Movies: The Smithsonian Network

We go behind the scenes and into the minds of artists as they capture, commemorate, and, at times, condemn our presidents....

Documentary which follows crocodile expert Brad Bestelink on a quest to dive with crocodiles without a cage or any other protection....

A documentary which follows two lion brothers as they become rulers of a pride in Botswana after a battle for dominance....

Enter the harsh and unforgiving Kalahari and follow a lion pride attempt to save their threatened bloodline....

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It lasted only one day on a small piece of land, but the impact the Battle of Waterloo had on history is massive and far-reaching. This is the definitive account of the fight that ended Napoleon's rule as emperor and altered the destinies of France, ...

This is the story of a cheetah born into the Linyanti cheetah coalition. He is the runt of the litter and will have to fight hard for every scrap of food and attention to survive....

Herman Melville's epic ocean adventure "Moby Dick" is an American masterpiece. But was this stirring tale of violence and revenge simply an allegory, or were there real giants of the deep deliberately attacking whaling ships? With the help of centuri...

In the far reaches of the North, wolf and bear come head to head. Winter has been long. The melting ice reveal scattered carcasses in the Swamp: a feast worth fighting for. The bears must fatten up before Winter comes again, the wolves must strengthe...

China, as we know it today, would not exist without the Han Dynasty. About two millenniums ago, its emperors ruled for over 400 years, and yet, few visible remains of this period exist above ground. Underground, however, it's a different story. Join ...

Ascension Island, a remote Mid-Atlantic outpost famous for its big game fishing, is under siege. Tiger sharks, hammerheads, even great whites, lured here every year by the bountiful reefs, are displaying aggressive behavior, culminating in the island...

Even 2,000 years after his death, General Hannibal's battle strategies are still studied today. But of all his military feats, perhaps his greatest was leading his massive Carthaginian army of men and three-dozen elephants across the Alps and into th...

20 years after the TV Mini-Series "Tales of the Serengeti", our crew reunites to truly explore the Serengeti, with no fiction. We almost didn't survive it....

In 1960, a lone assassin planned a deadly attempt on the life of President-Elect John F Kennedy. With a Buick packed with dynamite, nothing was going to stop Kennedy's Suicide Bomber....

Smithsonian Institution scientists race against time to save endangered frogs from a deadly fungus that is ravaging amphibians worldwide....

In Austria, he was known as an art collector and idealist. In Mexico, he was a colonialist aggressor responsible for thousands of deaths. And in France, he lost an empire. But who was the real Archduke Maximilian? Join us as we examine the brief and ...

In China's Valley of the Kings, there stands a tall, carved stone. It honors the resting place of a woman named Wu Zetian, who rose from concubine to become China's only female emperor. For more than a millennia, history claimed she killed her own ch...

Before he wrote the book that revolutionized the way people understood evolution, a young Charles Darwin found himself, by chance, on a strange sea voyage. This is the story of the HMS Beagle, which traveled from Great Britain to survey South America...

The history of the people and the planes that first broke the speed barrier in 1947 and the impact it has had on aviation and how we fly today....

Brazil's massive Pantanal is a land of extreme contrasts, ruled by dramatic cycles of torrential rain and arid heat. At the peak of the dry season, the floodplains bake and a searing struggle for life begins. However, there is an oasis that stubbornl...