Video Documentaries

A new generation of rebels and entrepreneurs compete for the key to this land's prosperity , its natural resources , while others fight to protect them. It's an epic quest for treasure that shapes the country to this day. Over 10 hours, the drama-documentary tells the extraordinary tale of some of the people, places and events that shaped Canada — stories of change makers and rule breakers, dreamers and visionaries, scientists and entrepreneurs who forged a nation in a vast and harsh land. Canada the Story of Us ep. 2 - Hunting Treasure 1777 to 1793 Like many New Englanders, Massachusetts entrepreneur William Hazen is torn on the subject of American independence. Eventually, he decides to remain loyal to the British Crown. He moves north to Portland Point, near what will soon become the city of Saint John, and begins supplying timber to the Royal Navy. In 1784, Hazen is named to the council of the newly established Colony of New Brunswick. He also develops the province's ti...

Over 10 hours, the drama-documentary tells the extraordinary tale of some of the people, places and events that shaped Canada — stories of change makers and rule breakers, dreamers and visionaries, scientists and entrepreneurs who forged a nation in a vast and harsh land.     Canada the story of Us ep. 1 - Worlds Collide pre 1608 to 1759 Hundreds of Indigenous nations with advanced cultures already live in Canada when French and English colonizers arrive and fight for land claims. Indigenous people suffer as a result of first contact. Over the course of 12,000 years, the North American continent evolves into a place populated by millions of Indigenous people living in hundreds of different nations. These diverse cultures range from the Wendat, a nation of farmers who lived in what is now Southern Ontario, to the Inuit hunters of the far north. These nations have advanced cultures, economies and spiritual traditions. Through diplomacy and trade, these nations grow and thrive on Tu...

The Battle for Castle Itter was fought in the Austrian North Tyrol village of Itter on 5 May 1945, in the last days of the European Theater of World War II. German and American soldiers fight together to save French VIP prisoners from Nazi troops.  Nazi die hard and fanatics fight to the last man to stop Allied forces from freeing Europe, keeping an unrelenting grip on the naval bases, citadels and fortresses of occupied Europe. Hitler's Last Stand episode 4 - Enemy Allies -Battle for Castle Itter The Battle for Castle Itter was fought in the Austrian North Tyrol village of Itter on 5 May 1945, in the last days of the European Theater of World War II. Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., a number of Wehrmacht soldiers led by Major Josef "Sepp" Gangl, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, and recently freed French prisoners of war defended Castle Itter against an attacki...

As winter sets in, US Rangers must capture Hill 400, a strategic peak on the German border.  Nazi die hard and fanatics fight to the last man to stop Allied forces from freeing Europe, keeping an unrelenting grip on the naval bases, citadels and fortresses of occupied Europe.   Hitler's Last Stand episode 3 - Forest of Death - Hill 400 Hill 400 (German: Burgberg) is the name given by Allied forces during World War II to a 400.8 metres high hill located 1 kilometre east of the centre of Bergstein, a village in the Eifel region of Germany. The hill, which in medieval times was the site of Berenstein Castle, as well as a section of the Siegfried Line from the Second World War, now has an observation tower at the summit. After Berenstein Castle was destroyed around the year 1200, the material was used to build Nideggen Castle and the tower of the church in Bergstein. Today this hill is predominantly called by its civil name Burgberg (English: castle hill). This small mountain provides...

Desperate to feed the Allied advance after D-Day, US forces target a deep water port in France during a month long siege against Nazi paratroopers.   Nazi die hard and fanatics fight to the last man to stop Allied forces from freeing Europe, keeping an unrelenting grip on the naval bases, citadels and fortresses of occupied Europe. Hitler's Last Stand episode 2 - Nazi Fortress - Battle for Brest The Battle for Brest was fought on the Western Front during World War II. Part of the Allied plan for the invasion of mainland Europe called for the capture of port facilities, in order to ensure the timely delivery of the enormous amount of war materiel required to supply the invading Allied forces. It was estimated that the 37 Allied divisions to be on the continent by September 1944 would need 26,000 tons of supplies each day. The main port the Allied forces hoped to seize and put into their service was Brest, in northwestern France. Battle for Brest Brest was surrounded and eventually...

Nazi die hard and fanatics fight to the last man to stop Allied forces from freeing Europe, keeping an unrelenting grip on the naval bases, citadels and fortresses of occupied Europe. A Canadian regiment tasked with capturing the Ardenne Abbey in France are instead captured by a notorious Nazi unit. What came after was a massacre that violated every agreed convention of war. Ardenne Abbey massacre The Ardenne Abbey massacre occurred during the Battle of Normandy at the Ardenne Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, near Caen, France. In June 1944, 20 Canadian soldiers were massacred in a garden at the abbey by members of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend over the course of several days and weeks. During the course of the Normandy Campaign an estimated "156 Canadian prisoners of war are believed to have been executed by the 12th SS Panzer Division (the Hitler Youth) in the days and weeks following the D-Day landings. In scattered groups, in v...

