* American Experience (Series)

Jesse Owens (2012)
The most famous athlete of his time, his stunning triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games captivated the world even as it infuriated the Nazis. Despite the racial slurs he endured, Jesse Owens' grace and athleticism rallied crowds across the globe. But when the four-time Olympic gold medalist returned home, he could not even ride in the front of a bus. The story of the 22-year-old son of a sharecropper who triumphed over adversity to become a hero and world champion, Jesse Owens is also about the elusive, fleeting quality of fame and the way Americans idolize athletes when they suit our purpose, and forget them once they don't.

JFK: Like No Other (2013)
In this probing biography, American Experience presents a fresh look at an enigmatic man who remains one of the nation's most beloved and mourned leaders, John F. Kennedy. Beginning with Kennedy's childhood years as the privileged but sickly son of one of the wealthiest men in America, the film explores his early political career as a lackluster congressman, his successful run for the U.S. Senate, and the game-changing presidential campaign that made him the youngest elected president in U.S. history. With the benefit of recently opened archives, the film recounts his struggles with life-threatening illnesses, and his efforts to keep them hidden from the public.

JFK offers a new perspective on his complicated private life, including his relationship with his wife, his close connection to his younger brother, Robert, and his complex bond with his powerful father. It also reevaluates Kennedy's strengths and weaknesses in the Oval Office as he navigated some of the most explosive events of the mid-twentieth century--the disastrous failure at the Bay of Pigs, the urgent demands of an increasingly impatient civil rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the escalating conflict in Southeast Asia.

Sit Down and Fight (1992)
This episode of American Experience traces the tumultuous struggle of America's auto workers against the management of the automobile manufacturers. Led by Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers formed their union in 1936 to seek better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The program recounts the United Auto Workers' pitted battle with management in a dispute that was often ugly and even bloody. Archival news clips, photographs, journalistic accounts, personal recollections, and commentary by historians illustrate the sit-down strikes and conflicts that marked this turning point in labor relations.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was just Sit Down and Fight (1992) and I renamed it to:

American Experience - Sit Down and Fight (1992)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Death and the Civil War (2012)
From acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns, Death and the Civil War explores an essential but largely overlooked aspect of the most pivotal event in American history. With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before - permanently altering the character of the republic, and the psyche of the American people. The work of contending with death on an unprecedented scale propelled extraordinary changes in the inner and outer life of Americans - posing challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began - challenges that called forth remarkable and eventually heroic efforts as Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale.

Based on Drew Gilpin Faust's groundbreaking book, This Republic of Suffering - the film tracks the increasingly lethal arc of the war, from all but bloodless opening, through the chaos of Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg - down through the struggle, in the war's aftermath, to cope with an American landscape littered with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many unburied, most unidentified.

1964 (2014)
Based on The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, by award-winning journalist Jon Margolis, this film follows some of the most prominent figures of the time, and bring out from the shadows the actions of ordinary Americans whose frustrations, ambitions, and anxieties began to turn the country onto a different course.

1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater's conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. Based in part on The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 by Jon Margolis, 1964 follows some of the most influential figures of the time--Lyndon B. Johnson, Barry Goldwater, Betty Friedan--but also brings out from the shadows the stories of ordinary Americans whose principled stands would set the country onto a new and different course.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (2014)
Long before Paul Newman and Robert Redford immortalized them on screen, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid captivated Americans from coast to coast. In the 1890s, their exploits robbing banks and trains in the West - and then seemingly vanishing into thin air - became national news and the basis of rumors and myth. But who were Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh?

American Experience - Clinton (2012)
The biography of a president who rose from a broken childhood in Arkansas to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history, and one of the most complex and conflicted characters to ever stride across the public stage. From draft dodging to the Dayton Accords, from Monica Lewinsky to a balanced budget, the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton veered between sordid scandal and grand achievement. Clinton had a career full of accomplishment and rife with scandal, a marriage that would make history and create controversy, and a presidency that would define the crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9-11.

The latest installment in the critically acclaimed and successful series of presidential biographies, Clinton follows the president across his two terms as he confronted some of the key forces that would shape the future, including partisan political warfare and domestic and international terrorism, and as he struggled with uneven success to define the role of American power in a post-Cold War world. Most memorably, it explores how Clinton's conflicted character made history, even as it enraged his enemies and confounded his friends.

