History

Carrier

CARRIER is a character driven, edge-of-your-seat, nonfiction drama as well as a total immersion in the high stakes world of a nuclear aircraft carrier. CARRIER follows a core group of film participants aboard the USS Nimitz, from the admiral of the strike group to the fighter pilots to the youngest sailors, as they navigate personal conflicts around their jobs, families, faith, patriotism, love, the rites of passage and the war on terror.

In the Shadow of the Moon

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (DVD MOVIE)

The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns

The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour Civil War didn't just captivate a nation, reteaching to us our history in narrative terms; it actually also invented a new film language taken from its creator. When people describe documentaries using the "Ken Burns approach," its style is understood: voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts. The Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it. --Dave McCoy

On the DVD
The DVD features on The Civil War provide a wealth of insight, creative philosophy, historical perspective, and educational enjoyment. Twelve years after its premiere broadcast, the film was given a digital facelift, sharpening image clarity, correcting color, and enriching its soundtrack with a remastered 5.1-channel mix, as demonstrated in the "Civil War Reconstruction" featurette. In interviews from 2002, producer-director Ken Burns, historian Shelby Foote, journalist George Will, author Stanley Crouch, and composer-musicians Jay Ungar and Molly Mason reflect upon The Civil War's enduring significance. And Burns's eloquent commentary--selectively included on each disc and totaling five hours--illuminates the historical importance and creative impulse behind crucial chapters of the film. Fifty-seven onscreen biography cards detail important North, South, and civilian figures, and two 1990 featurettes—"Making History" and "A Conversation with Ken Burns"--provide a more personal perspective on the creation of this extraordinary film. Useful for both personal and academic study, these features stand as a fitting supplement to one of the greatest documentaries ever produced. --Jeff Shannon

Hailed as a film masterpiece and landmark in historical storytelling, Ken Burns's epic documentary brings to life America's most destructive-- and defining--conflict. With digitally enhanced images and new stereo sound, here is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one.

The World at War (30th Anniversary Edition)

Sir Jeremy Isaacs highly deserves the numerous awards for documentaries he has earned: the Royal Television Society's Desmond Davis Award, l'Ordre National du Mérit, an Emmy, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. His epic The World at War remains unsurpassed as the definitive visual history of World War II.

The Second World War was different from other wars in thousands of ways, one of which was the unparalleled scope of visual documents kept by the Axis and Allies of all their activities. As a result, this war is understood as much through written histories as it is through its powerful images. The Nazis were particularly thorough in documenting even the most abhorrent of the atrocities they were committing--in a surprising amount of color footage. The World at War was one of the first television documentaries that exploited these resources so completely, giving viewers an unbelievable visual guide to the greatest event in the 20th century. This is to say nothing of the excellent, comprehensible narrative. Some highlights:

• A New Germany 1933-39: early German and Nazi documentation of Hitler's rise to power through the impending attack on Poland
• Whirlwind: the early British losses in the blitz in the skies over Britain and in North Africa
• Stalingrad: the turning point of the war and Germany's first defeat
• Inside the Reich--Germany 1940-44: one of the most fascinating documentaries that exists on life inside Nazi Germany, from Lebensborn to the Hitler Youth
• Morning: prior to Saving Private Ryan, one of the only unromanticized views of the Normandy invasion
• Genocide: this film is one of the most widely shown introductions to the Holocaust
• Japan 1941-45: although The World at War is decidedly focused more on the European theater, this is an important look into wartime Japan and its expansion--early 20th-century history that lead to Japan's role in World War II is superficial
• The bomb: another widely shown documentary of the Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

The World at War will remain the definitive visual history of World War II, analogous to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. No serious historian should be missing The World at War in a collection, and no student should leave school without having seen at least some of its salient episodes. Rarely is film so essential. --Erik J. Macki

No End in Sight

NO END IN SIGHT (DVD MOVIE)

A staggering portrait of arrogance and incompetence, the documentary No End in Sight avoids the question of why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, choosing instead to focus on the war's aftermath--and meticulously examine the chain of decisions that led Iraq into a grotesque state of lawlessness and civil war. Drawing from interviews with top generals, administration officials, journalists, and soldiers who were in the thick of the war itself, No End in Sight lays out a gripping story, as suspenseful as any Hollywood movie, accompanied by terrifying footage of firefights and explosions more vivid than any special effects. Unfortunately, there is no happy ending. If the documentary has a weakness, it's the shortage of voices trying to defend the administration policies (perhaps unsurprisingly, policymakers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz declined to be interviewed). But the testimony (presented by administration insiders and officials in Iraq, both military and civilian) argues that, despite contrary analysis and experienced advice against its actions, the top brass of the Bush administration made decisions (that aggravated already existing problems and created devastating new ones. No End in Sight builds its case one voice at a time and avoids the grandstanding that undercuts Michael Moore's work; instead, the gradual accumulation of simple facts--presented with weary resignation, earnest outrage, and restrained anger--results in a compelling condemnation of one of the worst blunders the U.S. has ever made. --Bret Fetzer

The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ's fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War--and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as--well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same. --Robert Horton

