Marc Wanamaker

The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.

Ekchart Schmidt examines the machinery behind the dream factory; the Hollywood myth is unmasked. How does the studio industry work? What role does marketing and the hype surrounding the stars play?

Schmidt follows the 27 miles of the “street of life” to Pacific Palisades, where the boulevard ends at the ocean. While interviews with celebrities from show and film document the well-known glamorous side of Sunset Boulevard, Schmidt also witnesses the transformation in the wake of a gigantic investment boom

Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well, nothing. This eye-opening documentary examines the rampant sexuality of early Hollywood through movie clips and reminiscences by stars of the era. Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich and others relate tales of the artistic freedom that led to the draconian Production Code, which governed content from 1934 to 1968. Diane Lane narrates.

The careers of D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charlie Chaplin are chronicled culminating in the formation of United Artists and 1919.

Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more.

Documentary about Hollywood during the silent film era.

A documentary on the life and career of silent film star Mabel Normand.

A new TV documentary on Chaplin that celebrates a 100 years of the iconic Tramp, presented by Laurent Delahousse.

Shortly after the turn of the 20th Century, a small group of entrepreneurs began making motion pictures, and went west to a small suburb of Los Angeles. They became movie moguls, tasting success beyond their wildest American Dreams.

Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with John Bengtson and film historian Marc Wanamaker, reveals newly discovered connections between Buster Keaton’s MGM debut and the earliest films of his career.

TV review of a litany of Hollywood impropriety.

In the early 1920s, Louis B. Mayer brought a young Irving Thalberg to Hollywood to trouble-shoot some problems at the film studio. Soon, this Boy Wonder proved to be a visionary of gigantic stature who left an indelible mark on Hollywood.

Ever wonder if celebrity truly dies with the celebrity, if graves really can give up the dead, or if walls really do talk? Then join the hunt for star haunts and hauntings in and around the city of broken dreams - Hollywood, California. Find out the details of the odd pilgrimages and observances held at celebrity gravesites, the eerie accounts of strange studio haunts, the unusual tales of ghostly disturbances at the mansions of the stars, and the spooky sightings of apparitions on the Grey Ghost herself, the legendary luxury liner, the Queen Mary. With this program, you have a unique backstage pass to the studio lots, the crypts, the tombstones, the cemeteries, and the homes of some of Hollywood's most notable characters, ranging from Bugsy Siegel and Rudolph Valentino to Harry Houdini and Marilyn Monroe. So if your curiosity is sparked and your courage is up to par, then come along on a truly terrifying tour of Hollywood Ghosts and Gravesites.

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".

A universal and exciting story about courage and desperation, set against the background of the history of the Dream Factory and contemporary Hollywood. Paweł Ferdek overcomes successive obstacles on his way to learn its deepest secrets. He reaches producers, who reveal to him how they succeeded on their own. Ferdek takes us around the great American Dream, which is the foundation of today’s film industry. Will his dream of Hollywood also come true?

The power struggle between film producer Louis B. Mayer and star actor John Gilbert during the Roaring Twenties and the arrival of talkies.

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.