Social & External
Unknown Role
Part two of the Mysterious China series chronicles Marco Polo's adventures and discoveries along the Silk Road as he heads toward the Mongol Empire in China. This documentary reveals the pivotal trade route as experienced and written about by the 13th-century explorer. Follow the tracks of the Venetian adventurer -- one of the first Westerners to journey into China -- and uncover the mysteries of the Silk Road.
In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is a 2008 PBS documentary film detailing Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's 1993 retracing of Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China.
By filming on the actual locations traversed by Marco Polo, the series brings to life the authenticity of the local peoples from the standpoints of ethnology, historiography, culture and economics. We follow the exact route depicted in his book, Il millione, documenting the peoples, customs and cultures along the way to bring into sharp relief the cultural differences within the Asian mainland. Viewers are introduced to their development, becoming familiar with three completely different and, to us, relatively unknown spheres of civilisation and religion - Arabic Islam, Indian Hinduism and Oriental Buddhism. The host takes us through regions and cultures that may seem exotic - and, at times,dreamlike - in our search for the evidence of Marco Polo's passage.
Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.
Assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to convert the court of Kublai Khan to Christianity, Marco Polo is abandoned in the mountains when the priests, doubting the very existence of China, turn back. Polo eventually pushes bravely forth alone toward the fabled country where he is accepted as an envoy into Khan's court. Marooned on the far side of the world, Polo, accompanied by his servant, Pedro, advances as a Mongol grandee for twenty extraordinary years. What he eventually brings back with him to the West is a chronicle that changed history forever.
In this globe-trotting adventure, Marco Polo (Don Diamont) plays the famous 13th Century explorer who sets out from Italy to find his missing father, and along the way finds danger, excitement, and amazing discoveries at every turn. The supporting cast includes Oliver Reed, Jack Palance, and Herbert Lom.
Set at the time of Italian explorer Marco Polo's historic expedition to China ,during the reign of Monogol ruler Kublai Khan, it stars American actor Richard Harrison as Polo. Taking considerable liberties with the historic record, the film has Polo turning up as an Imperial Inspector assigned to root out Chinese rebles in the south, but eventually being won over to their cause.
A defiant warrior-monk arrives at Kublai Khan's court in chains and soon earns his tragic nickname in this 30-minute origin story.
The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.
Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.
A behind-the-scenes look at the building of the bridge in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and the preparations for its destruction.
For First Nations communities, the headdress bears significant meaning. It's a powerful symbol of hard-earned leadership and responsibility. As filmmaker JJ Neepin prepares to wear her grandfather's headdress for a photo shoot she reflects on lessons learned and the thoughtless ways in which the tradition has been misappropriated.
On March 13, 2022, filmmaker Brent Renaud was killed by Russian soldiers, the first American journalist to die while reporting on the war in Ukraine. His younger brother and collaborator, Craig Renaud, recovered Brent’s body and his final recordings from Ukraine and brought them back to their childhood home in Arkansas. As Brent’s journey to his final resting place unfolds, the film chronicles the years he and his brother spent covering some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts.
ATENTAMENTE is a film that, through the sensation of the time passing by and the presence of the death that wanders into a nursing home, allows us to feel the life through the illusion that love brings along. Libardo and Alba, a couple of elders who met each other at the nursing home where they live, they fall for, they become boyfriends and start to struggle in order to find fifty thousand pesos to rent a room for one night at a hotel so they can have a privacy moment, since at the nursing home where they live is not possible to have that. While struggling they must face each other, face their fears, their limitations, their pains, their time as well as their fragility so they can construct that moment in which they meet love. A struggle that seems to be easy, but for them is an odyssey against time, against their limitations and their own ghosts.
The actor, Warwick Davis, presents the story of the Owicz family and their ordeal during WWII. From a successful musical act to being tortuously experimented on by Dr. Josef Mengele in a concentration camp. This story might have been lost to history if it weren't for the family's diminutive size, which made them both a novelty as well as an inspiration.
A daily life in Korogocho, Kenya, one of the world’s poorest slums.
The truth of Russia's greatest unsolved mystery, the Dyatlov Pass Incident, is uncovered in this compelling documentary.
Zarah Leander was one of the greatest film stars of the Third Reich. Adored by the Nazis, she rose to become the highest-paid female film star of National Socialism. To this day, she remains inextricably linked to our collective memory, reviled as a "Nazi siren" but also loved unconditionally. At the same time, there are files in Sweden that claim she was a Russian spy. Extremely contradictory rumors that continue to shape the myth of Zarah Leander to this day. She herself described herself as completely apolitical. "The Zarah Leander File" delves into the life of the Swedish film diva and asks: Who was the woman behind the mysterious gaze, the frivolous songs, and the pompous gestures? Who was "Leander" really?
The collar of his coat turned up in New York: Images which have collaborated on building a myth – the image of eternal and misunderstood youth. Unlike Marlon Brando, the proletarian rebel with identifiable goals, James Dean was the timeless and androgynous youthful rebel. His death on the Interstate 46 leads us back to 1950s America, a time when youth was re-interpreted all anew.