Show Documentary
Documentary series with each episode focusing on a solitary historical figure who, for various reasons, including despotism, canibalism, genocide, and too many atrocities to imagine, are considered some of histories most vile and appalling figures.
United Kingdom United Kingdom
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For No Good Reason
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Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
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Swimming to Cambodia
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The Prisoner of Shark Island
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Cambodia, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
Between April, 1975 and January, 1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people in Cambodia. A quarter of the population were wiped out in one of the most brutal and virulent genocides of the twentieth century. This new film explores the life of Pol Pot, the ever-smiling, obsessively secretive leader of the Khmer Rouge. What drove him to inflict such a radical experiment on his own people? How did the Khmer Rouge turn from a band of nationalist revolutionaries into a ruthless killing machine? And why did the West stand by and let it happen? As an international tribunal in Cambodia finally brings the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice, it's time to re-examine the gruesome legacy of Pol Pot.
The Toilet: An Unspoken History
Welsh poet Ifor Ap Glyn has a passionate interest in the toilet: its history and how it has evolved over the centuries, right up to the development of the current design. Here, he explains the reasons behind his fascination.
Worse Than War
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Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas
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Fourth Week Films and the New Orleans Jesuit Province present Xavier, a new PBS-style documentary film on the life of the famed 16th-century Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. Narrated by Liam Neeson, Xavier tells the missionary's compelling story through dramatizations, interviews, contemporary location shots, paintings and engravings, maps, and most importantly, the extant letters of Xavier. The film features interviews with distinguished scholars of Jesuit and Renaissance history including Ingrid Rowland (Notre Dame University), Andrew Ross (University of Edinburgh), Lourdes del Costa (University of Goa, India), Anthony Ucerler, SJ (Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome), Gauvin Bailey (Clark University) and John O'Malley, SJ, (Weston Jesuit School of Theology).
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Biography is a documentary television series. It was originally a half-hour filmed series produced for CBS by David Wolper from 1961 to 1964 and hosted by Mike Wallace. The A&E Network later re-ran it and has produced new episodes since 1987. The older version featured historical figures such as Helen Keller and Mark Twain, or long-dead entertainment figures such as Will Rogers or John Barrymore. The A&E series has placed the emphasis on such people as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Plácido Domingo, Freddie Mercury, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Eric Clapton, Pope John Paul II, Gene Tierney, Selena, Diego Rivera, Mao Zedong and Queen Elizabeth II, and fictional characters like The Phantom, Superman, Hamlet, Betty Boop, and Santa Claus. The program ended up profiling enough figures that in 1999, A&E spun it off into an entire network, The Biography Channel.
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