Absent Presence

Documentary - COUNTERFEIT CULTURE is a one-hour documentary that explores the dangerous and sometimes deadly world of fake products. An industry that once dealt in imitation designer handbags and shoes has exploded into a global epidemic of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, foods, toys, electronic goods, car parts and microchips. COUNTERFEIT CULTURE challenges consumers to take a deeper look at what appears to be harmless knock-offs at bargain prices. - Ann-Marie MacDonald, Tim Phillips, Todd Gilmore

At age 29, documentary filmmaker Sara Lamm discovered that she was conceived via sperm donor. Using her skills as an investigator she decides to dig ever deeper to uncover where half of her DNA comes from.

An experimental film following a trip made by three friends in which the contrast between the agitated city of São Paulo, Brazil and the calmness of the beach leads the flow. No script. No story. Just vibes.

How did your body become the complicated, quirky, amazing machine it is today? Anatomist Neil Shubin uncovers the answers in this 3-part science series that looks at human evolution. Using fossils, embryos and genes, he reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates — the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree.

This narrated computer animation, with an original musical score, illuminates cellular mitosis. DNA self-replicates; chromosomes divide into two daughter cells; but it begins with a hormone entering the nucleus of a cell.

The history of Hip-Hop / Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between. Supported by rich archival materials and in-depth interviews with individuals crucial to the evolution of a way of life--and the outsiders who studied and admired them – Fresh Dressed goes to the core of where style was born on the black and brown side of town.

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?

A scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.

What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China? Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of workers lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products. Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.

The made-for-cable documentary film The Real Eve is predicated on the theory that the human race can be traced to a common ancestor. The mitochondrial DNA of one prehistoric woman, who lived in Africa, has according to this theory been passed down from generation to generation over a span of 150,000 years, supplying the "chemical energy" to all humankind.

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn’t digital, it’s biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR gives us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing disease, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. This documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the genetic engineers who are testing its limits.

One of the most important and exciting historical research of all time, the study of the DNA of the navigator Christopher Columbus, finally answers two fundamental questions: where do his bones rest? What is his true origin?

The unsolved rape, mutilation and murder of young G.I. Darlene Krashoc has haunted Joe Kenda in the years since he turned in his gun and badge. Until a crack team of cold case cops uses Kenda’s groundwork to set a trap for a monster hiding in plain sight.

Each day, some 2.5 trillion bytes of data are exchanged, a deluge known as "big data." How can we classify, store, and give meaning to this mass of digital information? Will our digital society remain capable of producing a lasting memory? Learn the fate of memory storage in the future.

When Harvard PhD student Jennifer Brea is struck down at 28 by a fever that leaves her bedridden, doctors tell her it’s "all in her head." Determined to live, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story—and four other families' stories—fighting a disease medicine forgot.

Over three very personal films, Sir David Attenborough looks back at the unparalleled changes in natural history that he has witnessed during his 60-year career.

A legendary garment, mass-produced, which witnessed the Industrial Revolution and clad cowboys on the western frontier, is now a fashion statement worldwide for men and women, young and old: an icon of modernity which has lasted for 150 years. With flying colors, the jeans have sailed through early marketing, the Internet, the world of collectors, the end of the Cold War, and now globalization. Their eternal popularity begs a question: Why?

This animated film was made by RIKEN Omics Science Center for the "Beyond DNA" exhibition at the National Science Museum of Japan. The filmmakers attempt to illustrate how molecular machines interact with each other according to the central dogma, with an anime look. This approach helps people (especially kids) to identify these molecules more easily, and to understand how they function in the body. There are two versions of the film: one with English narration and text, and another in Japanese.

The American woman is the best dressed woman in the world. This is due to Yankee ingeniuty, which makes a fashionable, well-made dress to sell for twenty dollars or less.

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?