
Canada was led to war by a bigoted, ignorant, self-obsessed Minister of Militia, who may well have been clinically insane, but the importance of Canada's contribution in that war owes a great deal to him. The man of course, was Colonel - later made Lieutenant General by his own hand - Sam Hughes. Sam's Army is a compelling portrait of a complex man and the formidable military he built. Sam Hughes was not your standard-issue military leader. Canada's World War I Minister of Militia and Defence concentrated power in his own hands, insisted that the Canadian military use the ill-conceived Ross rifle and liberally promoted his cronies. But there was no denying Hughes was a visionary. He assembled the world's largest-ever volunteer army and bucked superiors to keep his ferocious fighting force together in one Canadian Corps.
1999-03-01
10
Far from Home: Canada and the Great War - Part 1
5.1A comic study of 20th-century history, reconstructing the life of writer, creator and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. Born in 1911 Newport and last heard of in 1989, Luper’s life is pieced together from the evidence found in 92 suitcases scattered across the globe. In the first of three parts, we follow Luper through three distinct episodes: as a child during the First World War; as an explorer in Mormon Utah; and as a writer in Belgium during the rise of fascism.
6.0In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
7.4In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.
5.7Drama-documentary recounting the events of the 1st July 1916 and the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front during the First World War. Told through the letters and journals of soldiers who were there.
0.0When two First World War enemy soldiers become stranded in no man’s land, an unlikely bond is formed. Will they still be able to pull the trigger if the time comes?
6.6Richthofen goes off to war like thousands of other men. As fighter pilots, they become cult heroes for the soldiers on the battlefields. Marked by sportsmanlike conduct, technical exactitude and knightly propriety, they have their own code of honour. Before long he begins to understand that his hero status is deceptive. His love for Kate, a nurse, opens his eyes to the brutality of war.
7.1Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
6.4When the First World War breaks out in 1914, Josef Schwejk, a naive dog dealer in Prague, joins the Imperial Army.
7.4France, 1914, during World War I. On Christmas Eve, an extraordinary event takes place in the bloody no man's land that the French and the Scots dispute with the Germans…
5.5The film focuses on the leadership of the Great Powers of Europe in the days leading up to the outbreak of the First World War.
5.5The true story of a French WW1 deserter who, with the support of his wife, spends a decade in disguise as a woman.
6.6A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.
7.6The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.
7.3Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.
7.8In November 1918, a few days before the Armistice, when Lieutenant Pradelle orders a senseless attack, he causes a useless disaster; but his outrageous act also binds the lives of two soldiers who have nothing more in common than the battlefield: Édouard saves Albert, although at a high cost. They become companions in misfortune who will attempt to survive in a changing world. Pradelle, in his own way, does the same.
8.0Lost Heroes is the story of Canada's forgotten comic book superheroes and their legendary creators. A ninety-minute journey to recover a forgotten part of Canada's pop culture and a national treasure few have ever heard about. This is the tale of a small country striving to create its own heroes, but finding itself constantly out muscled by better-funded and better-marketed superheroes from the media empire next door.
8.8Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.
Documentary using animated maps, recreations and period footage, on conflicts around a French stronghold which the Germans briefly captured during the battle of Verdun in WWI, between February and October of 1916.
8.0The only thing colder than a Canadian winter is Canadian bureaucracy (probably). Based on five real life stories, Romy Boutin St-Pierre and Joe Nadeau pay homage to the nation-wide stress headache of phone calls with the government in this surprising short.
6.3At the onset of World War II, American Lt. Col. Robert Frederick is put in charge of a unit called the 1st Special Service Force, composed of elite Canadian commandos and undisciplined American soldiers. With Maj. Alan Crown leading the Canadians and Maj. Cliff Bricker the acting head of the American contingent, there is initial tension -- but the team comes together when given a daunting mission that few would dare to attempt.
6.1Sergeant Michael Dunne fights in the 10th Battalion, AKA The "Fighting Tenth" with the 1st Canadian Division and participated in all major Canadian battles of the war, and set the record for highest number of individual bravery awards for a single battle
6.8Fact-based war drama about an American battalion of over 500 men which gets trapped behind enemy lines in the Argonne Forest in October 1918 France during the closing weeks of World War I.
6.9The true story of Australia's cat-and-mouse underground mine warfare—one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and mystifying conflicts of WW I. It was secret struggle BENEATH the Western Front that combined daring engineering, technology and science. Few on the surface knew of the brave, claustrophobic and sometimes barbaric work of these tunnellers.
7.8A documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of Armistice Day, and the end of the war.
6.3Set in a dugout in Aisne in 1918, a group of British officers, led by the mentally disintegrating young officer Stanhope, variously await their fate.
7.0In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee leads the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the goal of marching through to Washington, D.C. The Union Army of the Potomac, under the command of General George G. Meade, forms a defensive position to confront the rebel forces in what will prove to be the decisive battle of the American Civil War.
6.1During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.
6.7After leaving his family's sheep farm in the Australian outback, a young man joins his countrymen on the western front of World War I with hopes of helping expedite an end to the bloody conflict. But as war rages on, he is forced to grapple with the brutal realities of trench warfare, including a near-constant battle to keep himself alive—without leaving another man behind. Inspired by the real-life diary entries of local ANZACs, the feature film details the untold story of some of Australia’s greatest military victories.
6.6A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
6.9Trapped in a bunker during World War I, a group of soldiers are faced with an ungodly presence that slowly turns them against each other.
6.2Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery, but became a vocal critic of the government's continuation of the war when he returned from service. Adored by members of the aristocracy as well as stars of London's literary and stage world, he embarked on affairs with several men as he attempted to come to terms with his homosexuality.
6.8Soldier Brian Wood, is accused of war crimes in Iraq by the human rights lawyer Phil Shiner. The two men go head to head in a legal and moral conflict that takes us from the battlefield, at so-called Checkpoint Danny Boy, to the courtroom and one of Britain’s biggest ever public inquiries, the Al-Sweady Inquiry.
6.3The film centers mostly around the personal and professional life of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a brilliant if eccentric Confederate general, from the outbreak of the American Civil War until its halfway point.
6.7The working-class Smiths change their initially sunny views on World War I after the five boys of the family witness the harsh reality of trench warfare.
8.3A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
7.6An escaped slave travels north and has chance encounters with Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Based on the life story of Shields Green.