Ethel Rosenberg

In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billy holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic. Written by Excerpted from Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Update

A disturbing collection of 1940s and 1950s United States government-issued propaganda films designed to reassure Americans that the atomic bomb was not a threat to their safety.

Physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no idea what he'll be working on. When he learns the true nature of the weapon being designed, he fears the post-war risk of a nuclear holocaust and begins to pass significant information to the Soviet Union.

When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death in 1953 for selling atomic secrets to the USSR, their two children were orphaned after every family member refused to take them in. Documentarian Ivy Meeropol, raised to believe in her grandparents' innocence, begins investigating what actually happened, interviewing family members and friends. With declassified papers indicating Julius was participating in espionage in some capacity, Ivy tries to understand the beliefs that drove the couple.

Documentary of the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rose to prominence in the early 1950s by trumpeting allegations of a vast conspiracy by alleged Communist agents whom he claimed had infiltrated the U.S. government, media, film industry, labor unions and other organizations.

With firsthand accounts and access to prominent figures around the world, this comprehensive docuseries explores the Cold War and its aftermath.

Communism spread to all of the continents of the word, lasting through four generations and over seven decades. Hundreds of millions of men and women were affected by this political system, one of the most unjust and bloodiest in history. Using newly discovered propaganda films and archival photos, these four episodes explore the mysteries of this totalitarian political machine that lured its share of important followers into the fold. Known as the red church, communism seduced its ardent followers like some earthly religion.