unaware of their scripted lives and unable to deviate from them.

A group of women who are imprisoned on the island of Sumatra by the Japanese during World War II use music as relieve their misery.

A soldier recounts his relationship with a famous political prisoner attempting to overthrow their country's authoritarian government.

Joseph Svenden is a middle-aged school-teacher who lives on a farm with his dying mother. In his simple life there are no excitements, even in long-time relationship with a widow. However, when seventeen-year-old beauty enrolls in his class, Joseph would soon end up in her arms. After that, Joseph is torn between the passion and feeling that he is doing something wrong.

A portrait of Lord Longford, a tireless British campaigner whose controversial beliefs often resulted in furious political debate and personal conflict.

Mussolini and I is a 4 hour docu-drama that was made for television. It originally aired on HBO in September 1985. It is about Italy's fascist regime leader Benito Mussolini. Most of the film is based on the diaries of Galeazzo Ciano. It was directed by Alberto Negrin.

An introspective young woman's life is upturned by the arrival of her maladjusted sister.

On the 19th of May 1983 Diane Downs stops at the McKenzie-Williamette-Hospital and cries for help. She is wounded on her arm and her three children are also wounded seriously. She says that a stranger shot at them but the investigation of detective Welch bring out that Diane is a liar.

One of Oliver Stone's first films, Last Year in Viet Nam presents part of his personal experiences after coming back as a war veteran from the Vietnam war, trying to cope with terrible memories from the front and the recurring sensation of isolation, anguish and alienation he felt while living in New York, still uncertain of what to do with his life.

Kaisa is a Scot, a successful London lawyer, who snorts coke and has one-night stands with strangers. Her mother calls from Aberdeen with some story begging her to fly to Norway and collect her alcoholic dad whom she hasn't seen in years. The impatient Kaisa reluctantly agrees. The story is a ruse: mom is dying and wants her ex and her daughter together again. The trip gets complicated (dad is too drunk to fly and the hot-tempered Kaisa gets them banned from the airline): they go by ferry then car, needing a great deal of help along the way from a sweet lorry driver named Clive. Will they reach Aberdeen before mom's death, and will Kaisa find any stability within herself or in others?

Honest Man: the Life of R. Budd Dwyer is a movie about politics and corruption, suicide and survival. Four years in the making, it explores the scandal that led an honest, hard-working man to take his own life. This independently produced feature-length documentary follows Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who infamously committed suicide at a televised press conference. The film chronicles Dwyer's meteoric rise to political power and examines the bribery scandal and subsequent trial that pushed him to his breaking point. Honest Man also delves into the controversy and consequences of the uncensored airing of Dwyer's death on television stations worldwide. Honest Man reveals a story that has remained untold for over 24 years. The film features exclusive new interviews, including William Smith, the man whose testimony convicted Dwyer, and Dwyer's widow Joanne--her last interview before her death in 2009. Was Dwyer venal, or a victim? Did he kill himself because he couldn't live with being guilty, or because he couldn't live with being innocent? Honest Man allows audiences to judge for themselves.

The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.

A husband, wife and their son are stranded on a remote island with no way off; as the son grows older, sexual tensions emerge.

Emmy Coer, a computer genius, devises a method of communicating with the past by tapping into undying information waves. She manages to reach the world of Ada Lovelace, founder of the idea of a computer language and proponent of the possibilities of the "difference engine." Ada's ideas were stifled and unfulfilled because of the reality of life as a woman in the nineteenth century. Emmy has a plan to defeat death and the past using her own DNA as a communicative agent to the past, bringing Ada to the present. But what are the possible ramifications?

Based on a true story, this heart-wrenching film follows the journey of Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti), a Jewish-Hungarian doctor who manages to survive Auschwitz. Decades later, she's applying for U.S. citizenship when she becomes accused of colluding with the Nazis. Her judge and jury are three INS investigators (played by Bruce Davison, Richard Crenna and Beau Bridges) who must decide her fate

2DTV is a short animated satirical show that keeps up to date with the latest stories. Using a special kind of animation, it is able to make characters and places quite easily and finished on the date in which it's supposed to be aired.

The life and legacy of Marlon Brando and how he changed acting.

