True Stories Season 2011
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True Stories
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Showcasing the best of international feature documentaries.
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True Stories Season 2011 Full Episode Guide
In October 2008, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, admitted to Congress that he'd found a flaw in his economic model of how the world works. He'd placed too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets. In a system based on the unsustainable lending necessary to fuel continued spending, the world found to its cost what happens when that credit bubble bursts. Drawing on interviews with leading world economists, The Flaw attempts to explain - in unprecedented depth - the underlying causes of the global financial crisis. Unless the root causes of the problem are addressed, the system may collapse again, and next time it may not be possible for governments to rescue it.
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Documentary exploring the lives of Maggie, Sana and Shaboo, three members of Karachi's colourful but sometimes grim transgender subculture. Often turned out onto the streets as children for their unorthodox attitudes, Pakistan's transgender citizens have formed an underground network of `families' that provide them with support, but many become trapped in a culture of prostitution, violence and forms of slavery. The programme reveals how cunning government officials are planning to offer members of the clandestine community jobs as tax collectors - hoping even the most stubborn evaders will be embarrassed into paying up when faced with a visit from a flamboyant unit of collection agents.
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Nick Broomfield heads to Alaska to find the real Sarah Palin and meet the friends, family and colleagues that gave their heart, soul and belief to the charismatic ex-hockey mum. [S]
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The definitive account of the 'wiki-saga', featuring the first major television interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The film unites all the major protagonists for the first time, including Assange's erstwhile partner Daniel Domscheit Berg, and the editorial teams at the Guardian, Der Spiegel and New York Times newspapers, as well as the US state department spokesperson who had to deal with the leaks. At the film's core the largely overlooked story of US Private Bradley Manning, accused of the biggest leak in history. Without that leak, there would have been no story at all. When Assange launched his whistle-blower website he was heralded as a hero, bravely publishing classified material to highlight government wrongdoings to its peoples. He won awards around the world and was credited with creating a historic moment for journalism. But the story took a dark twist when Assange was accused of rape and sexual assault in Sweden. Award-winning film-maker Patrick Forbes presents the story of Wikileaks, using the words of people at the heart of the story, and on both sides of the fence. This is the story of Wikieaks told by the people involved: sulphurous, personal and moving, it documents history in the making and the frontier of new technology and journalism. It's also a story of human emotions clashing with the advent of new technologies, summed up in the words of Guardian journalist Nick Davies as 'a Greek tragedy... as triumph was turned into disaster through the actions of one man.' True Stories commissions and showcases the best international feature documentaries.
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During the Soviet era, the people of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan were used as human guinea pigs in the testing of nuclear weapons. Today the residents believe they are living with the consequences: one in 20 children is born with defects. This True Stories film focuses on those whose lives have been shaped by this past, including a maternity doctor who enthusiastically pilots a 'genetic passport' scheme to stop women with bad genes from getting pregnant, and a local resident fighting for her right to have a child. There is no scientific consensus on how radiation affects human genetics, but this does not detract from the harrowing scenarios this community faces and its struggle to cope with the country's history. True Stories commissions and showcases the best international feature documentaries.
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Documentary using surveillance footage obtained as part of a sting conducted by Illinois' Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to reveal the inner workings of a drug den. The film provides an insight into operations under dealer Darrell `Duck' Davis, who took over Rockford's narcotics trade in 2001, and recruited men from the South Side of Chicago to help him sell an average of a kilo of hard drugs each week
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Award-winning director Gillian Anderson has been following the lives of Josie, Diana and Kerry since 1976, when they were teenagers in suburban Australia. Love, Lust and Lies documents how their lives have changed in the last 35 years, from new relationships starting and breaking up with partners, to becoming mothers and grandmothers. The women reveal their stories and secrets with remarkable honesty as the film demonstrates how fascinating and complex 'ordinary' life can be.
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Based on recordings and transcripts from psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson's sessions with Marilyn Monroe in the dark months prior to her controversial death in 1962, Marilyn, the Last Sessions tells the fascinating story of how the troubled star turned to Greenson, who attempted to aid and protect her but was later considered by many to be suspect. The film features rarely seen archive footage of Monroe, and those who surrounded her towards the end of her career, such as the Kennedys, Arthur Miller, John Huston and Truman Capote. True Stories commissions and showcases the best international feature documentaries.
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The Sound of Mumbai: A Musical tells the story of a slum school choir in Mumbai who performed a concert of songs from The Sound of Music with a full orchestra, before an audience of over 1,000 people. At the centre of the story is 11-year-old Ashish, whose wide smile and optimism defy his family's constricted slum shelter. He admits to lacking confidence as he copies out in his notebook 'I will not be self-conscious'. His natural charisma suggests that he could go far if given the right opportunity. Now he's tasked to perform a solo piece from The Sound of Music at Mumbai's National Centre for the Performing Arts, a venue that's normally inaccessible to the poor. He can't help but attach dreams to the event; he hopes to win the affections of an upper-class girl and inspire a patron to sponsor his education. With so many hopes riding on this single performance, the stakes are high for everyone. True Stories commissions and showcases the best feature documentaries from around the world.
