Summary: Music has been a constant in human history, an intermingling of voice and instrument that for all its local variation and increasing sophistication nevertheless endured in more or less the same form for centuries. Then came recording--and music was forever transformed. Soundbreaking, an eight-part event television series, traces this ongoing sonic revolution, and explores the nexus of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "In 1915, African American newspaper editor and civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith's notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly blockbuster The Birth of a Nation, which unleashed a fight still raging today about race relations and representation, and the power and influence of Hollywood. Birth of a Movement features commentary from Spike Lee, Reginald...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: With breath-taking CGI, beautiful landscape footage and some of the world's most important astronomical artifacts, Ancient Skies looks at the cosmos through the eyes of our ancestors, charting our changing views of the cosmos throughout history.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Seabiscuit is the remarkable tale of a thoroughbred racehorse and down-and-out jockey John "Red" Pollard, an ex-prizefighter. Together they become hard luck heroes for a troubled nation and two of the most celebrated sports figures of the twentieth century.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Home Video ; a Hollywood, CA 2003

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Challenges one of America's most cherished assumptions, the belief that slavery in the U.S. ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, by telling the harrowing story of how, in the South, a new system of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Distribution 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: This elaborately produced documentary series made up of six episodes plunges into Parisian life at the beginning of the twentieth century, a hotbed of artistic creation with the blossoming of Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Through illustrations, animation and stunning original archival footage, the films trace the highs and lows, scandals and celebrations, tragedies, and the triumphs...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Examines the history, science, and business of fireworks. Covers the origin of fireworks in China and their further development in England and Italy. Visits the "fireworks capital of the U.S.", New Castle, Pennsylvania, home of the Zambellis, the self-proclaimed "first family of fireworks."

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: WGBH Boston Video 2006

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Dr. Lucy Worsley explores the royal wardrobes of our kings and queens over the last 400 years, from Elizabeth I to the present Queen Elizabeth II, explaining how the royal wardrobe is a carefully orchestrated piece of theater managed by the royals themselves to control the right image and project the right message to their subjects. Royal fashion is, and always has been, as much about politics...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "In the spring of 1789, a ship left port in London bound for the Botany Bay penal colony in Australia. The ship carried precious cargo - women, sent to keep the desperate male colonists from engaging in what their governor called 'gross irregularities.' But these women were hardly quiet homemakers - they were a hardy raucous lot rounded up from London's notorious Newgate prison and other jails...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: PBS Home Video 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

Conover, Julie

Summary: Julie Conover and Mark Jennings explore a variety of destinations across the planet.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Topics Entertainment 2013

Copies Available at East Bay

Summary: Conductor and violinist Scott Yoo is on the road again, for Season 4 of Now hear this. Join him in Buenos Aires, to learn the tango and Piazzolla's conflicted relationship with it. In Scotland and Germany, explore the connection between mental health and creative genius. In the boroughs of New York, meet a dynamic new composer pointing classical in a new direction. And in Spain, discover the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "In 2011, construction workers were shocked to uncover the remains of a woman in an abandoned lot in Queens, New York. Follow forensic archaeologist Scott Warnasch and a team of historians and scientists as they investigate this woman' story, revealing a vivid picture of what life was like for free African American people in the North."--

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Exotic, sensuous, exquisitely mysterious. For centuries, the seductive grace of the Japanese geisha has fascinated and confounded outsiders who have attempted to fathom this secretive world of tradition, intrigue, and pleasure. Now, enter a realm once known only to the rich and powerful. Go beyond the popular Western misconception of the geisha as little more than a high-priced call girl, and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: A & E Television Networks 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Examines the life and career of the inspiring actor and entertainer, Raul Julia.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Hannibal, one of history's most famous generals, achieved what the Romans thought to be impossible. With a vast army of 30,000 troops, 15,000 horses, and 37 war elephants, he crossed the mighty Alps in only 16 days to launch an attack on Rome from the north. In Hannibal in the Alps, a team of experts conclusively proves for the first time that Hannibal's army did indeed cross the Alps.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The Boston Massacre: March 5th, 1770. Tensions are mounting on King Street at the Custom House. New taxes have been imposed by British Parliament on the colonies. Governor Hutchinson, John Adams and Sam Adams discuss their rationale for rioting. Ultimately the rioting escalates leaving many people dead, including Crispus Attucks.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: CBS News 2000

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Cleopatra Thea Philopator was a woman no man could resist: strong, beautiful, and intelligent, she knew how to manipulate the patriarchal political system of Ancient Egypt to work in her favor. In many ways she seemed to have it all, so what could have driven her to take her own life at such a young age? From her noble birth to her famous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony to her...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: A & E Television Networks 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: For decades the wreck of the liner RMS Titanic had eluded those seeking to locate her gravesite. Many failed until Dr. Robert Ballard turned a dream into reality in 1985 when he found her remains over 12000 feet beneath the North Atlantic Ocean. Dr. Ballard tells how his missions to two lost submarines from the Cold War helped him find the debris trail of the Titanic that she left across the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Wellspring Media 2004

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Examines the life and legacy of African American poet, memoirist, and civil rights worker Maya Angelou, from her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her work with Malcolm X in Ghana to the recitation of her inaugural poem for President Bill Clinton. Includes Angelou's own words woven together with archival photographs and videos as well as interviews with Angelou's friends and family.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Peninsula

Summary: Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind since early childhood, was a passionate advocate for change, using her celebrity and wit to champion rights for women, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty. Becoming Helen Keller examines the complex legacy of this author, advocate, lecturer, and human rights pioneer.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere