National Trust: Living in Our Historic Homes (2024)

Lost World Of Pompeii

What life was like in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii moments before it was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Boblo Boats: A Detroit Ferry Tale

For over 85 years, steamship Ste. Claire transported generations of Detroiters to Boblo Island, an amusement park nestled in the waters between the US and Canada. When the vessel comes under threat of ruin, a doctor, psychic and amusement park fanatic unite to save their beloved steamship from the scrapyard. Interweaving local lore and mythology, "Boblo Boats" explores the whitewashed history of amusement parks and one crew's crusade to bring back the memories.

Povo da Floresta

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Old St. Patrick's Church: Chicago Renaissance Story

Mike Leonard tells the inside story of how the west Loop’s St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, known to residents as Old St. Pat's, transformed itself from an empty church in a declining neighborhood into a Chicago hub of worship, culture, social life, education, and service -- revitalizing a then-struggling West Loop.

Dan Cruickshank & The House That Wouldn't Die

This unique recreation of an 18th-century home, in London's Spitalfields, has to be seen to be believed. Dan Cruickshank smells the rotting food and warms his hands by the roaring fires and asks whether this living museum is really more accurate than a National Trust treasure, or just an eccentric one-off from its outlandish Californian creator, the late Dennis Severs. A follow-up of sorts to the 1985 BBC series Ours to Keep episode "Incomers" focused on this residence.

The Birth of Saké

Through the unrelenting winter in the north of Japan, a small group of workers must brave unusual working conditions to bring to life a 2,000-year-old tradition known as sake. A cinematic documentary, The Birth of Sake is a visually immersive experience of an almost-secret world in which large sacrifices must be made for the survival of a time-honored brew.

Nos restaurants : Une grande histoire française

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Our Story: The Indigenous Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco

Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. Witness the Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the health and well-being of communities surrounded by these extractive industries.

Marqueetown

Through booms and busts, Delft Theatres and its innovative gem The Nordic endured in Marquette, Michigan for almost 100 years. Bernie Rosendahl’s crusade to restore the historic arthouse to its former glory reveals a hidden cinema empire in the Upper Peninsula.

Spain: The First Globalization

A new reading of the historical period that began with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs (1479-1516) and the discovery of America (1492), as well as an analysis of its undeniable influence on the subsequent evolution of the history of Spain and the world.

Beyond Paper

At a critical moment in the history of the written word, as humanity’s archives migrate to the cloud, one filmmaker goes on a journey around the globe to better understand how she can preserve her own Romanian and Armenian heritage, as well as our collective memory. Blending the intellectual with the poetic, she embarks on a personal quest with universal resonance, navigating the continuum between paper and digital—and reminding us that human knowledge is above all an affair of the soul and the spirit.

Death of a Skyline

A group of citizens lobbied to save the landmark Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator, one of the defining features of Mayerthorpe’s landscape, from being torn down in 2003 - as thousands of others had been. This film documents those efforts while exploring the broader history and significance of the grain elevator.

Our Vanishing Americana: A South Carolina Portrait

Photographer Mike Lassiter journeys across South Carolina capturing the stories of historic, often family-run businesses that line main streets from the coast to the upstate.

Mayor of Lowell

This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.

La Grotte Cosquer, un chef-d'œuvre en sursis

A short distance from Marseille, at Cape Morgiou, in the depths of the Calanques massif, lies the Cosquer cave, discovered only about thirty years ago by a diver, Henri Cosquer. With its bestiary of hundreds of paintings and engravings - horses, bison, jellyfish, penguins - the only underwater decorated cave in the world allows us to learn a little more about Mediterranean societies 30,000 years ago. Today, threatened by rising water levels accelerated by global warming, this jewel of the Upper Paleolithic is in danger of being swallowed up. To save the cave from disappearing, the Ministry of Culture has chosen to digitize it. From this virtual duplicate, a replica has been made on the surface to offer the public a reconstruction that allows them to admire these masterpieces.

