At the beginning of the 5th century, Imperial Rome is dying out. But Greco-Roman civilization lives on. In the East, many cities will continue to experience flourishing prosperity for almost four centuries. One city tells the story of this moment of history known as “Late Antiquity.” Its name is Sagalassos, in Turkey. And therein lies a great paradox of history: when Sagalassos disappears, so to will the “Last Romans.”
Mark Twain published his first stories in the same place where modern mining was invented: Virginia City in Nevada. For the first time historians and archaelolgists have joined forces to unravel the real wild west together. Will their efforts lead to the rewrite of American history books?
In "Black Samurai", we're thrust into the lives of the Surma people, one of the fiercest tribes of southwestern Ethiopia, where war ravages the land. Recently, because of a terrible famine, the Surma land has been infiltrated by hundreds of their lifelong enemies, the Bumis. The King of Surma, watch over the confines of his territory to prevent attacks from the Bumis. He decides to call for a Donga, a dual with long sticks, which helps the clan to practice fighting for the upcoming battles. Wole Kiwo will go through the violent trial. He will then exchange his stick for a kalachnikov, and return to the combat zone to fight the Bumis.
Saving Face is the story of how in the horror of two World Wars a new, life saving branch of surgery was born at the delicate hands of some very inventive Kiwis. During WWI Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup was home to Kiwi surgeons Sir Harold Gillies and Henry Pickerill, both determined, brilliant men tasked with rebuilding the shattered faces of wounded soldiers. These were the pioneers of a new form of surgery - reconstructive plastic surgery. It had been attempted in crude form for centuries but during WWI Gillies and Pickerill developed and standardised daring new techniques. They knew their work was revolutionary but little did they realise they were laying the foundation of a surgical discipline that would transform lives of millions in times of war and peace. In WWII two more Kiwis and Gillies proteges, Sir Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem, furthered their mentor's work by rebuilding the faces of downed airmen and other servicemen who had been ravaged by fire and mortars. Director, John Hagen says this was the number 8 wire approach at its best. "It can be a bit of a cliche to talk about 'Kiwi ingenuity' but these four guys were the real deal, they took their existing surgical know-how and rose to the extraordinary challenges they faced." Through interviews with family members, experts, and former patients treated during WWII the documentary gives a rare insight into the motivations, successes, trials and tribulations of these four extraordinary surgeons.
A scientific investigation that questions all previous studies on the origins of astronomy! It is commonly known that 35,000 years ago, Man was brutish and primitive and his main activities were copulation, hunting and gathering. But what if this Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that these men actually invented Astronomy! For the last 20 years, Chantal J�es-Wolkiewiez, an independent astronomer and ethnologist, has lead a rigorous investigation to prove this theory. According to her studies, hunter gatherers spent long nights observing the sky, calculating, and recording their discoveries either on the walls of caves or on animal bones. Thanks to their analyses they could measure time and adapt to weather change. In this film, she shares her stunning conclusions: Prehistoric men chose their caves according to the orientation of the sun, created measuring tools such as a lunar calendar, and their wall paintings were the first maps of the sky and stars. Today, these fascinating discoveries are gradually gaining respect in the international science community.
Canada is today the world’s third producer of diamonds both in value and quantity. These are not just any diamonds, they are ice diamonds or clean diamonds in opposition with Africa’s blood diamonds that finance war, weapons and use child labor. Clean diamonds are widely appreciated on the international market for their purity as well as their ethics. Extracting these rocks is no easy feat. By minus 50 degrees celsius and polar winds, thousands of men work in giant open-air mines of 1,5 km diameter. These holes the size of lunar craters are excavated by huge bulldozers that dig sometimes 300 meters deep into the permafrost and then into black lava rock of over 53 million years old. We are almost in a science fiction movie: the mine and machinery are ultra modern, the scenery is pristine white and the miners work in extremely secure conditions. We are very far from the 19th century coal mines. For nine months of the year, the miners are isolated from the rest of the world, as there is no other way to access the site than by the ice road.
While the world knows of the KGB spies and agents who crossed over to the West, few know of this tale of secret dissention from within. There is one officer, Viktor Orekhov, who went from repression of dissidents to joining their cause. After months and months of searching, the filmmaker tracked down Orekhov and now brings his story to the world. Illustrated with the unique testimonies of Viktor Orekhov, now 65, archives and accurately re-enacted sequences, the documentary tells the story of a man who braved an impenetrable system and dared to challenge the KGB.
