The Dam Busters

The story of the conception of a new British weapon for smashing the German dams in the Ruhr industrial complex and the execution of the raid by 617 Squadron 'The Dam Busters'.

1955-05-16 | en

Manufactured Landscapes

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

2006-09-09 | en

Flood in the Desert

Explore the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis Dam, the second deadliest disaster in California history. A colossal engineering and human failure, the dam was built by William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer who ensured the growth of Los Angeles by bringing the city water via aqueduct. The catastrophe killed more than 400 people and destroyed millions of dollars of property.

2022-05-03 | en

Sunrise at Campobello

The story of Franklin Roosevelt's bout with polio at age 40 in 1921 and how his family (and especially his wife Eleanor) cope with his illness. From being stricken while vacationing at Campobello to his triumphant nominating speech for Al Smith's presidency in 1924, the story follows the various influences on his life and his determination to recover.

1960-09-28 | en

FDR: A Presidency Revealed

For twelve years he stood as America's 32nd President, a man who overcame the ravages of polio to pull America through the Great Depression and WWII. From his legendary Fireside Chats to his sweeping New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt revolutionized the American way of life. FDR: A Presidency Revealed examines one of history's most compelling figures. Inspired by his cousin Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt rose to the nation's highest office during the depths of one of its darkest periods. A man of few words, he brought a nation together through his revolutionary Fireside Chats. He introduced vast reforms like Social Security and work relief for the unemployed. At the same time, his administration hid a dark underbelly teeming with covert maneuvers, spy rings, and powerful enemies.

2005-04-17 | en

Hyde Park on Hudson

The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York.

2012-12-07 | en

Three Gorges: The Biggest Dam in the World

Explores the plans for the construction of the monumental dam on China's Yangtze River, the structure that when completed in 2009 will become the Three Gorges Dam. It is slated to be 610 feet high, 1.3 miles across, creating a reservoir 400 miles and the largest power plant in the world.

1998-01-01 | en

Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation of Nature

Documentary on water usage, money, politics, the transformation of nature, and the growth of the American west, shown on PBS as a four-part miniseries.

1997-06-24 | en

The New Deal: The Man Who Changed America

Elected in November 1932, as the economic crisis ravaged the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt immediately put all his campaign promises into action: it was time for the "New Deal". This bold plan, designed to turn around a nation on the brink of collapse, where unemployment was at an all-time high and the working poor were suffering from the precariousness of the job market, was intended to give hope to a country that had been battered before anything else. Once he came to power, the new president from the Democratic Party immediately passed some fifteen laws designed to revive the economy.

2021-08-10 | fr

Soul of a People: Writing America's Story

In the grip of the Great Depression, unemployed men and women joined an unlikely WPA program to document America in guidebooks and interviews. With the Federal Writers' Project, the government pitted young, untested talents against the problems of everyday Americans. From that experience, some of America's great writers found their own voices, and discovered the Soul of a People. — Spark Media

2009-09-06 | en

La Rose et le Barrage

A parallel montage of the construction of a dam in Galicia and the architecture of a small Roman-style church.

1963-01-01 | fr

Film-Essay on the Euphrates Dam

The construction of a dam on the Euphrates River is an example of a country’s economic development. Through grandly composed images, rhythmic editing, and aestheticized details, the director demonstrates his admiration for the interwar avant-garde. The film is a celebration of the new, while at the same time showing a traditional way of life and calling attention to working conditions; it is a refrain-like evocation of an arid country that explores the difficult lot of Syria’s rural inhabitants.

1970-01-01 | ar

Gorges du Verdon: Les défis du plus grand canyon d'Europe

2022-08-29 | fr

Sobradinho

In the 70s, a dam and a hydroelectric plant were built in Sobradinho. The government at the time, which was commanded by the military regime, thought that that small town, in the northeast hinterland, would be ideal for the construction, because there would be no resistance from the locals. So, 73.000 people were displaced - it is one of the biggest forced migrations in the history of Brazil. Four cities and dozens of villages submerged. Mrs. Pequenita was the only inhabitant to ever return; there, she lives in a ghost town. She receives the visit of three social agents, who own old videos and photos of the region.

2020-10-22 | pt

Vajont 9 ottobre '63

1997-10-09 | it

Dams: The Lethal Water Bombs

Documentary short about the disastrous dangers of aging, ailing dams.

2011-06-25 | en

Oravská priehrada

1954-01-01 | sk

Patagonia Rising

A documentary that chronicles a plan to build five large hydroelectric dams on two of the world's purest free-flowing rivers in Patagonia, Chile.

2012-06-08 | es

Dam Nation

This video focuses on Dumagat activists, Nanay Nene, Tatay Lope, and Chieftain Rodrigo and their continuous struggle to organize resistance against a Chinese-funded mega dam in Quezon. The Kaliwa Dam Project will displace numerous Dumagat and non-Dumagat families living near the dam site— yet another example of development aggression.

2020-10-02 | tl

We Work Again

The role of African Americans in the recovery years of the Great Depression is the subject of this informational short, which offers an idealized depiction of life in a segregated society. The highlight, by far, is rare footage of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo Macbeth,” produced in 1935 for the New York Negro Unit of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project.

1937-09-05 | en