Before MTV and the age of television, there were Soundies. First appearing in 1941, these three minute black-and-white films featured artists of the Big Band, Jazz and Swing era, like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, The Mills Brothers, Les Paul, Cab Calloway, and Fats Waller. The Soundies helped launch the careers of Doris Day, Nat King Cole, Liberace, and Dorothy Dandridge, among others. Viewed for a dime through a special machine called a Panoram, a movie jukebox, these forerunners to the music video could be seen in nightclubs, roadhouses, restaurants and other public venues across the U.S. These classic films remain as glorious time capsules of music, social history, popular culture, and tell the story of a crossroads in our country, when the uncertainties of war, race relations, and emerging technologies combined to write one of the most influential chapters in our nation¹s history.
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Writer and historian Dr Helen Castor explores the life – and death – of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure – a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn’t fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith and today, more than ever, we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone: the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where, in all of this, is the real Joan – the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan’s own words at her trial and, as Helen unpicks Joan’s story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges.
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During the brutal invasion of China in 1937 by Imperial Japanese forces, tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are murdered and women raped in what is known simply as “The Rape of Nanking.” This docudrama is a stirring account of a small band of courageous American missionaries who choose to stay in Nanking to try and protect a quarter million vulnerable Chinese civilians who are trapped in a city ruled by a savage, out of control army. Their stories are brought vividly to life through actual real-time letters and diaries as they bear witness to one of the worst wartime atrocities in history.
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The controversial bad-boy of comedy delivers a piercing look at his life, lifting the metaphorical smokescreen that he feels has clouded the public view, commenting on everything from the dangers of smoking to the trials of relationships, and unleashing a nonstop litany of raucous anecdotes, stinging social commentary and very personal reflections about life.
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