"The movie Casablanca was first released in 1942, just two weeks after the city itself surrendered to American troops led by General Patton. The film won Oscars for best picture, best director, and best screenplay, and would go on to enjoy more revival screenings than any other movie in history, and become firmly ensconced in the American cultural imagination. Through extensive research and interviews with filmmakers, critics, family members of the...

Bakersfield, California, in the late 1950s is a dusty, quiet town too far from Los Angeles to share that city's energy yet close enough to Hollywood to fill its citizens with the kinds of dreams they discover in the darkness of the movie theater. For Teresa, a young, aspiring singer who works at a shoe store, dreams lie in the music her mother shared with her, plaintive songs of love and longing. In Dan Watson, the most desirable young man in Bakersfield,...

"Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called "the most important story" he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon. Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model...

In this fascinating documentary, go behind the scenes of one of the most iconic film series of all time: *Star Wars*. The actors and extras who played aliens, storm troopers, rebels and even Darth Vader in George Lucas' *Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope* reminisce about their time on set and how making the Sci-Fi classic affected their lives and careers, for better or for worse. *"A sweet, quietly funny, fascinating and contemplative study of 10 character...

"The Coppolas are one of the great American filmmaking dynasties, a classic example of an immigrant family that has thrived in America -- the parallels with the Corleones of The Godfather are there for all to see, albeit without the organized crime. Centered on two extraordinary filmmaking generations: father and daughter Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola, each in different ways has defined their times. And of course, their stories are intimately...

Edward, a veteran filmmaker of Armenian descent, is in Toronto shooting a film about the Siege of Van, which led to the genocide of over a million Armenian people at the hands of Turkish troops. Raffi has been sent to Turkey to shoot background footage for the film. Raffi's mother Ani, an author and historian, is also involved in the project as a consultant. As Raffi attempts to re-enter Canada with cans of exposed film, he's detained by David, a...

Set in 1940 London, the story is an ode to how women played a major role in boosting national morale during the Blitz of London in the second World War.