Documentary examining Stalin's Gulag. Between the October Revolution and Stalin's death in 1953, millions of people died in the camps. The film explores the Gulag legacy, hearing from victims and perpetrators of the system. The Gulag part 1  The Gulag was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps that existed in post-Stalin times. The Gulag part 2  The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The Gulag part 3 The agency's full name was the Main Admin...

To discover the origins of these people and their civilization that flowered long before Alexander’s arrival David enters one of the least visited places on earth – the Wakhan Corridor. With a caravan of twenty-five yaks, horses and handlers, he begins the final leg of his Quest for Alexander’s lost world and experiences what it was like for Alexander’s army to live and fight in the high passes on the roof of the world. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.-6.mp4"][/video]   Then, looking for evidence of the earliest communities, Adams finds evidence of farming and irrigation above 4000 meters – evidence that long ago a radically different climate made farming possible on the roof of the world. He journeys on, deep into the high Pamir Mountains on Afghanistan’s border with China. Invited by his Kirghiz guides to a wedding on the high plains, he plays Buzkashi and experiences their...

In the waters of the Oxus River Adams discovers a surprising connection to Jason and the Argonauts – could they have possibly travelled this far from Greece? David explores the riches that had drawn Alexander and the Greeks, following the ancient trade route deep into in remotest Badakshan to discover more of its ancient civilization. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.-5.mp4"][/video]   Deep in the Hindu Kush, on the borders of hostile Nuristan, David reaches lapis lazuli mines that supplied the precious blue stone for Tutankhamuns funeral mask. For 7,000 years they have given up their riches – extraordinary evidence that this lost world was once connected to the west. On the Pakistan borders, David meets with the fabled ‘Children of Alexander’ and determines – once and for all – Alexander’s relationship to them. When the road turns to river and rubble, he finds the remains of ...

Crossing back into Afghanistan, Adams continues his search for Alexander’s Lost Cities. Lost in a sand storm in the desert, he and cameraman Greg finally reach a remote police outpost in the Taliban held Kunduz delta. The police take him deeper into the delta to the vast fortress known as Qy-i-Zal, believed to be one of Alexander’s bases. Here, he makes an incredible discovery. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.4-City-Of-Moon-Lady.mp4"][/video]   But still on the horizon is one of the only Greek cities ever found in Afghanistan – Ai Khanoum. Beset with obstacles, broken bridges, flooded rivers and the constant threat of Taliban roadblocks he finally reaches his destination. Ai Khanoum – the city of the Moon Lady – spreads out across the plain, a whole Greek city lies in the dust. But was it the once magnificent Alexandria on the Oxus? With the help of the local Afghan General, ...

Did Alexander really build sixteen cities in Afghanistan and Central Asia or was he the destroyer of a far more ancient civilization? Adams goes in search of the most alluring of them all – Alexandria on the Oxus. On patrol with the German army David moves over the very same ground as Alexander. At a festival celebrated long before Alexander’s time he joins Mullahs and Generals to witness the war game of Buzkashi. In search of the fabled city, David travels along Alexander’s route of conquest through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to unearth Alexandria on the Oxus. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.3.mp4"][/video]   He then crosses the Oxus River in the same manner as Alexander’s men, building a goatskin raft to ford the vast river. With an eccentric archaeologist Adams explores an excavated city, discovering the truth about the marriage of Alexander to Roxanne. Travelling with the ...

Crossing into Afghanistan in search of the lost city of Bactra, Adams uses the Ancient Greek accounts as a guide to try and locate Alexander’s fabled Central Asian Capital. Long thought to be the citadel of Balkh, the Greeks accounts appear to describe a different city entirely. In the markets beneath the citadel, he finds evidence to suggest Bactra may lie out towards the Oxus River at the end of a great delta. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.2.mp4"][/video]   Entering Taliban territory, David and his cameraman, Greg, discover the remains of a vast defensive network of walls and fortresses more than 2,500 years old. Bactra though remains elusive. Then a chance meeting leads David into the legendary Paraopamisus Mountains of the Greeks. Entering Taliban territory once again, he follows a system of archaic tunnels that lead into a remote valley. As he explores an abandoned arc...