Ansel Adams (2002)
From the day that a 14-year-old Ansel Adams first saw the transcendent beauty of the Yosemite Valley, his life was, in his words, "colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra." This youthful awakening to the sublime power of the wilderness was the beginning of a lifelong journey for Adams -- a quest in which he would discover the power of photography to reveal mankind's place in the natural world. His work was part of an extraordinary revolution in photography that sought to capture what Adams called "the continuous beauty of things that are," the landscape of the North American continent. More than any other artist of the twentieth century, Adams helped transform the meaning of wilderness in America; his greatest images of the American West changed forever what Americans thought about their own land. Few American photographers have reached a wider audience than Adams, and none has had more impact on how Americans grasp the majesty of their continent. In this elegant, moving and lyrical portrait of the most eloquent and quintessentially American of photographers, producer Ric Burns seeks to explore the meaning and legacy of Adams' life and work. At the heart of the film are the great themes that absorbed Adams throughout his career: the beauty and fragility of "the American earth," the inseparable bond of man and nature, and the moral obligation the present owes to the future. The documentary weaves together archival footage, photographic images, dramatic readings of the artist's own writing, and interviews with leading photographers, historians, curators, naturalists, as well as Adams's family, friends, and colleagues, to tell the story of a man who was at once a visionary photographer, a pioneer in photographic technique, and an ardent crusader for the cause of environmentalism.


Fidel Castro (2004)
"On January 3, 1959, a column of victorious young rebels advanced along Cuba's main highway towards Havana. At the head of the column rode 33-year-old Fidel Castro Ruz. As he went by, a Cuban peasant turned to an American journalist, and said: "There he goes, the hope of a people." Over the next few decades, by the force of his personality and the might of his Soviet benefactor, Castro turned himself and Cuba into significant players on the world stage. He did so while surviving the hostility of ten consecutive U.S. presidents, an invasion, several CIA assassination attempts and an economic embargo. Castro's face with its trademark beard, has become an iconic image worldwide, yet the man himself remains an enigma to all but a few. Through interviews with relatives, childhood friends, fellow rebel leaders, Bay of Pigs veterans, human rights activists and journalists, American Experience: Fidel Castro constructs an intimate and revealing portrait of the most resilient of leaders."

This documentary begins with 1950s television footage of Fidel Castro's first moments as prime minister of Cuba. "At the age of 32," says a newsreader, "you now have in your hands a great deal of power and a great deal of responsibility. Aren't you a little frightened by this?" The vision switches to Castro, dressed unaccountably in pyjamas and sitting in a very feminine living room. He plumps a cushion and nods. "Not frightened because I have self-confidence."

This is a beautifully made documentary packed with rare archive footage and photographs. It shows Castro's childhood, his recklessness as a youth, his blossoming talents at the University of Havana and then his swift and complex ride to lawyer, jailbird, guerilla, politician and revolutionary. Adored and deplored, Castro's life makes compelling viewing.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco Fidel Castro consolidates his power in Cuba. He declares publicly that he's a Marxist Leninist, establishes very close relations with the Soviet Union, and begins to turn Cuba into a socialist state. However, in October 1962 the US realises Cuba has allowed the Soviets to build missile sites from which they could launch nuclear missiles into the U.S. This leads to a crisis that is considered the closest the world came to a nuclear war.

During the following 20 years Cuba becomes a prime example of a socialist state, with free education and free health services for its population. Castro provides military and logistic aid to various liberation movements, notably to the Angolan revolutionaries who were fighting the South Africans. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban revolution experiences its worst economic crisis. The continued U.S. embargo isolates the country, but he and his regime manage to survive by diversifying into other non-traditional areas, and seeking foreign investment in areas such as tourism.

************ Freedom Riders (2011)
The story behind a courageous band of civil rights activists called Freedom Riders who in 1961 challenged segregation in the American South.