DANCING WITH DICTATORS is a film about Burma and the battle for control of a newspaper. Central to the story is Australian publisher Ross Dunkley who owns The Myanmar Times. Like all media in Myanmar the newspaper is heavily censored. The government has forced a 51% partner on Dunkley and after the first election in 20 years their enmity explodes. Dunkley is arrested and imprisoned as his Immigration charges turn into a sexual smear campaign. His partner takes control and the government moves towards ending any foreign ownership of the Burmese media.
There's Something About Mary Magdelene brings together fresh insights and dramatically reassesses the Church�s sinner-turned-saint, based on compelling new research into ancient texts discovered in the last century. The 2,000-year-old story of this Christian icon features leading experts on both sides of the controversy, and is told through dramatic re-enactments set against stunning Mediterranean landscapes, as well as sumptuous Renaissance paintings and architecture. Raising and addressing new questions, such as Mary's role in the early Christian movement and whether it was too hot for the Church to handle, but stops short of the some of the more controversial claims made in recent books, such as The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Tomb of Jesus.
While the world knows of the KGB spies and agents who crossed over to the West, few know of this tale of secret dissention from within. There is one officer, Viktor Orekhov, who went from repression of dissidents to joining their cause. After months and months of searching, the filmmaker tracked down Orekhov and now brings his story to the world. Illustrated with the unique testimonies of Viktor Orekhov, now 65, archives and accurately re-enacted sequences, the documentary tells the story of a man who braved an impenetrable system and dared to challenge the KGB.
In 1958, nine years after coming to power, Mao launched a program of industrialization called the "Great Leap Forward" intended to take China out of its almost medieval state of under-development. Poor planning and mismanagement plunged the country into economic chaos which caused an unprecedented famine and a death toll around 45 million. Based on previously unheard testimony by survivors, rare archive footage, secret documents and interviews with the leading historians on this catastrophe, this film provides a new insight into this folly.
Deep in the heart of the Amazon is a mysterious language no outsider has ever learned. Until now. After thirty years of research and life with the Pirahas, one man has finally cracked the code. Daniel Everett's mission was to bring Jesus to the Amazon. Instead of that, the missionary discovered a unique people with no words for numbers of colors, no sense of the distant past, no concern for the future and no need for his God.
The Deepwater Horizon was known as one of the safest drilling rigs. When the alarm set off- it was about to complete an exploration-well in 5 600m of depth. Even months after the explosion, crude oil continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, and BP and its clean up methods came under fire and scrambled to control the images that the public saw. Now all live-cams are switched off, and all seemed to be back to normal. Yet oil industry insiders, fishermen, lawyers, and marine toxicologists shed a different light upon methods and legacy of the toxic clean up performed by BP and the Coast Guard. This was not the first story of an oil giant caught between profit maximization and the need to satisfy our rising demand for oil during the closing decades of the oil age- Profit, Pollution and Deception- BP and the Oil Spill.
This is the story of science's latest frontier: a global scientific investigation into DNA sequencing and bio-molecular cloning, to understand how scientists around the world are competing to be the first to rewrite the history of our planet and resurrect creatures from the past.
When the Communist Party took over China in 1949, it engineered a massive propaganda effort to win over the people’s hearts and minds. Making Mao revisits the people and events responsible for making Mao Zedong the star of this cultural phenomenon. It was an artistic yet brutal onslaught of images and slogans that lasted over 25 years and kept him in power. Yet while Mao was celebrated as a God by most, those who did not abide became victims. This story examines what created and perpetuated this mass hysteria, and revisits the art that would both shape and nearly destroy a nation.
Eugenics is the science of “good births” which aims to create the perfect human being and tries to achieve this by preventing reproduction of those perceived as weak, sick, disabled, or otherwise “degenerate.” Before being employed by the Nazis in what remains the most deadly program of “racial purification”, eugenics was a very popular concept among scientists in the United States and Europe. As early as 1907, the United States applied the first eugenics laws, which continued to be in force until the 1970s. More than 60,000 people were denied children under widespread campaigns of forced sterilization. See the explanation of historians and the testimony of victims who continue to struggle for recognition of the harm they have suffered, which has been erased from the collective memory
How do you grasp an event as enormous as September 11? At the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, you start small: A briefcase, a Blackberry, a victim's sweatshirt, and a hero's nametag. Simple objects that tell personal stories, recounted in the donors' own words. Stories from New York, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA remind us that the legacy of 9/11 is not fear -- it's friendship, courage, and ordinary people pushed by extraordinary circumstances. Their stories deserve to be remembered across decades and generations. By telling them, we triumph over tragedy.
