Search Results for "american experience"

Dylan and Toby are live action role-players who never break from their characters and have an intense rivalry. After one battle ends with the "death" of a loved one, they prepare for a final showdown.

Part II of PBS' American Experience: Reagan

Inspired by a book by acclaimed historian Simon Schama, Murder at Harvard uses a combination of film-noir drama and present-day documentary footage to tell the true tale of one of the most notorious American crimes of the 19th century. Grappling with frustrating gaps in the historical record, Schama assumes the role of a time-travelling detective who takes an unusual step for an historian and imagines how certain scenes and encounters might have played out. "Maybe I thought what I was after was not a literal documentary truth," Schama tells us, "but a poetic truth — an imaginative truth — and for that I was going to have to become my own Resurrection man. I was going to have to make these characters live again."

An eye-opening experience. Must see film! Getting an understanding of the long history of Americans is so insightful from this point of view. Very important film to watch and learn new insights.

As a general, he had fought to preserve the Union. As president, he helped to oversee the transformation from union to nation. As a former president, he was the embodiment of the very idea of national union, and of America's entry onto the world stage. As a dying general, he was the symbol of the nation's greatest and most traumatic war. The story of Ulysses S. Grant's life, from his first days on the Ohio frontier to his last days out-writing death in the Adirondacks, is an endlessly fascinating one. Few public figures have ever held a such a firm grip on the American popular imagination. Grant was a man whose rise from obscurity made him a hero to millions who could see themselves in him. An ordinary man who faced and met extraordinary challenges, his successes and failures seemed to encapsulate the national character. He was so popular with the American public that, despite his two scandal-ridden terms as president, he was nearly nominated to run for a third term.

This documentary contrasts the issues faced by today's Native American people and covers the injustices that their people had faced in the past.

Chronicles over four centuries of African American influence on the development of the modern-day United States. Before Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, St. Augustine, FL had built a multicultural colony of free and enslaved men and women. This small colony would eventually set the stage for the first Underground Railroad in the late 1600s. Then, 300 years later, be the epicenter of events that would lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Redefining race relations through public discourse made legends of the two men profiled here: multitalented performer, writer, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, and literary giant Richard Wright (Native Son). For Robeson, this propensity ultimately cost him his career, leading to his blacklisting during the McCarthy era. For Wright, it fueled a body of work that brought the experience of being black in America to the world at large.

From the hand-drawn typeface on the book cover of The Godfather to Herman Miller’s biomorphic coffee table, the work of Japanese American artists/designers including Ruth Asawa, George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi, S. Neil Fujita, and Gyo Obata permeated American postwar culture. While these second generation Japanese American artists have been celebrated, less-discussed is the powerful effect their World War II incarceration—a period of intense hardship and discrimination—had on their lives and art.

Unseen Tears documents the effects of Native American boarding (residential) schools in western New York and Ontario. The documentary focuses on communites effected by the Thomas Indian School and the Mohawk Institute.

Polio at age 39, president at age 50. Explore the public and private life of a determined man who steered this country through two monumental crises: the Depression and World War II. FDR served as president longer than any other, and his legacy still shapes our understanding of the role of government and the presidency. A film by award winning filmmaker David Grubin. This is the second of four parts.

He was a farmer, a businessman, an unknown politician who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held the highest office, Harry Truman was the least prepared, but would prove to be a surprise.

MacArthur is a 1999 television documentary film about Douglas MacArthur, a United States General of the Army. Produced by PBS for The American Experience (now simply American Experience) documentary program, it recounts the significant events and controversies in MacArthur's life, from childhood to his death in 1964. Written and produced by Austin Hoyt, directed by Hoyt and Sarah Holt, and narrated by David Ogden Stiers.

Eleanor Roosevelt struggled to overcome an unhappy childhood, betrayal in her marriage, a controlling mother-in-law, and gripping depressions — all the while staying true to her passion for social justice. This biography includes rare home movies, contemporary footage, and reflections from Eleanor’s closest surviving relatives, as well as biographers Blanche Wiesen Cook, Allida Black, and Geoffrey C. Ward, bringing to vibrant life one of the century’s most influential women.

Before there was Disneyland, there was Coney Island. By the turn of the century, this tiny piece of New York real estate was internationally famous. On summer Sundays, three great pleasure domes--Steeplechase, Luna Park and Dreamland--competed for the patronage of a half-million people. By day it was the world's most amazing amusement park, by night, an electric "Eden".

The remarkable story of Earl Silas Tupper, an ambitious but reclusive small-town inventor, and Brownie Wise, the self-taught sales-woman who built him an empire out of bowls that burped. Brownie was an intuitive marketing genius who trained a small army of Tupperware Ladies to put on Tupperware parties in living rooms across America in the 1950s. She rewarded her sales force with minks and modern appliances at extravagant annual jubilees which the company filmed. her saleswomen earned thousands, even millions, selling Tupperware. And the experience changed their lives.