Battle Over Bears Ears

At its heart, it’s a battle for homeland and sovereignty. Bears Ears, a remote section of land lined with red cliffs and filled with juniper sage, is at the center of a fight over who has a say in how Western landscapes are protected and managed.

Missing Green

A solitary woman walks through the eerie night-time landscape of Dublin's Cork Street, a street once quiet and residential, now a four-laned artery for city traffic. Memories are narrated which no longer match the present-day surroundings.

The Wikipedia Promise

In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?

Canada Vignettes: The Move

In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.

Arctic Summer

ARCTIC SUMMER is a poetic meditation on Tuktoyaktuk, an Indigenous community in the Arctic. The film captures Tuk during one of the last summers before climate change forced Tuk's coastal population to relocate to more habitable land.

Saving Venice

Rising sea levels and sinking land threaten to destroy Venice. Leading scientists and engineers battling the forces of nature to try to save this historic city for future generations. Discover the innovative projects and feats of engineering currently underway, including a hi-tech flood barrier, eco-projects to conserve the lagoon, and new efforts to investigate erosion beneath the city.

Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride

When his rented lot is snatched up by an opportunistic real estate mogul, Eddie Miranda and his Coney Island ride the Zipper become casualties of a power struggle between the developer and the City of New York over the future of the world-famous destination.

Der vergessene Tempel von Banteay Chhmar

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Wedding Night

A journey into the wedding night, where an ultra-Orthodox Jewish couple gets to know each other for the first time.

Terry's Little Village

Terry Wilson is a 70-year-old lifelong resident of Meadowvale Village, Ontario's first heritage district. As development looms and begins to destroy Terry's favourite place in the world, he recreates pieces of history in his backyard, crafting an oasis where it feels like nothing has changed. A beautiful tribute to his childhood, his mother, and his town, Terry passionately fights to preserve history in a world that's too anxious for change.

Les Îles Canaries, nées du feu et bercées par l'océan

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Maine's Home Movies

An essay film celebrating the work and home life of a rural state in the early twentieth century. Focusing on "the gaze" of amateur filmmakers and their subjects - so often someone they know well. Drawn from the regional archives at Northeast Historic Film.

After Winter, Spring

Family farmers in southwest France practice an ancestral way of life under threat in a world increasingly dominated by large-scale industrial agriculture.

Against the Grain

A glimpse at how genre film-focused home video companies have taken the charge in preserving, restoring, and releasing so many works which otherwise might have been lost to time.

Fantastic Matt Parey

It is hard to imagine Polish science fiction without Maciej Parowski. He was the editor-in-chief of the Polish iconic monthly Fantastyka who stood behind the success of several generations of authors. People from across Poland were sending their texts to him. If it had not been for him, no one knows what would have happened to "The Witcher" or "The Cathedral", an Oscar-nominated film by Tomasz Bagiński.

I am a Woman

Documentary film about the life of a transgender woman, current political situation in Slovakia and the power of hatred.

Tokyo Kurds

In the 1990s, fearing persecution from the Turkish government, about 2,000 Kurdish refugees of Turkish nationality came to settle in a suburb of Tokyo. Here live Ohzan (18), Ramazan (19) and Memet (38). This documentary focuses on these three young Kurds in Japan.

Night is Limpid

During a period of exuberance and uncertainty, a group of artists and critics grow into new ideals and ways of thinking, as the old forms are no longer satisfying.

The Skinny Alejandra

A conversation between the director of this film, Carmen Castillo and Marcia Merino, AKA La Flaca Alejandra who was one of the collaborators of Pinochet's secret police (the DINA) after being tortured by them. It was Merino who betrayed Castillo, who lost her new born child after being tortured. Almost twenty years later, Carmen Castillo returns to Chile after her exile to film this documentary, during a time in which Marcia Merino, on the court of justice, decided to give the names of her old bosses who worked with her on the DINA.

Dief!

This documentary short is a portrait of Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and 13th prime minister of Canada, John George Diefenbaker (1895-1979). Diefenbaker's political career spanned 6 decades. When he died in 1979, his state funeral and final train trip west became more a celebration of life than a victory for death.