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In 2003, Mark Henderson was one of eight backpackers taken hostage while trekking in the Colombian jungle. What started as an innocent tourist adventure ended up as 101 terrifying days of captivity. Eleven months after his release Mark received an email from Antonio, one of his kidnappers. Another of the hostages, Reini from Germany, received a facebook friend request from Antonio's girlfriend, another of their captors. That email was the start of a five-year correspondence between hostage and kidnapper that eventually drew Mark back to the one part of the world he thought he'd never see again and face-to-face with the man who had once held the key to his freedom. This deeply personal, authored documentary follows Mark and three of his fellow hostages as they return to the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern Colombia: the place where they lived out their worst nightmares. As they travel deeper into the jungle, they discover the truth behind their kidnapping, come to understand how they all dealt with the ordeal and finally confront two of their kidnappers. My Kidnapper is an emotional journey into the heart of a kidnapping, told from all sides. True Stories commissions and showcases the best feature documentaries from around the world.
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Following on from his 2010 Dispatches: Children of Gaza, Bafta Award-winning filmmaker Jezza Neumann provides a second shocking portrait of children living in the aftermath of war. On 27 December 2008, the Israeli Defence Force unleashed Operation Cast Lead in Gaza: a 22-day campaign to destroy the ability of Hamas to launch rockets and mortars into Israel. Over 1300 Palestinians were killed, many of them children. Surrounded by rubble and increasingly isolated by the blockade that prevents them from rebuilding their homes and their lives, many of the surviving children's lives have been irreversibly damaged by war. War Child gives a voice to a handful of them. True Stories commissions and showcases the best feature documentaries from around the world.
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This gripping, feature-length documentary charts the first year in the life of Britain's new Supreme Court - the highest court in the land. With unprecedented access the film meets the judges, lawyers and ordinary people whose cases will have a far-reaching effect on the everyday lives of others across the UK. For those bringing these high-profile cases to court there is a lot at stake, and the programme reveals their hopes and fears as they and their legal teams come face-to-face with the most powerful judges in the UK. The judges have allowed proceedings to be filmed and, uniquely, justice is seen unfolding as judges and lawyers - the finest legal minds in the country - debate key contemporary issues. See David and Goliath battles of individuals challenging the state, the outcomes of which help to define the nature of society today. True Stories commissions and showcases the best feature documentaries from around the world.
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Yuwali was 17 when her first contact with white men was filmed. In 1964, as part of a rocket-launching exercise, a native welfare patrol officer was checking that an area in Australia's Western Desert was not inhabited when he met Yuwali and 19 other Aboriginal women and children. They were from the Martu people, traditional nomadic herders. Confusingly, there were no men in their group, and the welfare officer could not speak their language. And they had to get out of the desert before the rockets were launched. The women and children were taken to Jigalong Mission. Yuwali is now 62 and still lives at Jigalong. This Sydney Film Festival award-winning True Stories film follows Yuwali as she returns to visit her homeland.
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True Stories continues with some of the most powerful and compelling documentary feature films from around the world. Filmed over a year, The Nurture Room follows three Glasgow primary school children on an incredible journey that will completely transform their lives. Nurture Rooms offer a bridge between home and school: a safe place where children can be children. In these small, special classrooms children can re-visit early 'nurturing' experiences that they missed or didn't get at home.
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Doug Block's very personal film is about his only daughter Lucy. Block has spent much of his and Lucy's life filming their relationship and now, aged 17, she is just a year away from leaving home for college. Block had long mulled over incorporating the footage into a film about parenting but with Lucy's departure imminent, he realised the real subject was the emotionally charged period when children separate from their parents - and vice versa. The result is a funny, poignant account of learning to let go as Block braces himself for Lucy's departure and the looming empty nest.
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Deborah Scranton's film looks at the 1994 genocide in Rwanda from both political and personal perspectives. In 2008, Rwandan President Paul Kagame released a report detailing France's hidden role in the genocide. Three months later, his closest aide, Rose Kabuye, was arrested in France on charges of terrorism. Jean Pierre Sagahutu is a genocide survivor haunted by his father's unsolved murder. Scouring the Rwandan countryside on a fifteen-year search for clues, he ultimately finds himself face-to-face with his father's killer. As Kagame fights to free Rose and expose the truth of what really happened and Sagahutu faces his father's killer, each finds himself faced with a choice: to enact vengeance or to turn the other cheek.
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