In search of the Alexander’s Lost World, Adams follows in the footsteps of the earliest Greek explorers, putting a new theory on Jason and the Argonauts to the test. Are the ancient accounts correct? Were the Caspian and Black seas once joined, actually making it possible for the Argonauts to sail to the East? Aboard a replica of the Argo, David embarks on an epic journey that will take him from Greece across half the earth and in to war torn Afghanistan. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Alexanders-Lost-World-ep.1.mp4"][/video]   In Russia David discovers the Phasis River, the waterway that led Jason to ‘The land of the Golden Fleece’ and onto the Caspian Sea where Alexander planned to created a great canal to connecting it to the Black Sea. Then, guided by desert horsemen, he enters Alexander’s Lost World in search of the mysterious River Oxus that according to the Ancient Greeks once flowed into the...

2018 marks 100 years since the first women over the age of 30, who owned property, were allowed to vote in the UK. The fight for the vote was about much more than just the Pankhurst family or Emily Davidson's fateful collision with the king's horse. In this film, Lucy is at the heart of the drama, alongside a group of less well known, but equally astonishing, young working-class suffragettes who decided to go against every rule and expectation that Edwardian society had about them. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Suffragettes-with-Lucy-Worsley.mp4"][/video]   Lucy explores the actions of these women as their campaign becomes more and more dangerous, while their own words are delivered in simple but strikingly emotive pieces of dramatised testimony. Lucy also tells this story from a range of iconic original locations, from the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street to the Savoy Hotel, and ...

Virginia Woolf said that Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.   Homer's Odyssey The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulyss...

Churchill's Desert War: The Road to El Alamein -  On 13 September 1940, 80,000 Italian troops marched into Egypt to threaten the epicentre of the British Empire at a critical point in the Second World War. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Churchills-Desert-War-The-Road-to-El-Alamein.mp4" id="4853" src="" poster="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Churchills-Desert-War-The-Road-to-El-Alamein-2.jpg" loop="false" autoplay="false" preload="metadata" videopress_guid=""][/video]   By 1942, the desert skirmish in North Africa had become pivotal to what was by then a truly global conflict, with hundreds of thousands of men from over ten nations fighting on one of the most inhospitable battlefields on Earth, culminating in the Battle of El Alamein. It was a triumph that marked, in Churchill's famous words, 'the en...

Dr Janina Ramirez follows the momentous and nation-shaping war between England and France. The Hundred Years War part 1 - Trouble in the Family: 1337-1360 [video poster="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Chivalry-and_-Betrayal-The_-Hundred-Years_-War_-ep_-3-mp4-image.jpg" width="960" height="540" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Chivalry.and_.Betrayal.The_.Hundred.Years_.War_.ep_.1.mp4"][/video]   Dr Janina Ramirez explores the fallout of the longest and bloodiest divorce in history, when little England dared to take on the superpower France. Edward III rips up the medieval rule book and crushes the flower of French knighthood at the Battle of Crecy with his low-born archers. His son, the Black Prince, conducts a campaign of terror, helping to bring France to her knees.   The Hundred Years War part 2 - Breaking the Bonds 1360-1415 [video poster="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Chival...

With performances from Peter Capaldi, this documentary marks the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's notorious book The Prince. Famous for lines like 'It is better to be feared than loved', The Prince has been a manual for tyrants from Napoleon to Stalin. But how relevant is The Prince today, and who are the 21st century Machiavellians? Alan Yentob talks to contributors including Colonel Tim Collins, who kept a copy of The Prince with him in Iraq; plus Hilary Devey, Alastair Campbell and Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin. Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer of the Renaissance period. He has often been called the father of modern political science. For many years he was a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal corres...

In 1915, Boston-based African American newspaper editor and activist William M. Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith’s technically groundbreaking but notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly The Birth of a Nation, unleashing a fight that still rages today about race relations, media representation, and the power and influence of Hollywood.  Birth of a Movement, based on Dick Lehr's book The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights, captures the backdrop to this prescient clash between human rights, freedom of speech, and a changing media landscape. Griffith originally titled his three-hour epic The Clansman, based on a novel and play of the same name, but changed it to The Birth of a Nation to reflect the director's belief his work gave the true story of America's "Reconstruction." Set during the Civil War, it was told from a point of view sympathetic to the Confederacy, and its portrayal of African American men was controve...

Poison gas killed 80,000 soldiers in World War I. Nearly a million more were victims who suffered its lingering effects. Initially the wind distributed chlorine gas across the battlefields of the western front but an arms race quickly developed until one in three shells contained some form of toxic gas. Deadly Battles of World War I -  Ypres the Gas Inferno part 1 It's not the statistics, however, that make this a successful documentary. A surprising amount of black-and-white footage and interviews with survivors and relatives of key players tell a compelling tale of motivations and consequences. Deadly Battles of World War I - Verdun the Nightmare part 2 For those who adhere to the maxim that history repeats itself, it's worth noting that despite an international convention banning chemical weapons, both sides of the Great War deployed poison gases with few reservations. As one interviewee puts it, patriotism defeated morality.