Movies: American history

In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be a...

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida....

Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates....

Larry Flynt is the hedonistically obnoxious, but indomitable, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his girlie magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for ...

Two women, black and white, in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, must decide what they are going to do in response to the famous bus boycott led by Martin Luther King....

The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real tro...

A cheap, powerful drug emerges during a recession, igniting a moral panic fueled by racism. Explore the complex history of crack in the 1980s....

When the government opens up the Oklahoma territory for settlement, restless Yancey Cravat claims a plot of the free land for himself and moves his family there from Wichita. A newspaperman, lawyer, and just about everything else, Cravat soon becomes...

In 30 years of a deeply committed career and 50 roles, Denzel Washington, double-Oscar winner, placed the figure of the Black man in all its complexity at the heart of the American paradoxes: from Black activist, rebel soldier to gangster torn betwee...

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world....

By the end of his illustrious career, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves may well have been the preeminent lawman of the Old West. He brought upwards of 3,000 outlaws to justice and served in law enforcement for 32 years during Reconstruction after the ...

This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He's a born free man who works as a carpenter and is also a part time musician. One day he is approached by some men who want him to ...

I Am JFK Jr. - A Tribute to a Good Man is an homage to America's fallen prince and the Kennedy legacy. It is the story of a young man destined for greatness, but determined to be good in a world filled with high expectations....

'JFK: Seven Days That Made a President' investigates the seven key days in JFK's life that helped shape his character and have come to define him....

Porky Pig balks at learning the Pledge of Allegiance until Uncle Sam appears to him in a dream and gives him a lesson in American history....

Ghost nation? Violent home? Traumatised country? What does the horror of one of the most famous writers of our time hide? What does his fictional America expose? To what extent does cinema feed itself off his unique vision and expression of fear? In ...

Documentary about Marilyn Monroe: 1962: America loses its blonde icon. Marilyn Monroe dies under mysterious circumstances. How did she die? The police report states: probable suicide. But there are many things that point to murder: a corpse draped to...

A made-for-TV dramatization of George Washington's perilous gamble of crossing the Delaware River and attacking the British forces at Trenton....

Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basqu...

This short follows the political career of Theodore Roosevelt, beginning in 1895, when he was appointed police commissioner of New York City. In 1897 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-Ame...