Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Barbarossa: Hitler Turns East

Hitler's invasion of Russia was one of the landmark events of World War II. This documentary reveals the lead-up to the offensive, its impact on the war and the brinksmanship that resulted from the battle for Moscow. Rare footage from both German and Russian archives and detailed maps illustrate the conflict, while award-winning historian and author John Erickson provides insight into the pivotal maneuvers on the eastern front.

Petra: Secrets of the Ancient Builders

In the heart of the Jordanian desert, the ancient city of Petra is full of mysteries. How was this architectural wonder created over 2,000 years ago? The technical prowess of Petra, an ancient city in southern Jordan, which was a wonder in the middle of the desert.

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary

Documentarians Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer turn their camera on 81-year-old Traudl Junge, who served as Adolf Hitler's secretary from 1942 to 1945, and allow her to speak about her experiences. Junge sheds light on life in the Third Reich and the days leading up to Hitler's death in the famed bunker, where Junge recorded Hitler's last will and testament. Her gripping account is nothing short of mesmerizing.

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

Führer Cult and Megalomania

By early in the twentieth century, Nuremberg was regarded as the most anti-Semitic city in Europe. By 1929, Hitler had decided to make Nuremberg the "City of the Party Rallies" and a symbol representing the greatness of the German Empire. Even today, it is possible to see signs in Nuremberg of the megalomaniac proportions that the system was to assume.

Bernau liegt am Meer

Daniel lives in Bernau, a small town north of Berlin.This film tells this 21-year-old’s story and describes the radical right-wing milieu in which he grew up. In his candid portrait of how right-wing radicalism breeds, Daniel explains how difficult it is to break out of a vicious circle of violence, self-hatred and a right-wing extremist frame of mind.

Kunst aus dem Todeslager

Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story

Nicknamed “Architect to the Stars,” African American architect Paul R. Williams had an incredible life. Orphaned at the age of four, Williams grew up to build mansions for movie stars and millionaires in Southern California. From the early 1920s until his retirement 50 years later, Williams was one of the most successful architects in the country. His clients included Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. His name is associated with icons like the Beverly Hills Hotel, the original MCA Headquarters Building and LAX Airport. But at the height of his career Paul Williams wasn’t always welcome in the restaurants and hotels he designed or the neighborhoods where he built homes, because of his race. “Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story” tells the compelling, but little known story, of how he used talent and perseverance to beat the odds and create a body of work that can be found from coast to coast.

Making Dust

Making Dust is an essay film, a portrait of the demolition of Ireland's second largest Catholic Church, the Church of the Annunciation in Finglas West, Dublin. Understanding this moment as a 'rupture', the film maps an essay by architectural historian Ellen Rowley on to documentation of the building's dismantling. Featuring oral interviews recorded at the site of the demolition and in a nearby hairdressers, the film invites viewers to pause and reflect on this ending alongside the community of the building. The film is informed by Ultimology, and invites its audience to think about the life cycles of buildings and materials, how we mourn, what is sacred, how we gather, what we value and issues of sustainability in architecture.

The Codes of Gender

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

Les Fleurs

A nude woman relaxing on a bed to Minnie Riperton's song Les Fleurs is exited by its chorus. Director Saam Farahmand heats up the body hair debate.

Reimagining A Buffalo Landmark

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's challenge

Combining real footage, archival footage, fiction and 3D modeling, this unseen documentary traces the history of this spectacular and unfinished work.

Barcelone vu par Ricardo Bofill

A native of the capital of Catalonia, the architect-urban planner, to whom we owe the Saint-Honoré market in Paris and the Donnelley Building in Chicago, speaks of Barcelona with infectious passion. "It's a unique city, difficult to understand with conventional diagrams, he explains, criss-crossing the main arteries of the city". It is an unfinished city, constantly changing, where everything has the charm of the unfinished". With a sharp eye, Ricardo Bofill observes and comments on volumes and scrolls. Standing, in the nave of the Sagrada Familia, arms outstretched, it pivots on itself as if to take in space. "You have to have your eyes wide open, move quietly, and at the same time remember what's behind. This is how we have the sense of space. Otherwise this art does not exist."

American Royalty

The American Royalty docuseries showcases an in-depth perspective of the Miss America Pageant. Experience the hundred year history, influence, controversy, and evolution of this iconic institution.