Meteorologist Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita spent ten months studying The Super Outbreak of 1974, which was the most intense tornado outbreak on record. Mr. Tornado is the remarkable story of the man whose groundbreaking work in research and applied science saved thousands of lives and helped Americans prepare for and respond to dangerous weather phenomena.

This is the story of a group of 514 prisoners of war from the Bataan Death March and how they were rescued near the end of the war. The reason this was so important is that the Japanese high command was ordering the execution of all prisoners when it appeared that the camps were soon to be liberated. So, in the case of this camp, it meant a covert operation well behind enemy lines in order to get to the guys before it was too late. The episode consists of many, many interviews--including several living POWs, a Philippino partisan, members of the assault team, their second in command and some historians.

Documentary about the final five, turbulent years in the life of civil rights activist Martin Luther King. The story begins at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963, when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism and comes to a bloody end five years later on a motel balcony in Memphis. King has since become a mythic figure, an activist whose works and image are more hotly contested, negotiated and sold than almost anyone else's in American history. (Storyville)

Dinosaur Wars is the story of two talented scientists, O.C. Marsh and Edward Cope, whose once professional rivalry soured into a bitter personal feud. Together, Marsh and Cope were responsible for identifying more than 142 different species and for introducing dinosaurs into the American imagination, but their legacy would be forever marred by two decades of ruthless infighting, espionage, and sabotage.

In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, the monumental building that was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed.

Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.

The life of President James Garfield, including his rise to power and the aftermath of his assassination.

Actor Dustin Hoffman narrates this decade-spanning documentary that highlights the contributions of Jewish Americans to the most American sport of them all: baseball. Highlights include a rare interview with legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax.

Robert Stone’s Academy Award–nominated documentary reconstructs the 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. Built largely from previously unseen U.S. government archival footage and eyewitness accounts, the film recounts the relocation of the Bikini Islanders and the experiences of American sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout during the experiments. The documentary later aired as part of the PBS series American Experience.

Rob Williams was an African-American living in Monroe, North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s. Living with injustice and oppression, many African-Americans advocated a non-violent resistance. Williams took a different tack, urging the oppressed to take up arms. Williams was stripped of his rank as leader of the local NAACP chapter, but he continued to encourage local African-Americans to carry weapons as a means of self-defense. Wanted on a kidnapping charge, Williams and his wife fled to Cuba. His radio show Radio Free Dixie could be heard in some parts of the United States.

A documentary that explores the range of experiences lived by transgender Americans.

The Triangle Fire chronicles the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killing one hundred and forty-eight young women and forever changed the relationship between labor and industry in the United States.

In 1988, after two terms in office, Ronald Reagan left the White House one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century -- and one of the most controversial. A failed actor, Reagan became a passionate ideologue who preached a simple gospel of lower taxes, less government, and anti-communism.

In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.

Based on eight years of continued prosperity, presidents and economists alike confidently predicted that America would soon enter a time when there would be no more poverty, no more depressions -- a "New Era" when everyone could be rich. But when reality finally struck, the consequences of such unbound optimism shocked the world.

One of the most popular rockers of the 1950s and early 60s, Fats Domino and his record sales were rivaled then only by Elvis Presley. With his boogie-woogie piano playing rooted in blues, rhythm & blues, and jazz, he became one of the inventors, along with Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, of rock ‘n’ roll, a revolutionary genre that united young black and white audiences.

Doomed attempt to get to California in 1846. More than just a riveting tale of death, endurance and survival. The Donner Party's nightmarish journey penetrated to the very heart of the American Dream at a crucial phase of the nation's "manifest destiny." Touching some of the most powerful social, economic and political currents of the time, this extraordinary narrative remains one of the most compelling and enduring episodes to come out of the West.

Cold War Roadshow tells the story of one of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of modern history — the unprecedented barnstorming across America in the fall of 1959 by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the world leader of communism and America’s arch nemesis. At the very height of the Cold War, with American schoolchildren practicing duck-and-cover drills, the man who Americans feared could incinerate them in a rain of hydrogen bombs arrived in Washington, D.C. at the invitation of President Eisenhower. For both men, the visit was an opportunity to halt the escalating threats of the Cold War and chart a new course toward peaceful coexistence. For the American press, it was the media blockbuster story of the year.

The film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, Features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.

Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. Before it was over, the flu would kill more than 600,000 Americans - more than all the combat deaths of this century combined.

Arguably one of the most fateful and resonant events of the last half millennium, the Pilgrims journey west across the Atlantic in the early 17th century is a seminal, if often misunderstood episode of American and world history. The Pilgrims explores the forces, circumstances, personalities and events that converged to exile the English group in Holland and eventually propel their crossing to the New World; a story universally familiar in broad outline, but almost entirely unfamiliar to a general audience in its rich and compelling historical actuality. Includes the real history of the "first thanksgiving".

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995 is the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. This documentary explores how a series of deadly encounters between American citizens and federal law enforcement—including the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco—led to it.