Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.
Filmmakers Laura Mulvey and Mark Lewis use rare archival footage and interviews with artists, art historians, and museum directors to examine the fate of Soviet-era monuments during successive political regimes, from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of communism.
A cinematic, character-driven insight to what it meant to produce and to own a car in communist times: the Socialist propaganda dreams and the hard reality of living that dream.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Soviet Navy officer Vasily Arkhipov refused to launch a nuclear strike and saved the world from nuclear war and total destruction.
Ukraine. Across its eastern border is Russia and to its west-Europe. For centuries, it has been at the center of a tug-of-war between powers seeking to control its rich lands and access to the Black Sea.
How could Hitler and Stalin, sworn ideological enemies, come to a secret pact in 1939? The captivating and detailed story of the diplomatic fiasco that led to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact and its devastating consequences.
Cold War Leningrad: In a culture where the recording industry was ruthlessly controlled by the state, music lovers discovered an extraordinary alternative means of reproduction: they repurposed used x-ray film as the base for records of forbidden songs.
Historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.
Popular movie trailers from 1996
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1996:
After kidnapping a father and his two kids, the Gecko brothers head south to a seedy Mexican bar to hide out in safety, unaware of its notorious clientele.
When vengeful General Francis X. Hummel seizes control of Alcatraz Island and threatens to launch missiles loaded with deadly chemical weapons into San Francisco, only a young FBI chemical weapons expert and notorious Federal prisoner have the skills to penetrate the impregnable island fortress and take him down.
Isolated in the bell tower of Notre Dame, Quasimodo longs to experience the world beyond the cathedral walls, despite the wishes of his stern guardian, the Judge of Paris Claude Frollo.
Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building, meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet, his seductive girlfriend, who is immediately attracted to her.
