A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
Every year, on the steppes of the Serengeti, the most spectacular migration of animals on our planet: Around two million wildebeest, Burchell's zebra and Thomson's gazelles begin their tour of nearly 2,000 miles across the almost treeless savannah. For the first time, a documentary captures stunning footage in the midst of this demanding journey. The documentary starts at the beginning of the year, when more than two million animals gather in the shadow of the volcanoes on the southern edge of the Serengeti in order to birth their offspring. In just two weeks, the animal herd's population has increased by one third, and after only two days, the calves can already run as fast as the adults The young wildebeest in this phase of their life are the most vulnerable to attacks by lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas. The film then follows the survivors of these attacks through the next three months on their incredible journey, a trip so long that 200,000 wildebeest will not reach the end.
On Zambia's Liuwa Plain two star-crossed spotted hyena cubs are born to warring rival clans: Twaambo, a male cub and Nasanta, a female, are destined to lead converging lives as their extreme environment forces them together
Madrid, Spain, 1949. The Circo Americano arrives in the city. While the big top is pitched in a vacant lot, the troupe parades through the grand avenues: the band, a witty impersonator, the Balodys, acrobats, jugglers, acrobatic skaters, clowns and… Buffallo Bill.
Good Farm
The filmmaker interviews still surviving residents of Las Hurdes, where Buñuel shot a controversial documentary almost 70 years ago, and compares the area as shown in that work to the way it seems now.
Los chicos de la foto
Jesús Franco, manera de vivir
Documentary about the painter Lucian Freud.
A portrait of a family living in a village in Masuria.
Gente de mesón
Represión: un arma de doble filo
In the 1920s, former coal miner Harry Hoxsey claimed to have an herbal cure for cancer. Although scoffed at and ultimately banned by the medical establishment, by the 1950s, Hoxsey's formula had been used to treat thousands of patients, who testified to its efficacy. Was Hoxsey's recipe the work of a snake-oil charlatan or a legitimate treatment? Ken Ausubel directs this keen look into the forces that shape the policies of organized medicine.
In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later. There, he works as a prisoner in the SS Photographic Service, hiding, between 1943 and 1945, around 20,000 negatives that later will be presented as evidence during several trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Why do migratory birds take on the hardships of a long flight year after year? The documentary accompanies migratory birds with breathtaking aerial images of their journeys from a "bird's eye view" in the service of science. The camera helicopter crosses the dangerous Strait of Gibraltar together with storks and accompanies them in the air all the way to Tanzania and Kenya.
Roald Amundsen's South Pole Journey is a Norwegian documentary film that features Roald Amundsen's original footage from his South Pole expedition from 1910 to 1912.
On 15 May, 2006, double amputee Mark Inglis reached the summit of Mt Everest. It was a remarkable achievement and Inglis was feted by press and public alike. But only a few days later he was plunged into a storm of controversy when it was learned that he had passed an incapacitated climber, Englishman David Sharp, leaving him to a lonely end high in the Death Zone.
In 1966, Heinz Sielmann sets off on his longest expedition. He spent 19 months traveling through the wilderness of North America. From the alligator swamps of the Everglades to the breeding grounds of arctic waterfowl.
Cinéastes de notre temps : Jean Vigo
The first of two documentaries about Ingmar Bergman produced to mark his 70th birthday. Includes behind the scenes "home movies" from Bergman's personal archive, interviews with Bergman recorded over his 40 years in the film industry and passages from his autobiography read by Max von Sydow and Bergman himself.