American Experience: Ulysses S. Grant (Part 2)

The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.

In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.

Oliver Stone charts the history of the United States from the Second World War to the present.

A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.

A comedic, brutally honest documentary following self-destructive TV writer Dan Harmon as he takes his live podcast on a national tour.

The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.

A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.

Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15 year adventure as James Bond. Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

The history of cinematic sound, told by legendary sound designers and visionary filmmakers.

A documentary special that explores the power of identity behind the iconic superheroes we know and love today. These legendary Marvel creations and stories have not only reflected the world outside our window – they have become a reflection of our own identities and who we truly are.

A 1993 documentary film about Bruce Lee. The film includes interviews from some of his fellow students and opponents who worked alongside him in his movies.

The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.

Join the likes of Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, and Vincent D’Onofrio as they reveal how Marvel Studios’ “Hawkeye” was conceived and created. Witness firsthand what it took to pull off the show’s pulse-pounding action set pieces, and discover how iconic characters from the pages of Marvel Comics such as Kate Bishop were adapted and brought to life for the six-episode series.

Featuring a wealth of previously unseen archive, this film looks at how Bowie continually evolved: from Ziggy Stardust to the Soul Star of Young Americans, to the ‘Thin White Duke’. It explores his regeneration in Berlin with the critically acclaimed album Heroes, his triumph with Scary Monsters and his global success with Let’s Dance. With interviews with all his closest collaborators, David Bowie - Five Years presents a unique account of why Bowie has become an ‘icon of our times’.

A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.

When Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch is critically wounded in Afghanistan, it sets him and his sons on a journey of love, loss, redemption and legacy.

Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the "DP" (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.

This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.

On August 8, 1908, at a racetrack outside Paris, Wilbur Wright executed what was, for him, a routine flight: a smooth take-off banking into a couple of tight circles, ending in a perfect landing. The flight took less than two minutes, but it left spectators awestruck. While the combined talents of Wilbur and Orville Wright had produced the first plane capable of controlled flight , their distrust of others had almost cost them the credit for their invention. Now, having proved to the public that they had mastered the sky, the reserved brothers from the small town of Dayton, Ohio, became world celebrities.

As a general, he had fought to preserve the Union. As president, he helped to oversee the transformation from union to nation. As a former president, he was the embodiment of the very idea of national union, and of America's entry onto the world stage. As a dying general, he was the symbol of the nation's greatest and most traumatic war. The story of Ulysses S. Grant's life, from his first days on the Ohio frontier to his last days out-writing death in the Adirondacks, is an endlessly fascinating one. Few public figures have ever held a such a firm grip on the American popular imagination. Grant was a man whose rise from obscurity made him a hero to millions who could see themselves in him. An ordinary man who faced and met extraordinary challenges, his successes and failures seemed to encapsulate the national character. He was so popular with the American public that, despite his two scandal-ridden terms as president, he was nearly nominated to run for a third term.

In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.

The Triangle Fire chronicles the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killing one hundred and forty-eight young women and forever changed the relationship between labor and industry in the United States.

Rob Williams was an African-American living in Monroe, North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s. Living with injustice and oppression, many African-Americans advocated a non-violent resistance. Williams took a different tack, urging the oppressed to take up arms. Williams was stripped of his rank as leader of the local NAACP chapter, but he continued to encourage local African-Americans to carry weapons as a means of self-defense. Wanted on a kidnapping charge, Williams and his wife fled to Cuba. His radio show Radio Free Dixie could be heard in some parts of the United States.

Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.

November 2016 : The United States of America are about to elect their new president. AMERICA is a deep dive into the heart of Arizona, meeting the inhabitants of a little town crossed by Road 66, the broken inheritors of the American Dream who deliver us their hopes and fears.

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during what has become known as the Gilded Age, the population of the United States doubled in the span of a single generation. As national wealth expanded, two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life. These disparities sparked passionate and violent debate over questions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best distributed, and by what process? Does government exist to protect private property or provide balm to the inevitable casualties of a churning industrial system? The outcome of these disputes was both uncertain and momentous, and marked by a passionate vitriol and level of violence that would shock the conscience of many Americans today.

Tuberculosis is the deadliest killer in human history, responsible for one in four deaths for almost two centuries. While it shaped medical pursuits, social habits, economic development and public policy, TB and its impact are poorly understood.

In 1988, after two terms in office, Ronald Reagan left the White House one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century -- and one of the most controversial. A failed actor, Reagan became a passionate ideologue who preached a simple gospel of lower taxes, less government, and anti-communism.

Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. Before it was over, the flu would kill more than 600,000 Americans - more than all the combat deaths of this century combined.

Arguably one of the most fateful and resonant events of the last half millennium, the Pilgrims journey west across the Atlantic in the early 17th century is a seminal, if often misunderstood episode of American and world history. The Pilgrims explores the forces, circumstances, personalities and events that converged to exile the English group in Holland and eventually propel their crossing to the New World; a story universally familiar in broad outline, but almost entirely unfamiliar to a general audience in its rich and compelling historical actuality. Includes the real history of the "first thanksgiving".

On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.

He was a farmer, a businessman, an unknown politician who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held the highest office, Harry Truman was the least prepared, but would prove to be a surprise.

Cold War Roadshow tells the story of one of the most bizarre episodes in the annals of modern history — the unprecedented barnstorming across America in the fall of 1959 by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the world leader of communism and America’s arch nemesis. At the very height of the Cold War, with American schoolchildren practicing duck-and-cover drills, the man who Americans feared could incinerate them in a rain of hydrogen bombs arrived in Washington, D.C. at the invitation of President Eisenhower. For both men, the visit was an opportunity to halt the escalating threats of the Cold War and chart a new course toward peaceful coexistence. For the American press, it was the media blockbuster story of the year.

In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million homeless. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic plantation family, the Percys, and the Percys against themselves. A dramatic story of greed, power and race during one of America's greatest natural disasters.

Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today.

The remarkable story of Earl Silas Tupper, an ambitious but reclusive small-town inventor, and Brownie Wise, the self-taught sales-woman who built him an empire out of bowls that burped. Brownie was an intuitive marketing genius who trained a small army of Tupperware Ladies to put on Tupperware parties in living rooms across America in the 1950s. She rewarded her sales force with minks and modern appliances at extravagant annual jubilees which the company filmed. her saleswomen earned thousands, even millions, selling Tupperware. And the experience changed their lives.

American Experience celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Founded by Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the CCC put over 3 million men to work improving the countries infrastructure and national parks.