Insignia Films

A psychiatrist treats a woman who is convinced that she turns into a killer leopard because of a family curse.

Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.

During the darkest days of the Depression when construction was started on Grand Coulee Dam, everything about it was described in superlatives. It would be the "Biggest Thing on Earth," the salvation of the common man, a dam and irrigation project that would make the desert bloom, a source of cheap power that would boost an entire region of the country. Of the many public works projects of the New Deal, Grand Coulee Dam loomed largest in America's imagination, promising to fulfill President Franklin Roosevelt's vision for a "planned promised land" where hard-working farm families would finally be free from the drought and dislocation caused by the elements.

Charles Lindbergh lived a life of absolutes, never doubting his own abilities or the altitude of his own moral high ground. His extraordinary character brought him unparalleled accomplishment but also public humiliation and lonely isolation, as his faith in genetic determinism could barely conceal his narrow, naive, and racist social and political views.

Follow General George Armstrong Custer from his memorable, wild charge at Gettysburg to his lonely, untimely death on the windswept Plains of the West. On June 26, 1876, Custer, a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. By day's end, Custer and nearly a third of his army were dead.

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, as Americans begin a dialogue about the future of one of the nation's most distinctive cities, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents a provocative history of the city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi. Walled in on almost all sides by water, pressed together by the demands of geography, New Orleans has always been a laboratory where the social forces play out in dramatic and, at times, disastrous fashion.

Alvin Ailey was a visionary artist who found salvation through dance. Told in his own words and through the creation of a dance inspired by his life, this immersive portrait follows a man who, when confronted by a world that refused to embrace him, determined to build one that would.

Paula is a successful Marketing Executive who has worked hard to achieve her glamorous life. It seems perfect but Paula has difficulties to encounter love... In a hilarious sequence of events, Paula finally meets Trey, the perfect guy. It all starts out like a fairy tale until Paula has to meet the other important woman of Treyˇs life; his mother. Paula’s mother in law is very wicked and doesn’ t want her son to be with Paula. The latter behaves to seduce her mother in law in vain. Things get complicated and Paula has to take a decision, the one that will give a new turn to her life. Is she going to stay with Trey and suffer or is she going to leave and go back to being lonely? (by AFRO STREAM)

Traces the often surprising, endlessly entertaining history of the country's most outrageous playground. Interviews with Las Vegas insiders as well as everyday citizens in search of the American Dream chronicle how Las Vegas transformed itself from remote frontier way station into the Depression-era "Gateway to the Hoover Dam," then into the mid-century gangster metropolis known as "Sin City," and finally into a family vacation destination and the fastest-growing city in the United States.

On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.

An illiterate mountain man, Kit Carson was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages; he twice married Native American women, yet led a brutal war against the Navajo. When the West was a mystery to most Americans, Carson mastered it, and his expertise made him not only famous, but also sought after. Eventually, by helping to spur a migration that would change the West forever, he unwittingly became an agent in the destruction of the life he loved.

The dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.

Two journalists traverse the Grand Canyon by foot, hoping this 750-mile walk will help them better understand one of America's most revered landscapes and the threats poised to alter it forever.

Explore the life of William Randolph Hearst, the pioneering media mogul and inspiration for Orson Welles’ "Citizen Kane." Wielding unprecedented power, Hearst forever transformed the media’s role in American life and politics.

He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait; though he didn't look the part, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression-era life, four men turned Seabiscuit into a national hero. They were his fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory. By following the paths that brought these four together and in telling the story of Seabiscuit's unlikely career, this film illuminates the precarious economic conditions that defined America in the 1930s and explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes world of thoroughbred racing. Scott Glenn narrates.

Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushes Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen with Zoot Suit and La Bamba, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate, and expand America’s story.

In the 1950s and early '60s, a small band of high-altitude pioneers exposed themselves to the extreme forces of the space age long before NASA's acclaimed Mercury 7 would make headlines. Though largely forgotten today, balloonists were the first to venture into the frozen near-vacuum on the edge of our world, exploring the very limits of human physiology and human ingenuity in this lethal realm.

1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support for the civil rights movement or opposition to it, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.

Six people live for a year on “Mars” in a NASA experiment studying what happens to humans when they are isolated from Earth. Shot by the subjects themselves over the course of the mission, Red Heaven vividly captures six people pushed to their limits in an exploration of our most fundamental needs as human beings.

The Sealab project, launched in 1969 off the shore of northern California, was the brainchild of a country doctor turned naval pioneer who dreamed of pushing the limits of ocean exploration like NASA did space exploration. The massive, 300-ton tubular structure was a pressurized underwater habitat, complete with science labs and living quarters for divers who would live and work there on the ocean floor for days or even months at a time. During the height of the Space Race, this daring program also tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized the way humans explore the ocean.