Henry Ford (2013)
Henry Ford paints a fascinating portrait of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century. Ford's Model T automobile and his five-dollar-a-day wage ushered in the modern world, earning Ford reverence from millions of Americans. Yet many of the changes he wrought deeply troubled the carmaker. In frustration, he lashed out at enemies, real and imagined, blamed Jews for the country's problems, bullied those who worked for him and exhibited great cruelty to his only son, often, it seemed, wishing to retreat to an idyllic fantasy of the past.

************ Hijacked (2007)

"For more than 30 years it would be known as "the blackest day in aviation history." On September 6, 1970, members of the militant Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P.), hijacked four commercial airplanes. They commandeered a fifth aircraft three days later. Wanting to attract attention to the Palestinian cause and secure the release of several of their comrades, the P.F.L.P. spectacularly blew up four of the planes.

Today the commanders who planned and carried out the attack resist comparison to the terrorists who masterminded the events of September 11, 2001: members of the P.F.L.P. were not religious extremists, but secular Marxist Leninists. And of the almost 600 passengers taken hostage, none were killed. And yet more than three decades later, it is clear that a connection exists between the two seminal events, that September 6, 1970 gave birth to a new era of terrorism.

In telling this dramatic and complicated story, award-winning producer Ilan Ziv interviews leaders of the P.F.L.P., militants who carried out the attack, journalists who covered the hijackings, crew members and passengers. More than just recounting the events of those tense September days, this American Experience production examines how and when Middle East militants began to see civilians as legitimate pawns in their struggles for self-determination." Synopsis from the PBS page, linked below.

************ Ike (1993)

"He went off to war an unknown soldier and returned a beloved national hero. Often dismissed as a 'do-nothing' president and a good-natured bumbler, Dwight D. Eisenhower -- the last American president to be born in the 19th century -- was actually a skillful politician, a tough Cold War warrior, and one of America's most misunderstood and unappreciated presidents. When he left office in 1961, historians ranked Eisenhower in the bottom third of American presidents, below Chester Arthur. By the 1990s, he ranked near the top."

Originally aired on the "Presidents" series on PBS' American Experience, the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower covers his days from childhood to his WWII heroics, his marriage to Mamie Doud, the rumored affair with military driver Kay Summersby, and details his tenure as America's 34th president. Ike, as he was affectionately nicknamed, became a Five Star General in the second World War, commanding the invasion of Normandy, and, in the Battle of the Bulge, defeated Germany's last offensive. During his presidency, the Korean War ended, the Interstate Highway System was laid out, and America's nuclear arsenal expanded. Despite efforts to contain Communism, Eisenhower was no sympathizer of zealots and worked behind the scenes to undermine Joseph McCarthy. Eisenhower's early legacy as the "do-nothing" president has deteriorated since he left office in 1960, and, as seen here, his actions as a skillful politician have been brought to light.

************ Jonestown - The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
Veteran filmmaker Stanley Nelson traces the stunning rise and fall of Peoples Temple and its charismatic founder Jim Jones, who convinced hundreds of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana to participate in a mass "suicide" on November 18, 1978. The shocking tragedy made international headlines and over 900 people, including more than 200 children, died in the Utopian community they had tried to create in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Many of those who died were from the Bay Area as Jones held sway over a huge congregation in San Francisco from 1972 to 1977. Nelson interviews former members of Peoples Temple, including many whose family members perished in Jonestown.
Initially, they felt they were part of an idealistic interracial community that could change the world. But they also reveal the fear, paranoia and beatings that were part of the traumatic experience. Jones became their father, friend, savior and god.

The film includes remarkable archival footage of Jones discussing his childhood in Indiana and preaching in San Francisco, where he wielded considerable political clout due to his ability to get hundreds of his followers to appear at many local political events.

There is also footage of San Mateo Congressman Leo Ryan's visit to Jonestown to investigate claims of people being held against their will and audiotape of Jones preaching, including his chilling exhortation to  "die with dignity." How was it possible for such an horrific event to take place? This disturbing portrait raises as many questions as it answers.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple' tells the story of the people who followed Jim Jones from Indiana, to California, and finally to the remote jungles of Guyana, South America, in a misbegotten quest to build an ideal society.

