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Storyville Season 16 Episodes
Season 16 Episode Guide
20 Episodes 2012 - 2012
Episode 1
Survivors: Despicable Dick
Mon, Jan 9, 2012 50 mins
Enigmatic rascal and recovering addict Dick Kuchera has offended many people in his time. As part of Storyville's Survivors season, Despicable Dick follows him on a life-changing road trip to track down former loved ones in an attempt to right the wrongs of his chequered past. A surprising and moving tragicomedy of change, family and forgiveness.
Episode 2
Survivors: Lust for Life
Mon, Jan 23, 2012 50 mins
Heather Leach was a cheeky flame-haired documentary director living life to the full - maybe too full! But at the age of 30 she was suddenly diagnosed with a thyroid disease and then cancer. As part of Storyville's Survivors season, Lust For Life follows her battle with ill-health, despair and depression and her emergence to find a new way to live a cheekier and more fulfilling life.
Episode 3
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
Mon, Feb 13, 2012 50 mins
Nominated for a 2011 Academy Award, this documentary tells the remarkable story of a young American environmentalist involved with the Earth Liberation Front - a group the FBI came to describe as America's 'number one domestic terrorism threat'.For years, the ELF - operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership - had launched spectacular attacks against dozens of logging companies they accused of destroying the environment.
Episode 4
The Love of Books - A Sarajevo Story
Mon, Feb 20, 2012 50 mins
Documentary which tells the story of a group of men and women who risked their lives to rescue a library - and preserve a nation's history - in the midst of the Bosnian war. Amid bullets and bombs and under fire from shells and snipers, this handful of passionate book-lovers safeguarded more than 10,000 unique, hand-written Islamic books and manuscripts - the most important texts held by Sarajevo's last surviving library.
Episode 5
Fire in Babylon
Mon, Feb 27, 2012 50 mins
Documentary which tells the story of how West Indies cricket triumphed over its colonial masters through the achievements of one of the most gifted teams in sporting history. Key players of the 1980s side recount how it emerged to smash the giants of cricket - first Australia and then England.
Episode 6
Knuckle: Bare Fist Fighting
Mon, Mar 5, 2012 50 mins
Documentary which goes inside the secretive Traveller world - a world of long and bitter memories. Filmed over twelve years, the film chronicles a history of violent feuding between rival families, using remarkable access to document the bare-fist fights between the Quinn McDonaghs and the Joyce clans, who, though cousins, have clashed for generations. Vivid, violent and funny, the film explores the need for revenge and the pressure to fight for the honour of your family name.
Episode 7
Murderball
Tue, Mar 6, 2012 85 mins
Documentary exploring the sport of wheelchair rugby, unofficially known as murderball. Created by quadriplegic athletes and played with bone-breaking intensity, the game is as aggressive as the name suggests. It is an official event at the Paralympics and the film documents the fierce rivalry between the American and Canadian teams before and during the Athens games of 2004.
Episode 8
Who Is Gorky? An Abstract Life
Mon, Mar 12, 2012 50 mins
In a personal journey into a family tragedy, filmmaker Cosima Spender explores how she and her relatives have been shaped by her grandfather - the pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter, Arshile Gorky. Following a series of tragedies, he committed suicide in 1948, leaving a young wife and two daughters behind. Through conversations with her grandmother, Gorky's widow, Spender tries to make sense of his creativity, the reasons for his death and the shadow it subsequently cast.
Episode 9
Tabloid: Sex in Chains
Mon, Mar 26, 2012 50 mins
Documentary which follows the stranger-than-fiction account of a former beauty queen whose single-minded devotion to the man of her dreams became a tabloid sensation. Allegations that Joyce McKinney had kidnapped her estranged lover and held him captive, handcuffed to a bed in a remote cottage, became the stuff of headlines.
Episode 10
Hijack Hell - Bus 174
Wed, Apr 18, 2012 50 mins
During the early morning rush hour in Rio de Janeiro on 12 June 2000, a hijacker seized control of a bus near the city's historic botanical gardens. A lone gunman, seemingly insane or on drugs, held his victims captive as the authorities and the media surrounded the parked bus.
