London/Hampshire, Tuesday 19th May 2026 – Indie prodco Woodcut Media and distributor Woodcut International bring history to life with new documentaries Hitler’s Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour and The Space Race in Colour, presold to Channel 4 (UK).
Currently in production, the docs combine expert historical analysis with state-of-the-art colourisation techniques, archive footage and some never-before heard interviews and eyewitness testimonies.
Hitler’s Games: Berlin 1936 in Colour (1 x 60’) – In 1931, Germany was awarded the Olympic Games in the hope this would draw them into the international community and world peace would be promoted through sport. For two weeks in August 1936 cameras captured the world’s greatest sporting spectacle, including the Gold Medal triumphs of record-breaking sprinter Jesse Owens. The Berlin Olympics were groundbreaking – many innovations introduced in 1936 such as television coverage and the torch relay became part of every subsequent Games. Hitler’s Games in Colour tells the story of the remarkable amateurs who excelled, but also how Hitler used the Games as propaganda for his brutal regime, to show the Nazis as benign and their military ambitions as modest. Using black and white archive, transformed by cutting-edge restoration and colourisation, this is the story of 16 days that fooled the world…
The Space Race in Colour ( 2 x 60’) – The 1950s and 1960s witnessed an unprecedented surge in space exploration, led by the USA and the USSR. This rivalry aka the ‘Space Race’ – climaxed with the greatest technological achievement in human history: the Apollo Moon Landings. The doc recaptures the drama of this competition for supremacy, which went on to define the nuclear age and explores the uneasy alliance between visionary rocket engineers and politicians’ desire for military supremacy. From the first satellite to the first man
on the moon, and its impact on the Cold War, the doc shows how the race was about more than missiles: it was also a question of surveillance, espionage, and the possibilities for living in space.
Series’ Producer is Jonathan Mayo, with Kate Beal as Executive Producer. Tom Adams joins Kate as Executive Producer for The Space Race in Colour.
Jonathan Mayo said: “Whether capturing the technological feats of the Space Race or the political theatre of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, the colourisation of the archive reveals these defining moments as living, human stories rather than distant historical events.”
Koulla Anastasi, Managing Director, Woodcut International added: “Our franchise is going from strength-to-strength, we feel the colourisation, unique access and techniques employed to tell these stories, speaks to powerful historical accounts with contemporary relevance and global appeal. ”
Reflecting a huge demand for the ‘in colour’ Woodcut series, these two new docs follow on from the success of ‘Titanic in Colour’, ‘The Race for Ancient Egypt in Colour’, ‘Britain’s Railway Empire in Colour’ and ‘The Manhattan Project in Colour’.
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About Woodcut Media:
Founded by award-winning producer Kate Beal in 2014, UK indie Woodcut Media is a female-led operation with a diverse team at its core, whose main ethos is to provide an honest and trusted voice – creating programming that tells incredible human stories with creativity, authenticity, and care. As well as being one of the leading true crime doc producers in the UK, Woodcut also specialises in a broad range of standout unscripted content – factual entertainment, specialist factual, and premium/talent led programming. Titles include Confessions of a Female Serial Killer, (Amazon’s Prime Video), long-running series World’s Most Evil Killers/Britain’s Most Evil Killers (10 seasons, 200 episodes), Fiennes: Return to the Wild and Fiennes: Return to the Nile with Joseph and Sir Ranulph Fiennes (Nat Geo), Cut from a Different Cloth, Mandela, My Dad and Me, both featuring Idris Elba, and Titanic in Colour (Nat Geo) to name a few. In December 2024 Woodcut launched (in partnership with KI and Seven Network) its first FAST channel (‘Crime Files’) in Australia. The same month Woodcut achieved B-Corp certification and also began its expansion into the digital space with the roll-out of YouTube channels under the banner The Uncut Network (True Crime Uncut, Underworld Uncut, History Uncut, Essentially Uncut). www.woodcutmedia.con
