Tony Maietta

Billy Wilder: Nobody's Perfect

Biography on the famous writer-director, Billy Wilder.

Irrésistible Gary Cooper

Dorothy Arzner: Pioneer, Queer, Feminist

Dorothy Arzner was Hollywood's most powerful director, though History has forgotten her. She began working in the film industry at 19 as a "cutter" before the advent of editors, and gradually worked her way up through the studio system. Determined and ambitious, she was accepted as a director at Paramount, as the first woman to direct a talking picture for the star Clara Bow. A true pioneer of the cinema, she was the only woman director at a major Hollywood studio in the 1930s and 1940s, openly lesbian, dressed like a man, making movies "avant-gardiste" about women's condition. She was a mentor for Francis Ford Coppola, who considers her as one of the most important woman directors of Hollywood.

Murnau, Borzage and Fox

Documentary focusing on the film careers F.W. Murnau, Frank Borzage and William Fox and their impact on the history of cinema.

Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film

Produced for Turner Classic Movies, this documentary looks at the early days of the gangster film.

Jack Lemmon, a true Trouper

Portrait of a deceptively smooth "everyman", whose excessiveness as a great actor Billy Wilder was able to reveal with a bang in the seven films they shot together, including "Some Like It Hot", "The Bachelor's ", "Irma the sweet" and "Avanti, avanti".

Hollywood Spies

During the 1930s anti-Semitism was rampant not only in Germany but also in America. There was a German American Bund and pro-Nazi rallies even filled Madison Square Gardens in New York City. And the US was isolationist. Until Pearl Harbor, then, everything changed. Spymasters throughout the 20th century, and particularly during times of conflict, thought it advantageous to enlist the services of celebrities who had high level and powerful "fans" in various industries, many with easy access to politicians and high ranking government officials. Hollywood, as we now know from declassified National Archive documents, aided in the mobilization for war and its people contributed as spies, combatants, propagandists, documentary and fund-raisers, entertainers, and morale-boosters. Hundreds of celebrities eagerly answered the "call to arms" and brought their talents and patriotism to the intelligence services, military and war information offices.

Edge of Seventeen

1984, Sandusky, Ohio. A naive 17-year-old navigates heartbreak and self-expression as he explores his sexuality.

Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood

A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934.

Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood

Each installment focuses on a different era of American movie history, from the invention of the first moving pictures to the revolutionary, cutting-edge films of the 1960s.