Documentary which tells the extraordinary unknown story of how the Beatles helped to destroy the USSR.\n \nIn August 1962, director Leslie Woodhead made a two-minute film in Liverpool's Cavern Club with a raw and unrecorded group of rockers called the Beatles. He arranged their first live TV appearances on a local show in Manchester and watched as the Fab Four phenomenon swept the world. \n\nTwenty-five years later while making films in Russia, Woodhead became aware of how, even though they were never able to play in the Soviet Union, the Beatles' legend had soaked into the lives of a generation of kids. This film meets the Soviet Beatles generation and hears their stories about how the Fab Four changed their lives, including Putin's deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, who explains how the Beatles helped him learn English and showed him another life. \n\nThe Soviet authorities were alarmed by the seditious potential of rock and roll, with the Beatles a special target and denounced as 'bugs' in official papers. Their smuggled records were destroyed and their music was banned, but the myth blossomed as bootlegs and photos were covertly traded and even rented amongst fans. \n\nSoon there were thousands of rock bands across the USSR, trying to make music with crude home-made guitars. Speakers on lampposts installed to broadcast propaganda were grabbed by rock hopefuls, while reports that an electric pickup could be cannibalised from a telephone led to phone boxes being raided and disabled.\n\nMillions of young people fell in love with the Beatles and the culture of the Cold War enemy, and defected emotionally from the Soviet system. The Beatles prepared the cultural way for the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately helped to wash away the foundations of that system.
Source: BBC 4
Queendom
A Storyville documentary following Gina, a queer artist from a small Russian town, who stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism – a ...
21-11-2024
BBC 4
Agent Of Happiness
Amber works as a happiness agent for the government of Bhutan, which has devised Gross National Happiness, a way of measuring and collating the contentment of the nation.\n\nWe ...
19-11-2024
BBC 4
Hollywoodgate
With unprecedented access to one of the most secretive cabals in the world, the Taliban, this extraordinary film begins on the day after the last US soldier left Afghanistan in ...
05-11-2024
BBC 4
Eternal You
A Storyville documentary exploring the digital afterlife business.\n\nWhat if a person's death did not mean the end of their life? What if their loved ones could still talk to t ...
29-10-2024
BBC 4
Dogs Of War
A Storyville documentary that tells the untold story of a seemingly ordinary Englishman who spent more than 40 years as a mercenary, fighting other people’s wars for money ...
22-10-2024
BBC 4
On The Morning You Wake (to The End Of The World)
On 13 January 2018, Hawaiians were suddenly confronted by an urgent nuclear threat. This was the text message they received from their country's emergency management agency: \n\ ...
08-10-2024
BBC 4
War Game
A Storyville documentary that sweeps viewers into an elaborate simulation which dramatically escalates the threat that was posed in the USA by the Capitol attack on 6 January 20 ...
01-10-2024
BBC 4
The Village That Fought Back: Five Broken Cameras
Oscar-nominated film compiled from the video diary of a Palestinian farmer who documents unrest in his West Bank village. Emad Burnat starts filming with his first camera follow ...
25-09-2024
BBC 4
Undercover Oap: The Mole Agent
A recently widowed 83-year-old goes undercover in a Chilean nursing home in a warm-hearted and surprising look at age, isolation and loneliness. \n\nSergio is a Chilean spy - so ...
24-07-2024
BBC 4
Attica: America’s Bloodiest Prison Uprising
A Storyville documentary about the violent five-day standoff between inmates and law enforcement which gripped America in 1971.
23-07-2024
BBC 4
Stranded! The Andes Plane Crash Survivors
In October 1972, a student rugby team boarded a small plane in Montevideo to fly across the Andes for a long weekend of playing rugby and partying in Chile. But they never reach ...
11-10-2022
BBC 4
The Trials Of Oppenheimer
J Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most celebrated scientists of his generation. Shy, arrogant and brilliant, he is best known as the man that led the Manhattan Project to spec ...
11-03-2024
BBC 4
The Eternal Memory
An extraordinary portrait of unconditional love and devotion, directed by Oscar-nominated documentary director Maite Alberdi.\n\nAugusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia have ...
13-02-2024
BBC 4
Revenge: Our Dad The Nazi Killer
Hundreds of Nazi war criminals fled to Australia after World War Two hoping to start over and avoid prosecution. Not all of them found the refuge they had sought; quite a few di ...
23-01-2024
BBC 4
Dogs Of War
A Storyville documentary that tells the untold story of a seemingly ordinary Englishman who spent more than 40 years as a mercenary, fighting other people’s wars for money ...
22-10-2024
BBC 4
Benjamin, Joshua And The Crown Shyness
When high school ends and adulthood begins, Benjamin and Joshua Israel, two identical twins of Jewish origin, start feeling burdened. While friends and schoolmates are planning ...
12-09-2023
BBC 4
Beyond Utopia: Escape From North Korea
A suspenseful, immersive look at the lengths to which people will go to gain freedom. The film follows various individuals as they attempt to flee North Korea, one of the most o ...
30-01-2024
BBC 4
Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight
In December 2019, Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, charged with financial crimes, stunned the world by fleeing Japan in a box supposedly containing a pri ...
10-10-2021
BBC 4
President
When Robert Mugabe was ousted by his own party, Zimbabwe’s new leaders promised a democratic presidential election – the first since the start of Mugabe’s rul ...
09-02-2022
BBC 4