Movies: Cinema history

An enchanting making-of story told through all-new in-depth interviews and cast conversations, inviting fans on a magical first-person journey through one of the most beloved film franchises of all time....

Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left t...

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves....

The Death of 'Superman Lives': What Happened? feature film documents the process of development of the ill fated "Superman Lives" movie, that was to be directed by Tim Burton and star Nicolas Cage as the man of steel himself, Superman. The project we...

From the earliest versions of the script to the blockbuster debuts, explore the creation of the Star Wars Trilogy....

A retrospective documentary about the groundbreaking horror series, Friday the 13th, featuring interviews with cast and crew from the twelve films spanning 3 decades....

France, 1974. The erotic film Emmanuelle, directed by Just Jaeckin, breaks all records for cinema attendance: the story of the creation of a sensual epic that marked a turning point in the struggle for sexual emancipation....

In the sixties, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) built a house on the remote island of Fårö, located in the Baltic Sea, and left Stockholm to live there. When he died, the house was preserved. A group of very special film buffs, came from...

Shot in France, England, Switzerland and the United States, this documentary covers director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre) and his 1974 Quixotic attempt to adapt the seminal sci-fi novel Dune into a feature film. After s...

The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes...

An exploration of the cinematic history of the folk horror, from its beginnings in the UK in the late sixties; through its proliferation on British television in the seventies and its many manifestations, culturally specific, in other countries; to i...

A tribute to Italian filmmaker Sergio Corbucci (1926-90), presented by American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino....

A look at the life, work and importance of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman (1910-89), a genius of world cinema, a wizard of special effects, revealing his sources of inspiration and his revolutionary filming techniques....

The history of the comic book superhero, Superman, in his various media incarnations....

The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-85), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new ...

Music is an integral part of most films, adding emotion and nuance while often remaining invisible to audiences. Matt Schrader shines a spotlight on the overlooked craft of film composing, gathering many of the art form’s most influential practitione...

The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements suc...

The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers....

Filmmaker Lawrence Shapiro discusses voice-over acting with the talented people behind the characters....

Since its release in 1968, Planet of the Apes, the masterful film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Charlton Heston, and its subsequent sequels have asked its viewers challenging questions about contemporary society under the guise of a ...