American Experience Films

"April 1975. During the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War, as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on Saigon, the South Vietnamese resistance crumbled. The United States had only a skeleton crew of diplomats and military operatives still in the country. With the lives of thousands of South Vietnamese hanging in the balance, those in control faced an impossible choice -- who would go and who would be left behind to face brutality, imprisonment or...

"Nikola Tesla has come to be seen by many as a tragic figure, a visionary engineer who died impoverished and largely forgotten--eclipsed by names such as Edison and Marconi. A tireless inventor who registered numerous patents and developed many working prototypes, Tesla would become most famous for his dazzling demonstrations. Audiences flocked to see him send thousands of volts of electricity pulsing through his body, dazzled by the spectacle of...

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the most famous criminal couple in U.S. history. Newsreels in movie theaters across the country flashed images of a pixyish Bonnie and handsome Clyde, turning them into the underworld's dark prince and princess of crime. In reality, as this film reveals, Bonnie and Clyde grew up in the slums of West Dallas and had little in common with their glamorous media images.

"They were charismatic and forward thinking, imaginative and courageous, compassionate and resolute, and, at times, arrogant, vengeful and reckless. For hundreds of years, Native American leaders from Massasoit, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa, to Major Ridge, Geronimo, and Fools Crow valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture. Sometimes, their strategies were militaristic, but more often they were diplomatic,...