The Killing of a Journalist

A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

Sam Now

Sam Now is a gripping family story consisting of home videos, Super 8 films and modern-day HD videos told over a lifetime. Director Reed Harkness captures the story of his half-brother, Sam, who grappled with the disappearance of his mother during the most formative years of his life. After setting out to find her as a teenager, Sam works through the subconscious trauma caused by her absence, his family members' denial and his feelings toward his mother, whose new life proves better than raising kids. Sam's journey is an emotional roller coaster with loops of mental health, commitment issues and familial relationships.

I Am DB Cooper

Two bounty hunters meet an old man claiming to be hijacker DB Cooper. Can they help him dig up the cash he hid half a century ago? Documentary footage blends with period reenactments to tell the tangled tale.

Goodbye Cruel World

Anzai, Mutoh, Hamada, Hagiwara, and Miru are in a car headed to a love hotel used by the Sugiyama Clan for money laundering. This one night only gang succeed in robbing them blind and though they were supposed to go their separate ways after splitting the money, the five end up being hunt down by a detective hired by the clan and clan members themselves. An ending nobody ever even dreamed of.

Unconquerable Summit

This documentary tells via the testimonies of people who knew him (like Simone Moro, his companion during his last ascent), the life, the mountaineering exploits and the very tolerant character of Anatoli Boukreev. This famous mountaineer has made more than twenty-one ascents on mountains of 8,000 m altitude, without using supplemental oxygen, and has reached the summit of Everest four times. In 1996 he saved the lives of many climbers in a group led by Scott Fischer during their attempt on Everest. The documentary is based on footage shot during his tragic last ascent of Annapurna in Nepal in 1997.

Mahendra Highway

The world-famous Mahendra Highway runs 1024 km across Nepal, along primeval forests and mountain deserts, through hot tropical regions and past the icy peaks of the Himalayas. Natural wonders line up with cultural sites, places of pilgrimage with vibrant bazaars, Buddhist with Hindu sanctuaries

Delikado

In the majestic tropical island of Palawan, three environmental crusaders confront murder, betrayal and political corruption in this thrilling documentary about land defenders battling to save and preserve paradise in the Philippines.

FD65 : Unité Spéciale Anti-crime

In the 1980s, Sankt Pauli, a district of Hamburg in Germany, was a hotspot for prostitution and drug trafficking. More or less large thugs cross paths or clash there, sometimes fatally. A recently created police unit is working to eradicate organized crime in this city, one of the most densely populated in Germany.

Sister of Mine

Zuzia, a very sensitive teenager with an artistic talent, is struggling with a drug addiction. Her brother, the film director, decides to take a closer look at the family to understand what might have caused this difficult situation.

Sweetheart Deal

Four sex workers caught in the spiral of addiction turn to a self-proclaimed healer offering friendship and a path to salvation from the streets inside his roadside RV. But just as they begin to rebuild their lives, a shocking betrayal comes to light that will change them all.

Scrap

The Industrial Age left us with refuse too vast to bury and impossible to ignore. Earth's resources are finite, yet after serving their short-lived purpose, our cars, appliances and electronics takes centuries to decay. These rusting skeletal remains, especially machines that shaped the landscape and our ability to move within it, are valued objects for those willing to reclaim them. A South Dakota farmer transforms oxidized agricultural machinery into beautiful sculptures that reflect the natural world, while across the ocean, British phone booths are painstakingly restored to their former glory. Whether it be living in abandoned aircraft husks on Bangkok's outskirts or transforming freighter ships into architectural wonders, the human capacity to revitalize obsolete artifacts is inspiring.

Pakucha

Immersed in the world of uywa ch'uwa, a family gathers to perform the ancient ritual dedicated to the pakucha, the alpaca's soul. Set deep within the breathtaking southern Andes, Pakucha opens to us the Aymara family's celebration and hypnotically guides us through their worldview in Andean culture. The family, surrounded by animals and nature, draws us into their pathway through the universe, where the final destination is the genesis of a new life.