Australian scientist Michael Alpers dedicated over 50 years to researching Kuru, an obscure and incurable brain disease unique to the Fore people of New Guinea. Kuru was once thought to be a psychosomatic illness, an infection, a genetic disorder, even a sorcerer's curse, but Alpers' findings pointed to cannibalism as the culprit. Yet a recent discovery has proven to be even more disturbing: the malady is linked to mad cow disease and its human equivalent, variant CJD. With a decades-long incubation period, could a larger outbreak be on its way?
See the extraordinary tale of a 14 year old Polish girl, Rutka Laskier, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. In 2005, the school notebook in which Rutka recorded her last months in the ghetto of Bedzin was made public, six decades after she hid it under the floorboards of her home there. Rutka was immediately dubbed the ‘Polish Anne Frank’. In her diary, Rutka details her life in the ghetto in 1943 – not just the Nazi atrocities and physical hardship but also how she was developing as a young woman, and her first steps towards relationships with boys. She also tells of how she made a daring escape from one of the early ‘aktions’ - Nazi round-ups of Jews for transportation. The documentary reveals Rutka’s story through the eyes of her half-sister, Israeli academic Zahava Scherz, on a journey to discover the life Rutka led in Bedzin before the Holocaust.
STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME is a compelling documentary feature film by Academy Award® nominee Michèle Ohayon about the power of love and the ability of humankind to rise above unimaginable suffering. 1943: Holland is under total Nazi occupation. In Amsterdam, Jack, an unassuming accountant, first meets Ina at a birthday party – a 20-year-old beauty from a wealthy diamond manufacturing family who instantly steals his heart. But Jack’s pursuit of love will be complicated; he is poor and married to Manja, a flirtatious and mercurial spouse. When the Jews are being deported, the husband, the wife and the lover find themselves at the same concentration camp, actually living in the same barracks. When Jack's wife objects to the relationship in spite of their unhappy marriage, Jack and Ina resort to writing secret love letters, which sustain them throughout the horrible circumstances of the war. Jack: “I’m a very special Holocaust survivor. I was in the camps with my wife and my girlfriend; and believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
When the RMS Titanic set sail across the Atlantic from Southampton on her maiden voyage 100 years ago, she made history. From the moment the ship sank, a series of powerful myths grew up around the Titanic. Perhaps the most potent of all was that of the band standing on deck, bravely playing on until the last lifeboat had left and there was no hope of escape. For the first time, Titanic: The Band Played On tells the story of those unsung heroes who were about to play for the last time.
In the 1930's a great famine struck the Soviet Union, plunging the cities into chaos and criminality. To restore law and order, Stalin organized in 1933 a great “cleansing” of Moscow and Leningrad of all citizens deemed a social nuisance. 6000 “unwanted people” were randomly chosen and transported to during eight days by train to Nazino, a small and desert Siberian island. Nazino had nothing, no shelter or infrastructure. Despair quickly led to theft and criminality and starvation to scenes of mass cannibalism. Through reconstitutions and archive pictures, this documentary unveils the arbitrary, disorganized and hasty methods used by the Soviet Regime for deportation.
For 300 years, the West has been the world’s pre-eminent civilization. But throughout history, all civilizations rise and fall. So, where is the West on the timeline? Many have theorized about the fall of western civilization but now we appear to have the evidence. Low birth rates, aging populations, debt laden economies and immigration – the West consumes without consequence, loves without longevity and lives without meaning. This documentary was filmed in ten countries and is about the world within, about us.
The extraordinary story of how one corpse changed the course of World War II.
For the past 80 years, researchers have been unsuccessful at finding a cure for Malaria. However, we may be about to witness a premiere in the medical world: the first vaccine ever against paludism. Like in a scientific thriller, we will follow the fascinating chronicles of the development of this first vaccine and the fierce debates it will provoke in the months to come.
What is your life saving medicine contained deadly viruses- and the drug manufacturers, the government, and your own doctors knew but failed to warn you? Through the eyes of survivors and family members, this film chronicles how a "miracle" treatment for hemophilia created in the 1960s became an agent of death for 10,000 Americans. Each dose of the treatment was pooled with blood from 60,000 individual blood donations, which was otherwise outlawed for fear of infection with hepatitis. Faced with evidence that pharmaceutical companies and government regulators knew the product was contaminated with deadly viruses, they launched a powerful and inspiring fight to right the system that failed them and to make it safer for all.