God Grew Tired of Us

An award-winning critically acclaimed documentary narrated by Nicole Kidman GOD GREW TIRED OF US explores the indomitable spirit of three Lost Boys from the Sudan who are forced to leave their homeland due to a tumultuous civil war. Traveling barefoot across the sub-Saharan desert John Bul Dau Daniel Abol Pach and Panther Blor were among the 25000 Lost Boys (ages 3 to 13) who fled villages formed surrogate families and sought refuge from famine disease wild animals and attacks from rebel soldiers. Named by a journalist after Peter Pan s posse of orphans who protected and provided for each other the Lost Boys traveled together for five years and against all odds crossed into the UN s refugee camp in Kakuma Kenya. A journey s end for some it was only the beginning for John Daniel and Panther who along with 3800 other young survivors were selected to re-settle in the United States.The documentary chronicles their triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities and a relocation to America where the Lost Boys build active and fulfilling new lives but remain deeply committed to helping friends and family they have left behind. The film is produced by Brad Pitt and Dermot Mulroney.System Requirements:Running Time: 89 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: PG UPC: 043396198999 Manufacturer No: 19899

God Grew Tired of Us is as much about America as it is about Africa. The moving documentary begins in war-torn Sudan with the mid-1980s exodus of 27,000 Christian boys, most between five and ten. After their arrival in Kenya, the UN steps in with aid. Directors Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker pick up the story a decade later, narrowing their focus to Panther, John, and Daniel, three of 3,800 given the opportunity to resettle in the US. Quinn and Walker are with them when they land in the States, where everything is new and exciting--electricity, running water, pre-packaged foodstuffs--all the things Americans take for granted. Through the assistance of various relief organizations, their expenses are covered for the next few months. After that, the trio is expected to provide for themselves (they're older than the subjects in 2003's The Lost Boys of Sudan). Divided between Pittsburgh, PA and Syracuse, NY, the young men are thrilled with their suburban lives. Over the next year, however, joy turns to sorrow. They miss their families and have trouble making connections beyond their social group. The directors document another two years, by which point things are finally starting to look up. Produced by Brad Pitt, God Grew Tired of Us won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance. Nicole Kidman provides a little narration, but for the most part, the Lost Boys speak for themselves, which is exactly as it should be. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

The First World War - The Complete Series

This definitive ten-part series offers insight and analysis to provide a coherent and strategic military narrative of the worldwide conflict that changed history.

Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers & Tides

Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides is a truly beautiful, Scottish-German 2001 documentary about artist Goldsworthy, a Scotsman whose medium is nature itself and whose preferred studio is the outdoors, particularly where water forever flows, rises, and/or retreats. The soft-spoken, secluded Goldsworthy is seen hard at work making ephemeral sculptures out of bits of ice in the trees, or building tall, mysterious cones from loose rock, which stand like spiritual sentinels in forests and on shorelines, overgrown by plants or swallowed daily by high tides. Filmmaker-cinematographer Thomas Reidelsheimer goes to great and sometimes inexplicable lengths to make visual corollaries to Goldsworthy's ideas about underappreciated relationships between light, color, movement, balance, and fluidity of form in the real world, making Rivers and Tides a lively and always surprising cinematic gallery. Some of Goldsworthy's most miraculous natural installations--stone walls that snake through hundreds of feet of forest and stream, for instance--show up in the last half-hour. --Tom Keogh

Wildly praised by the nation's top critics, the smash theatrical hit RIVERS AND TIDES is a mesmerizing, poetic and curiously contemplative portrait of revered Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, whose long-winding rock walls, icicle assemblages and other intricate, druidic masterpieces are made entirely of materials found in the wild. Gorgeously shot and edited by director Thomas Riedelsheimer, RIVERS AND TIDES is an intoxicating study of the fragile relationship between man, art and nature.

Everest (Large Format)

Filmed in the IMAX format, this film had the luck (or lack thereof) to be shot during the same fateful and fatal climb of Mount Everest chronicled in Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air, in which a group of rich hobby climbers found themselves trapped by a blizzard near the summit. The IMAX film contains footage of those people, but focuses on its own group, as they make their assault on the top of the world's highest peak. Some startling footage of the mountain and the approaches--and, as in Krakauer's book, the depiction of what is involved in this kind of adventure (particularly the pain and suffering)--makes you wonder exactly where the fun is. But documentary film is about showing you something you're not likely to see otherwise, and this movie certainly fills the bill. --Marshall Fine

Relive a breathtaking journey to the top of the world with EVEREST, the spectacular giant-screen motion picture for IMAX theatres! Filmed during the infamous 1996 storm that claimed eight lives, EVEREST documents the filmmakers' harrowing rescue efforts to help surviving members of the ill-fated group. Join an international team of climbers as they scale the world's tallest peak. Witness the perils of skin-blistering cold, violent blizzards that drop the windchill to minus 100 degrees, and air so thin it numbs the mind. EVEREST will take you across creaking icefalls and gaping chasms, up dangerous, towering cliffs and into the death zone of oxygen-thin altitude. Filmed in spellbinding IMAX photography, "the most hyperrealistic format yet invented," says producer Greg MacGillivray. Narrated by Academy Award(R)-nominee Liam Neeson, including the music of George Harrison, EVEREST is a rich, dramatic story -- a daring adventure of triumph and tragedy.