History16 Videos

When most people think of pre-Columbian America, they picture an idyllic wilderness peppered with small native villages and settlements. America Before Columbus tells the story of what Columbus really discovered when he landed on the shores of the so-called New World. Filmmaker Cristina Trebbi goes through many scientific facts that prove that millions of people […]

Ancients Behaving Badly is an eight-part series that recounts the antics of rulers throughout history. Each episode looks at the actions of one ruler, educating the audience about the person through consultations with historians and animated shorts. Each episode concludes by charting the featured ruler’s actions on a ‘psycho graph’ where they are rated from […]

The Gothic cathedrals are marvellous human achievements in architecture and artistry. Building the Great Cathedrals investigates how medieval architects could conceive and construct grand religious buildings such as the Beauvais Cathedral of France. It explores the logistics of acquiring the stone and other materials used in the construction of a cathedral, discusses how such an […]

Hiroshima is a BBC docudrama analysing and depicting the devastating impact of the world’s first nuclear attack on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the United States military in 1945. Narrated by John Hurt, it includes re-enactments of the events before and after the bombing as accounted by first-hand witnesses. The film chronicles the political […]

In Search of History: The Aztec Empire presents a comprehensive profile of the ancient American people known as the Aztecs, from their beginnings as a group of 1,000 people to their ascension as the dominant culture of Mexico and their downfall soon after encountering Hernando Cortés in the first quarter of the 16th century. The […]

Mankind: The Story of All of Us tells how humans have evolved and survived over thousands of years. While climate has played a role in determining where people set up civilisations, people have developed tools and technology to overcome the obstacles that nature has presented. The story of human existence is complex, but it turns […]

Soviet Storm: WW2 in the East is a seventeen-part series that recounts Russia’s epic military role in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. It begins with the German invasion of the USSR in June of 1941, known as Operation Barbarossa, and concludes with the Red Army’s million-plus man march on Berlin in the […]

Stealing a Nation recounts the expulsion of the indigenous population of the Chagos Islands in the 1960s and 70s by the British government. Whitehall cleared the way for the US military to build an airbase in Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands. Americans recognised that the island, found in the middle of the […]

The Birth of Israel recounts the events that led up to the 1949 Israeli war of independence resulting in the creation of the Jewish state. It features interviews with those who personally experienced the war as soldiers and civilians. It explores newspaper articles and photographs that were in circulation at the time that described the […]

The British Empire in Colour is a three-part series that chronicles the rise, fall and legacy of the British Empire. As its title implies, this retrospective tells much of its story through coloured film recordings, coupled with narration of the filmed portions and of correspondence between the British Crown and its colonies. The first part […]

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone investigates the reasons behind the Cold War, the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, and America’s role in the world since to fall of communism. Over the course of ten episodes, the series draws upon little-known and newly uncovered archive material to explore some […]

The Vietnam War is a ten-part series that provides an in-depth account of one of the most controversial wars the United States has ever executed. Produced by legendary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, the series brings to light stories that are rarely heard on this subject. People from both sides of the war are […]