This documentary charts the Shakespearean rise and fall of the man who led a very successful African country, and then ruined it. Robert Mugabe was damned as a terrorist, then knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and is still in power more than 30 years later. The film explores what happened through interviews with some of his closest comrades. It assembles a unique collection of southern African archive to powerfully evoke each of the decades of Mugabe’s reign. This is a complex and compelling view of Zimbabwe the country and Mugabe the man
Humanity's ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, A Short History Of Progress inspired SURVIVING PROGRESS, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by "progress traps" - alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world's resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn't an evolutionary dead-end
In the heart of the Pacific, Clipperton is the most isolated atoll on earth and remains a scientific enigma. How did life manage to take root on this tiny French territory off the coast of Mexico and how did it survive in this unique ecosystem? Over a four month expedition led by Doctor Jean-Louis Etienne, researchers from all fields have gathered a living inventory of the island, an absolute necessity in order to understand and set up measures to protect biodiversity on a global scale. This unique oasis draws a large number of sharks, millions of scarlet crabs, rats and thousands of birds...all voraciously struggling to survive turning the island into an hostile and fragile environment The hope is to continue the exploratory mission on a long-term scale to make Clipperton a permanent observatory of evolution in a sea environment.
The Hittite Empire was a major force in the ancient Near East between 1650 and 1200 BC. Journey back in time as Hittite history comes alive focusing on personal stories of love and war involving the most influential kings and queens of the empire. Highlights include a virtual tour of the Hittite capital, Hattusa. Its spectacular palaces, temples and houses made it one of the most glorious ancient cities of the world.
In summer 2008, a mysterious submarine was discovered off the coast of Italy at 120 meters deep. For Lorenzo del Veneziano, an underwater marine archeologist, it was an amazing sight, as the submarine was intact! Standing almost vertically at the bottom of the sea, its hull stuck in the sediment. What is the story of this ship, why is it there? During World War II, 60 German U-boats sailed in the Mediterranean Sea. All were found but one. Could this be the wreck of the long lost U-455, the last missing German U-boat? Retrace the incredible story of U-455, a German warship that fought every marine battle against the Allies, from the Baltic Sea, to the Atlantic and then finally the Mediterranean where it now rests.
An intimate portrait following Theodore Monod's last expedition in the Tibesti desert North of Tchad in 1997 before he died aged 98 in November 2000. This film pays tribute to the life and work of this exceptional scientist, philosopher and thinker of our time who devoted his life to natural and human sciences and became one of the most knowledgeable naturalist-explorer of the Saharan-Africa. In 1938 he founded the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire in Dakar- Senegal and joined the National Museum of Natural History, becoming a professor there in 1946. Mingling exclusive footage of his expeditions and newsclips with more personal archives, this film retraces Monod's unique life itinerary as one of the last encyclopaedists and humanist of our time moved by the deepest respect for all living creatures and engaged in the fight for justice and peace. Let us share his knowledge and thoughts. Based on Theodore Monod's last desert expedition in 1996, the film depicts the life, the challenges and the mind of one of the outstanding personalities of the 20 th century. The breathtaking images of the Tibesti desert, where we follow Monod in his quest of a flower he discovered fifty six years before, alternate with archives never released before, news footages and first hand accounts including those of Ambroise, Theodore's own son and of an other close friend, Jean-Marc Durou, photographer of the Sahara desert. Against the background of this splendid desert Monod loved so much, you can hear his voice as he comments the events, we stand by him and his team members as they face the hardships of the trip, we discover the man, his humour, his bursts of enthusiasm and signs of impatience, we follow him in his ultimate botanical and spiritual adventure, along what he called his quest of the "holy grail".
Two skeletons are found in Schwarzenberg Castle, Bohemia, decapitated heads between legs, weighed down by stones, and wooden stakes driven through chest cavities. They may help decipher the spine-chilling story of an infamous Austrian princess. Princess Eleanor was not only a main character in the original version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, but she was notable for keeping captive wolves and bathing in their milk. Now the notes of her extraordinary autopsy have been found, and help reveal why she became an infamous recluse and how she died. Using modern forensic science we uncover the myth and the reality behind the Vampire Princess.
A golden cauldron may be evidence of a secret Nazi cult formed by Heinrich Himmler.
For the first time, the available film of the assassination of Martin Luther King has been chronologically reassembled. The resulting documentary allows us to revisit the tumultuous events surrounding one of the most shocking assassinations in America and relive history through the voices of the era.
