Australia in Colour Season 2 is a four-part documentary series, narrated by Hugo Weaving, that uses meticulously colourised archival footage to explore significant events and themes in 20th-century Australian history. The series examines the nation’s character, its struggles, and its path to becoming the multicultural society it is today, confronting both celebrated moments and darker periods of its past.
Power to Heal
Power To Heal presents a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. It highlights how a new national program, Medicare, was used to mount a momentous coordinated effort that desegregated thousands of hospitals across the country, practically overnight.
Before Medicare, disparities in access to hospitals were dramatic. Less than half the hospitals served blacks and whites equally, and in the South 1/3 would not admit blacks even in life-threatening emergencies. Power To Heal shows how the Civil Rights Movement worked with the federal government to move toward health care equity.
Current efforts to implement health reform echo this struggle of a half century ago to move the health care system toward equity.
Nukemailing
NUKEMAILING follows three employees of Ukrainian nuclear power plants, revealing the human toll of Russia’s occupation: fear, illegal interrogations, and torture.
For IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, the perilous conditions under which staff are forced to work remain a grave concern. The film also carries a personal resonance for director Pavlo Cherepin, who first learned the word evacuation as a child in the aftermath of the Chornobyl disaster.
By weaving present-day testimonies with echoes of the past, the documentary reflects on a country that has never forgotten the world’s worst civilian nuclear accident—nor the promise it made in 1994, when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees.
Capturing Kennedy
Capturing Kennedy shares the extraordinary untold story of Jacques Lowe, a Holocaust survivor and young immigrant who, at just 28, became the personal photographer to President John F. Kennedy. Drawing on newly uncovered historic interviews and unprecedented access to Lowe’s archives, this documentary chronicles his remarkable journey from surviving the horrors of World War II to capturing some of the most iconic photographs of the Kennedy era. Through Lowe’s unique lens, Capturing Kennedy sheds light on one of the last untold chapters of the Kennedy Presidency and the young photographer whose images shaped it.
The Cable that Changed the World
The Cable that Changed the World explores the story of the first transatlantic communications cable to traverse the ocean floor, from Co. Kerry, Ireland to Newfoundland, Canada, 165 years ago.
The quest is driven by visionaries and pioneers. Among them are Cyrus Field, a wealthy businessman; Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and Morse code; Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer who pushes boundaries and budgets; and Belfast physicist Lord Kelvin, who calculates how to achieve what had hitherto been deemed impossible.
This documentary showcases innovative graphics, historical reconstructions and rarely seen archive footage, providing an insight into the 8-year journey of those who successfully connected North America and Europe, for the first time.
Together, their ingenuity and relentless pursuit helps realise one of the great scientific accomplishments of their age.
Angkor: Hidden Jungle Empire
In 1300 CE, Angkor was possibly the biggest city in the world. It had – and still has – the largest religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat. It was the seat of kings, home to an empire for 600 years, an incredible feat of urban engineering in a flood plain and rainforest. Then it was abandoned, left to the jungle and a handful of farmers and monks for hundreds of years. Centuries later, what happened to the city of Angkor is still a mystery. There are no graves. No bodies. Not a single bone has been found from the millions who lived there over centuries. But Angkor has left secrets buried in the mud underneath the city of water that reveal visions of the grand civilization.
Fengyang: Ancient China’s Forgotten Capital
In the city of Fengyang, east-central China, Archaeologists are hard at work. This ancient imperial city, rediscovered by chance over 50 years ago, has never been excavated. Initial excavations reveal a gigantic city, even more imposing than Beijing’s famous Imperial City. What did it look like? When and how was it built, and why was it destroyed in obscure circumstances?
We discover the treasures and peculiarities of a forgotten city with a unique destiny, which has suffered from oblivion and the ravages of time. At the same time, scientists are carrying out numerous geophysical, geological and chemical analyses to help them understand how this city, which served as a model for Beijing’s prestigious Forbidden City, was built, then destroyed and abandoned…
By following this unique archaeological excavation, the restoration of several of the city’s buildings and its virtual reconstruction, the story of the forgotten imperial palace of Fengyang and its builder, Emperor ZhuYuanzhang, is revealed anew.
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From the Ashes of World War II
As the second world war engulfed the globe, buildings – historic, magnificent, monumental, were brought crashing to the ground. Whole cities were flattened, knocked down and burned down. But from the devastation, through vast re-planning, restructuring and re-building – emerged new cities for a new world. This is the story of those cities that were attacked, damaged and destroyed during WWII that rose again – from the ashes.
Secrets of the Pharaohs
Egypt created the world’s first empire, yet much of what we know about ancient Egyptian culture is pieced together from very little archaeological evidence, and so many intriguing mysteries remain. New scientific techniques are now enabling historians to uncover many of these hidden secrets. Behind them lie tales of power and intrigue, love and madness, passion and murder.