Magic on a Stick

Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.

Buck Weaver and Hap Felsch are young idealistic players on the Chicago White Sox, a pennant-winning team owned by Charles Comiskey - a penny-pinching, hands-on manager who underpays his players and treats them with disdain. And when gamblers and hustlers discover that Comiskey's demoralized players are ripe for a money-making scheme, one by one the team members agree to throw the World Series. But when the White Sox are defeated, a couple of sports writers smell a fix and a national scandal explodes, ripping the cover off America's favorite pastime.

The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.

Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.

In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey, a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither by Susanna Drake, a rich New Orleans girl. This love triangle is further complicated by the American Civil War, and dark family history.

At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.

Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.

During World War I, a group of British miners are recruited to tunnel underneath no man's land and set bombs from below the German front in hopes of breaking the deadly stalemate of the Battle of Messines.

Jane Austen is about to turn 40, but she still hasn't found her ideal man. When Jane is approached by her niece Fanny and asked to help select the perfect husband for the young girl, the aging spinster begins to wonder why it is that she never found a man to share her own life with.

The story of Ray-Ray McElrathbey, a freshman football player for Clemson University, who secretly raised his younger brother on campus after his home life became too unsteady.

In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. What happens next becomes the stuff of legend.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing.

Discover the game-changing partnership between a then undiscovered Michael Jordan and Nike's fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and culture with the Air Jordan brand.

In 1961, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle played for the New York Yankees. One, Mantle, was universally loved, while the other, Maris, was universally hated. Both men started off with a bang, and both were nearing Babe Ruth's 60 home run record. Which man would reach it?

In the 1820s, a taciturn loner and skilled cook travels west to Oregon Territory, where he meets a Chinese immigrant also seeking his fortune. Soon the two team up on a dangerous scheme to steal milk from the wealthy landowner’s prized Jersey cow—the first, and only, in the territory.

What was a cunning plan from Lord Edmund Blackadder V to fake a time machine on his gullibly incompetent friends, turns out to be the real thing and hurls him and his imbecile underling, Baldrick, through the course of human history.

The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.

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

This MGM Passing Parade series short tells the story of Julian Poydras, whose encounter with a girl at Mardi Gras had a profound effect on his later life.

In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

The Great Kantō Earthquake is said to be the worst natural disaster in the history of Japan. When disaster struck on September 1st, 1923, a woman called Nobu managed to survive by fleeing desperately all while caring for her two small children. What did she see? What actions did she take? Her decision making during her evacuation is still relevant in present day and can help shed light on what actions to take to save your life should a large disaster strike without warning.

Shows how important luck can be in a person's life.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short highlights the film preservation efforts of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several scenes from early newsreels are shown.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, and later established the Nobel Prize.

Dolores is a seven-years-old girl who just wants to play. Running away from a fire demon, she accidentally falls into a grave.

This short film focuses on the mysterious and legendary Seri Indians who live in a utopian colony off the west coast of Mexico.

Kherson, Ukraine's embattled city, has endured invasion, occupation, and liberation. On February 24, 2022, Russian tanks entered Kherson, leading to brutal occupation marked by violence. Despite being outnumbered, local defense forces resisted, and citizens protested under the slogan "Kherson is Ukraine!" An underground resistance formed, led by brave individuals like journalist Valentyna and others who risked arrest and torture to support the cause. After nine months, Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson, but Russian destruction left the city in chaos. Shelling and drone attacks became relentless, and in June 2023, a dam explosion flooded the city, causing further devastation. Despite these challenges, Kherson's spirit remained unbroken, with citizens embracing arts and resilience. By August 2024, drone attacks specifically targeted civilians, yet the city resisted, determined to rebuild and reclaim its identity, refusing to succumb to ruin.

This Passing Parade entry tells the story of Dr. Joseph Goldberger (1874-1929), a Hungarian immigrant who devoted his life to finding the cause of pellagra, a disease that killed hundreds of thousands in the southern United States. Although the medical community believed that the condition was caused by a virus, Goldberger proved that a healthy diet was the cure.

At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland, was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a Pole, a Jew, and a German, pool their money together to build a factory.

The insatiably curious and headstrong inventor Leonardo da Vinci leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment freely, inventing flying contraptions, incredible machines, and study the human body. There, joined in his adventure by the audacious princess Marguerite, Leonardo will uncover the answer to the ultimate question – "What is the meaning of it all?"

In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.

In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short, a look is taken at the problems of film preservation efforts in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Berlin, February 27, 1933. The Reichstag is in flames. A young Dutch unemployed man, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found alone in the building. For Hitler, it was a plot by the "Reds". One hundred thousand communists and sympathizers were arrested during the night and in the days that followed and locked up in the first Nazi concentration camps. In March, the Chancellor obtained full powers. On September 21, the trial opened in Leipzig, broadcast on the radio. For the Nazis and the Communists alike, van der Lubbe was the perfect scapegoat. On December 23, 1933, he was sentenced to death, while his four co-defendants were acquitted.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short takes a look at the typical American barbershop throughout the years.

In 1895, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade constructs and flies India's first unmanned plane, despite having the odds stacked against him.

This MGM John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short tells the story of how a Mauser pistol used on the battlefield by Germans during WWII makes its way into the hands of an American gangster.