************ Panama Canal: Gateway to the American Century (2011)
On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower. This AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film using an extraordinary archive of photographs and footage, interviews with canal workers and firsthand accounts of life in the Canal Zone, unravels the remarkable story of one of the world's most significant technological achievements.
Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in human history. It literally required moving mountains, in one of the most challenging environments on earth, breaking the back of the great range that connects North and South America. This 2-hour program tells the epic story of one of the great engineering triumphs of all time, and one of the most expensive, in both money and lives. It weaves together the stories of the powerful men whose decisions shaped the enterprise, including larger-than-life characters such as Ferdinand de Lesseps and Theodore Roosevelt, with the stories of the ordinary laborers from Jamaica and Barbados whose labor and sacrifice actually dug the canal. Along the way it tells a story of innovation that literally changed the course of history.

* Silicon Valley (2013)
Silicon Valley tells the story of the pioneering scientists who transformed rural Santa Clara County into the hub of technological ingenuity we now know as Silicon Valley. The film spotlights the creativity of the young men who founded Fairchild Semiconductor and in particular the brilliant, charismatic young physicist Robert Noyce. Their radical innovations would include the integrated circuit that helped make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal computer revolution, transforming the way the world works, plays and communicates, making possible everything from the Apollo program to smart phones, from pacemakers to microwaves.


This episode of American Experience traces the tumultuous struggle of America's auto workers against the management of the automobile manufacturers. Led by Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers formed their union in 1936 to seek better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The program recounts the United Auto Workers' pitted battle with management in a dispute that was often ugly and even bloody. Archival news clips, photographs, journalistic accounts, personal recollections, and commentary by historians illustrate the sit-down strikes and conflicts that marked this turning point in labor relations.


************ Sit Down and Fight (1992)
This episode of American Experience traces the tumultuous struggle of America's auto workers against the management of the automobile manufacturers. Led by Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers formed their union in 1936 to seek better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The program recounts the United Auto Workers' pitted battle with management in a dispute that was often ugly and even bloody. Archival news clips, photographs, journalistic accounts, personal recollections, and commentary by historians illustrate the sit-down strikes and conflicts that marked this turning point in labor relations.

************ The Amish: Shunned (2014)
Filmed over the course of twelve months, The Amish: Shunned follows seven former members of the Amish community as they reflect on their decisions to leave one of the most closed and tightly-knit communities in the United States. Estranged from family, the ex-Amish find themselves struggling to understand and make their way in modern America. Interwoven through the stories are the voices of Amish men and women who remain staunchly loyal to their traditions and faith. They explain the importance of obedience, the strong ties that bind their communities together, and the pain they endure when a loved one falls away.

************ The Amish (2012)

{L}http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Amish{/L}
On October 2, 2006, a 32-year-old milk truck driver named Charles Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and shot 10 young girls, killing five, before committing suicide as police officers stormed the school. Just hours after the shooting, Amish community members visited the gunman's family to offer forgiveness. The tragedy at Nickel Mines horrified the nation for its senseless brutality and left many questioning and haunted by the victims' startling response.

Lyrical and meditative, The Amish answers many questions Americans have about this insistently insular religious community, whose intense faith and adherence to 500-year-old traditions have by turns captivated and repelled, awed and irritated, inspired and confused for more than a century. With unprecedented access to the Amish built on patience and hard-won trust, this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film is the first to deeply penetrate and explore this profoundly attention-averse group, painting an extraordinarily intimate portrait of contemporary Amish faith and life. What does America's attraction to the Amish say about deep American values? What does the future hold for a community whose existence is so rooted in the past?


************ The Battle of the Bulge (1994)
The single biggest and bloodiest battle American soldiers ever fought. It came as a total surprise, on December 16th, 1944, when 30 German divisions roared across the Allied front in Belgium and Luxembourg. The war, after all, was coming to an end. Allied commanders were eating oysters, celebrating promotions, and reflecting on the death of Glenn Miller.

This was Hitler's final gamble and for the more than half a million men thrown into the cause, an infernal test of courage and endurance. Nearly 80,000 Americans were killed, maimed, or captured. Packed with extraordinary newsreel and Army footage, Battle of the Bulge captures the action on the battle's frontlines and the strategy behind the scenes.