Episode 11
Girl Model
Mon, Jun 25, 2012 50 mins
Storyville: documentary which exposes the shocking supply of ever younger girl models to the Japanese modelling industry. The film follows 13-year-old Nadya from poverty in Siberia to the city of Tokyo and a life as a model. American scout Ashley promises her a lucrative career, but all is not as it seems as Nadya's optimism quickly fades when confronted with the dehumanising culture of life in Japanese casting sessions.
Episode 12
The Albino Witchcraft Murders
Mon, Jul 2, 2012 50 mins
Storyville: documentary which charts the attempts of two people with albinism to follow their dreams in the face of prejudice and fear in Tanzania. Against the backdrop of an escalation in brutal murders of people with albinism, quietly determined 15-year-old Veda still dreams of completing his education. Josephat Torner has dedicated his life to campaigning against the discrimination of his people, confronting communities who may be hiding the murderers.
Episode 13
Hitler, Stalin and Mr Jones
Thu, Jul 5, 2012 50 mins
An investigation into who killed Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Jones's greatest scoop was to reveal the starvation to death of millions in 1930s Ukraine, caused by Stalin's policies. A portrait emerges of a fiercely bright young man who preferred a journalist's life of courage and danger which took him from smalltown Wales to even hitching a lift in Hitler's private plane. However, in a 1930s world of competing ideologies, there existed a fine line between journalism and spying.
Episode 14
The Queen of Africa: The Miriam Makeba Story
Mon, Sep 7, 2020 50 mins
A documentary which takes a look at the life of South African singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba. Forced into a life of exile for exposing the harsh realities of apartheid, Makeba was the first African musician to win international stardom. Always anchored in her traditional South African roots, Makeba's music delivered messages against racism and poverty.
Episode 15
Racing Dreams
Mon, Aug 13, 2012 50 mins
The coming-of-age story of three kids who dream of one day becoming professional race car drivers. Eleven-year-old Annabeth, twelve-year-old Josh and thirteen-year-old Brandon compete for the championship in the World Karting Association's national series, widely considered the little league for professional racing. Clocking speeds of up to 110 kmh, these young drivers race their way through the year-long national series that spawned many top drivers.
Episode 16
The $750 Million Thief
Wed, Sep 5, 2012 50 mins
Just days before Bernard Madoff captured headlines as the largest Ponzi schemer in US history, Marc Dreier, a prominent Manhattan attorney, was arrested for orchestrating a massive fraud that netted over 750 million dollars. For six years, Dreier funded an increasingly extravagant lifestyle of yachts, artwork, houses and celebrity events sponsored by his law firm by living a lie.
Episode 17
JFK's Road to the White House: Primary 1960
Sun, Nov 4, 2012 50 mins
'A new kind of reporting, a new form of history', Robert Drew promised John F Kennedy. He was proposing a revolutionary, small camera filming live with Kennedy day and night for nearly a week during the climax of his 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary run against Hubert Humphrey.
Episode 18
From the Sea to the Land Beyond: Britain's Coast on Film
Sun, Nov 18, 2012 75 mins
Made from over 100 years of BFI archive footage, From the Sea to the Land Beyond offers a poetic meditation on Britain's unique coastline and the role it plays in our lives. With a soundtrack specially created by Brighton-based band British Sea Power, award-winning director Penny Woolcock's film offers moving testimony to our relationship to the coast - during wartime, on our holidays and as a hive of activity during the industrial age.
Episode 19
The Other Irish Travellers
Sun, Dec 16, 2012 50 mins
A documentary which takes a personal look at the history of Ireland's vanished Anglo-Irish classes through the quirky family of filmmaker Fiona Murphy. The director follows her father and his four siblings back to the estate in County Mayo where they grew up in the newly-independent Ireland of the 1930s, to trace lives rich in contradiction. While the siblings wrestled with their Anglo-Irish identity, their father carved out a successful career as a diplomat at the height of the British Empire.
Episode 20
Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
Mon, Dec 16, 2013 50 mins
Classic rock film documenting David Bowie's last public appearance as his androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. This memorable final concert at the Hammersmith Odeon includes Changes, Time and Suffragette City.