The rail systems of Nazi Germany were the tentacles by which its horror was spread across Europe. Two award winning films are only the beginning of this ACE film series which focus on this subject of the shadow. Jiri Menzel’s Academy Award winning film, Closely Watched Trains, is a masterpiece of human observation and one of the best-loved films of the Czech New Wave. Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield star in John Frankenheimer’s “edge-of-your-seat” thriller The Train, about efforts by the French Resistance to thwart a Nazi attempt to steal and transport to Berlin a vast quantity of rare French paintings. The shadow goes on to Nazi-occupied Holland in Winter in Wartime where a young Dutch boy finds a downed RAF pilot. This film is a breathtaking cinematic masterpiece that shows the true human cost of a terrible conflict. In Paul Verhoven’s Blackbook , the distinctions between good and evil become blurred by the complexities of human nature. Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 French Resistance masterpiece Army of Shadows, is “The Best Film of 2006” according to the New York Times, L.A. Weekly, Premiere, and Sight and Sound. The documentary The Rape of Europa, which chronicles the Nazis’ attempt to steal the great art of Europe, will be shown throughout the series.