A Night at the Movies: The Gigantic World of Epics looks at Hollywood’s biggest screen spectaculars from all sides, including the genre’s beginnings, literary adaptations, great epic directors and actors, the challenges of making big-budget movies, classic set-pieces and epic music scores. The special also looks at how the genre fell out of favor with audiences and filmmakers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, only to be reborn with more recent films like Gladiator, and Dances with Wolves trilogy. Throughout, the special is packed with classic scenes and behind-the-scenes images from such films as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone With the Wind (1939), Samson & Delilah (1949), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), King of Kings (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Warner Bros. uses the movies to prepare the US for war and keep up morale on the home front during World War II.

A behind the scenes documentary from the 1998 movie launched as part of the program HBO First Look.

Joey Scoma demonstrates how Star Wars (1977), a potential disaster in its rough cut, was saved in the editing.

A retrospective of "E.T.," featuring a cast reunion and a look at the making of the 20th anniversary edition of the film.

Made in 1976, TVTV's close-up look at Hollywood's annual awards ritual mixes irreverent documentary with deadpan comedy. TVTV's cameras go behind the scenes to follow major Hollywood figures (including Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Lee Grant, Jack Nicholson, and many others), capturing them in candid moments—inside their limousines, dressing for the ceremony, backstage at the awards.

Steven Spielberg takes us behind the cameras for the making of a classic movie.

A short documentary featurette about the 2012 restoration of Jaws.

A documentary on the making of one of the greatest films ever made, filled with trivia, interviews from cast and crew and never-before-seen footage.

This new retrospective features new interviews with director Joe Dante, star Zach Galligan, writer Chris Columbus, executive producers Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall and producer Michael Finnell.

Documentary on the making of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" (2012).

A new light on American filmmaker Steven Spielberg, Hollywood’s greatest director, offering a unique perspective on his work and digging into his personal influences.

The story of actor Kirk Douglas, the man and the legend, one of the last stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. An epic journey through the 20th century and the entire history of Hollywood. A testimony of the huge scope of his life and the scale of the myth. The untameable Kirk Douglas, the ragman's son.

A fascinating chronicle of the birth and rise of the radically different independent studio founded by director Francis Ford Coppola.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg tell the struggles and the passion for making the Indiana Jones Trilogy.

Eight-part retrospective documentary on the making of "Back to the Future" (and its two sequels) for the film's 25th anniversary.

A documentary film on the making of 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'

A behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Steven Spielberg's 1982 film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

Cannes is the town in France where Bergman meets bikinis, and the art of filmmaking meets the art of the deal. In 1975, a group of expat Kiwis managed to score interviews with some of the festival's emerging talents, indulging their own cinematic dreams in the process. Werner Herzog waxes lyrical on the trials and scars of directing; a boyish Steven Spielberg recalls the challenges of framing shots during Jaws; Martin Scorsese and Dustin Hoffman talk a gallon.

The compelling story of an extraordinary woman's journey from her birth in a paper thin shack in the cotton fields of Georgia to her recognition as a key writer of the twentieth Century.Walker made history as the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel, The Color Purple.