The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick is a movie starring Paul Williams, Robert Anton Wilson, and Scott Apel. Philip K. Dick stories continue to inspire filmmakers, writers, technophiles and philosophers. And for the last ten years...

The powerful Greek shipowner and constructor Thanos proposes to marry Phaedra during the baptism of a ship with her name. Phaedra, who is the daughter of Thanos'greatest competitor, is a bored woman. Thanos gives an expensive ring to Phaedra and soon she learns that his estranged son from his first marriage, Alexis, has left the London School of Economics (LSE) in London to dedicate himself to painting. Thanos asks Phaedra to travel to London to bring Alexis to meet him in Greece. When Phaedra meets Alexis, she falls in love with her stepson and seduces him. Their doomed love affair leads the family to a tragedy.

Independent of each other, the Pal family - parents Hazari and Kamla, and their three offspring Amrita, Shambu and Manooj - and Max Lowe arrive in Calcutta, their initial dealings there being less than positive. After losing their farm in the nearby countryside to the "money lender", the Pals are in the city in search of a better life, especially in wanting to build a dowry for Amrita who is now of marrying age. Max, a Houston based surgeon who fell into the career as a matter of family obligation, quit his job unable to cope with the emotional toll especially of losing patients, and has come to Calcutta in search of spiritual enlightenment.

In the early days of the civil rights movement, a Southern plantation owner holds his sharecroppers in virtual slavery. Purlie comes home as a preacher who will shake things up and bring freedom to his people.

A 2001 documentary that has Stone, in his own words, reflect on his life, beliefs and the changing face of America, and how it informs his work.

The definitive three-and-a-half hour documentary about the troubled creation and enduring legacy of the science fiction classic Blade Runner (1982), culled from 80 interviews and hours of never-before-seen outtakes and lost footage.

In the 1950s, an adolescent Werner Herzog was transfixed by a film performance of the young Klaus Kinski. Years later, they would share an apartment where, in an unabated, forty-eight-hour fit of rage, Kinski completely destroyed the bathroom. From this chaos, a violent, love-hate, profoundly creative partnership was born. In 1972, Herzog cast Kinski in Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972). Four more films would follow. In this personal documentary, Herzog traces the often violent ups and downs of their relationship, revisiting the various locations of their films and talking to the people they worked with.

A young woman battles to regain custody of her son.

The story of the twilight years of tobacco billionairess Doris Duke and her relationship with her gay butler, to whom she left her entire fortune.

A boy named Max imagines he is "Where The Wild Things Are''.

An enthusiastic filmmaker thinks he's come up with a totally original idea: animation set to classical music! When he is informed that some American named "Prisney" (or something) has already done it, he decides to do his own version, using an orchestra comprising mostly old ladies and an animator he's kept locked in a dungeon. Several different classical pieces are animated, while the animator plots his escape.

A documentary about the disastrous 1968 round-the-world yacht race.

A documentary about censorship in America.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

Eighteen-year-old Esther has been deaf and blind since the accident which killed her mother. Wealthy Margaret Landi, a native of Esther's village in Ireland, is talked into helping to educate and possibly heal Esther. Margaret grows to love Esther as a daughter, but finds Esther's innocence threatened by sleazy promoters and her own sleazy ex-husband.

The global protest against the Iraq War on 15 February 2003 was a pivotal moment in recent history, the consequences of which have gone unreported. We Are Many chronicles the struggle to shift power from the old establishment to the new superpower that is global public opinion, through the prism of one historic day.

A brief look at some of the highlights of film composer George Delerue's career. A few directors and even more image and sound editors are found in their workspaces, reviewing the films they made in conjunction with him. His artistry in supporting without dominating the image, his subtleties in dynamics, and his instincts for nailing the emotional impact of a scene are discussed - as well as observing him engrossed in the spark of creating with keyboard, pen and paper.

A loving look at one of the most cherished and controversial figures in children's literature, Maurice Sendak. In this deeply moving tribute, spend time with the man who spoke to children through his stories and illustrations in a way no one else could.

Rosanna Arquette talks to various actresses about the pressures they face as women working in the entertainment industry.

An incompetent radio DJ tries to get an interview with the Swedish pop group during their famous week-long 1977 tour of Australia.