This short shows how two objects led to important discoveries. Children playing with a seesaw inspire French physician Rene Laennec to invent the...

This short film presents the story of Dr. Ephraim McDowell, who came under scrutiny for his pioneering of surgical practices.

Widowed Welsh mother Anna Loenowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna...

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a...

Born a lower-caste girl in rural India's patriarchal society, "married" at 11, repeatedly raped and brutalized, Phooland Devi finds freedom only as...

Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.

Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during...

In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson stops touring, produces "Pet Sounds" and begins to lose his grip on reality. By the 1980s, under...

Oscar François de Jarjayes was born female, but her father insisted she be raised as a boy as he had no sons. She becomes the captain of the guards...

This short film focuses on the mysterious and legendary Seri Indians who live in a utopian colony off the west coast of Mexico.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short explores the origins of various customs such as shaking hands, kissing, and why ships are christened.

This dramatized short film describes the historical mystery of France's "man in the iron mask". King Louis XIV imprisoned a man who was never...

This short film shows how the war department utilizes a Ph.D., a chimp, and three dogs to help design aptitude tests for men applying for work.

This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short tells the story of 18th Century French physician Dr. Philippe Pinel, who initiated enlightened, humane...

In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963...

This Passing Parade entry tells the story of Dr. Joseph Goldberger (1874-1929), a Hungarian immigrant who devoted his life to finding the cause of...

Newly elected President Nelson Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring...

In 19th-century Louisiana's Cajun country, Belizaire is the informal spokesman for his citizens, who don't see eye to eye with local racists who...

Biographic film chronicling the last year of the life of the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, 1919, who falls in love with a girl from a wealthy...

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America.