Last Stage

Founded upon the famous revolt of the gladiators, the romance of ancient Rome, is a true story of Pagan Rome. Spartacus, the strongest of the Thracian Chieftains, his sister Idamis and her betrothed Artemon are captured by Crassus. Spartacus and Artemon are forced to be gladiators. Idamis is forced to be Crassus' daughter, Narona's slave. This blockbuster film was produced in Italy in 1913 and was purchased for U.S. distribution by the very enterprising George Kleine. Kleine made a fortune in the early days of cinema by shrewdly purchasing the rights to other spectacular movies, including "The Last Days Of Pompeii", "Julius Caeser", "The Lion Of Venice", "Othello", "Antony And Cleopatra", "Vanity Fair" and "Quo Vadis?" He knew that audiences wanted to be wowed and his films never failed to deliver.

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man is a first and a last. The 1914 version is widely regarded as the first feature film made in Hollywood. And DeMille makes the final film under his MGM contract with a 1931 Talkie of the oft-told tale (DeMille lensed a second silent version in 1918) about a British outcast in the West, his Native American bride and events that shatter their happiness. The films vary greatly. The first is packed with events – a horse race, a brawl with a Scotland Yarder, a shipboard fire, a night in New York – that foreshadow DeMille’s ambitious narrative reach. The second hones in on the tender and ultimately heartbreaking familial relationship. Same story. Same filmmaker. A rare chance to experience them in different ways.

At the outset of the tale, literature professor Jon prepares to wed onetime student Thora, the daughter of the region's most prosperous clan. Sadly, however, disadvantageous circumstances threaten to stand in the way of the couple's happiness, including a fiscal dispute between the family of the bride and the family of the bridegroom, and by Jon's complicated past - a past that involves a prior marriage that gave the young man grave self-doubts and made him feel deeply unworthy.

India's greatest director, Bengalese Satyajit Ray was recipient of numerous awards in his career. Typical of the styling of cinema he created, he kept them unceremoniously out of view under his bed, aware of the lavish presentation they would make displayed out in the more public rooms of his Calcutta home. This noble air of subtlety is also apparent in his film-making with Jalsaghar (The Music Room) being a perfect example.
The film's major character is Huzur Biswambhar Roy who is a zemindar (the now ancient concept of an aristocratic landlord). He is shown as a tragic figure who is both a victim of his selfish pride and superfluous belief in his own nobility.
Ray has made a profound and magnificent exploration of one man's obsolescence in a modern developing society in 1920's India.

Michael Portillo takes to the tracks with a copy of George Bradshaw's Victorian Railway Guidebook. He travels the length and breadth of the country to see how the railways changed us, and what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

With military historian Norm Christie as our guide, we explore the battlefields, cemeteries and monuments of the First World War. The men who fought tell their stories, and we discover how the naive, amateur soldiers of 1914 became, by 1918, perhaps the most feared, efficient and deadly Allied fighting machine on the Western Front: the "Canadian Corps."
FOR KING AND EMPIRE tells the stories of ordinary Canadians who fought extraordinary battles during the First World War. Six episodes represent a turning point in the Great War: Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, the Battles of the Last Hundred Days, and the Legacy of the War.

Discover 13 of the most magnificent oral traditions in the world, proclaimed a Masterpiece of Human Heritage by UNESCO: Royal Ballet in Cambodia, Kabuki Theater in Japan, Woodcraft in Madagascar, Baaka songs in Central Africa …

Recently widowed American opera diva Caterina takes her teenaged son Joe with her on a long singing tour to Italy. Absorbed in her hectic work in various Verdi operas around Rome, Caterina is soon shocked to discover that her troubled and lonely son has become a heroin addict. Her desperate attempts to wean the youth off the drug result in an incestuous relationship, but also in a possibility to reunite Joe–maybe even herself–with his real father, whose existence she has kept a secret from him.