9 11 One Day In America

Series exploring the history of American art sees Andrew Graham-Dixon feeling the pulse of contemporary America.

For director Roger Ross Williams, prison was not a distant possibility when he was growing up, but a daily threat. 'As a young black man in a chaotic environment, I always felt there was a chance that, whether or not I committed a crime, I could end up behind bars.' Determined to avoid this fate, Roger left his hometown of Easton, Pennsylvania as a teenager to pursue his dreams of being a film-maker. Overcoming the odds, he became the first black director to win an Academy Award. As his success grew, he thought about Easton less and less, until the day he heard about the suicide of his old friend Tommy Alvin.

In the final part of his United States odyssey, Andrew Graham-Dixon feels the pulse of contemporary America. Beginning in Levittown - the first mass-produced suburb - Andrew uncovers the dark side of post-war consumerism and the role artists have played in challenging the status quo. He visits New York's Metropolitan Museum to see the most subversive artwork of 1950s America, Jasper Johns's White Flag. Pop art defined the 1960s and Andy Warhol was its greatest artist. Andrew examines Warhol's soup can paintings, meets his former lover Billy Name and interviews one of the last great surviving pop artists, James Rosenquist.

A comprehensive history of the American stage of the Vietnam War.

"Images tell stories, we tell the stories of images." Mysteries in the archives, ten investigations into ten events of the twentieth century that have marked our memory and our imagination. In the French series, we learn about the historical events of the 20th century by closely investigating archive films. Who is in the picture, who is missing? Why was the camera pointed right here? Who is sitting next to whom?

The Alien Invasion of America didn't start in 1942 with the ''Battle over Los Angeles,'' in truth it was thousands of years prior. From the dawn of man, Native American cultures have claimed to be visited by people that came from the stars. There are countless shocking and amazing accounts handed down for generations of Aliens from other worlds visiting in our ancient past. These Star people educated and civilized mankind and guided the first Americans. Their legends speak of people coming from the stars to educate, guide and civilize people of the Earth. Now there is abounding evidence that early tribes of natives did indeed have contact with one or more races from the stars.

At present the total nuclear arsenal of the world is no less than 27,000 nuclear warheads. Nine countries in the world (probably) have nuclear weapons and a dozen more have access to the resources and technology needed to produce such a weapon.

One of the most tragic and shocking images ever broadcast to the American people, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion left our country in mourning. The loss of seven astronauts became more heartbreaking as we learned that the incident could have been avoided if protocols had been different. Hear the emotional recollections of the Challenger commander’s wife, two astronauts who were involved in the launch preparation, an engineer for the rocket boosters that failed, and a reporter who thought this would be a routine workday, as they relive the controversial moments that lead to the most notorious day in NASA’s history.

Dan Cruickshank's quest is to tell the story of civilisation through the greatest of man's achievements. It will also be the story of his travels, and who and what he meets along the way. Whether standing before the solemn heads of Easter Island, investigating the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru or the magnificent temple of Borobodur in Java, Dan is never less than fascinating about the origins, construction, mysteries and vicissitudes of each of these monuments to the great civilisations of the world.