Tragedy + Time + Comedy = Healing. From the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to today stand-up comedians, talk-show hosts, sketch performers, television animators and other entertainers have used often-controversial jokes to unite and heal in the face of tragedy.
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Stan Romanek is the center of the world’s most documented extraterrestrial contact story, and the multitude of evidence accumulated over the past decade has convinced thousands around the world that his story is true. This documentary film takes audiences on a journey through Stan’s past, present and future with one goal in mind: help the world understand that no one knowingly chooses the challenges Stan and his family have endured. This film’s intention is not to prove the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials, but it does pose the question’ What if this is all true? extraordinary: the stan romanek story is about one man’s evolution through a life he did not choose and the messages he is driven to deliver to mankind.
With the rapid emergence of digital devices, an unstoppable, invisible force is changing human lives in ways from the microscopic to the gargantuan: Big Data, a word that was barely used a few years ago but now governs the day for many of us from the moment we awaken to the extinguishing of the final late-evening light bulb. This massive gathering and analyzing of data in real time is allowing us to not only address some of humanity biggest challenges but is also helping create a new kind of planetary nervous system. Yet as Edward Snowden and the release of the Prism documents have shown, the accessibility of all these data comes at a steep price. The Human Face of Big Data captures the promise and peril of this extraordinary knowledge revolution.
Follow several talented members of the ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.
He’s our favorite veterinarian, and now we reveal what makes him so incredible. In this special program, Dr. Jan Pol shares his most intimate and life-changing moments – from his childhood in the Netherlands when the world was at war, to his move to the American midwest, and a love story fit for the movies – this is the story of his incredible life. (Disney+)
60 years since his directorial debut, Martin Scorsese’s life has been dedicated to the past, present and future of cinema. 26 feature films later, the aptly named Caretaker of Cinema continues to push the boundaries of moviemaking.
The behind-the-scenes account – part love story, part thriller – of how Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was thrown into a Tehran jail, and how her family battled to get her home
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.
In JINGLE BELL ROCKS!, director Mitchell Kezin delves into the minds of some of the world’s most legendary Christmas music fanatics and hits the road to hang with his holiday heroes – including hip hop legend Joseph “Rev Run” Simmons of RUN-D.M.C., The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne, filmmaker John Waters, bebopper Bob Dorough, L.A. DJ and musicologist Dr. Demento, and Calypso legend The Mighty Sparrow. In his search for the twelve best, underappreciated Christmas songs ever recorded, Kezin both asks and answers the question, “Why, when Christmas rolls around, are we still stuck cozying up with Bing Crosby under a blanket of snow?”
OUR GODFATHER is a feature-length documentary about Tommaso Buscetta, the first high-ranking Italian mafia boss ever to turn against Cosa Nostra. Buscetta helped convict more than 400 Mafiosi. He became the Mob’s most wanted man in the world – and 11 members of his family were killed. “He was the most important, protected and endangered witness in US criminal history” The film tells – for the first time- the Buscetta story with exclusive access to his family, which is breaking its silence after 30 years in hiding.
For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
A documentary that chronicles the life of South African leader Nelson Mandela. Mandela is probably best known for his 27 years of imprisonment, and for bringing an end to apartheid. But this film also sheds light on the little-known early period of Mandela’s life.
They called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but because of their ecstatic dancing, the world called them Shakers. Ken Burns creates a moving portrait of this particularly American movement, and in the process, offers us a new and unusually moving way to understand the Shakers.