Silent Forests

"Little E" baby elephant born in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, must grow up with his family to have every chance of survival.

Drawing upon a vast and richly visual archive and featuring a host of performers, historians and aficionados, this four-hour mini-series follows the rise and fall of the gigantic, traveling tented railroad circus and brings to life an era when Circus Day would shut down a town and its stars were among the most famous people in the country.

The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian National Park Administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro Crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values ​​they needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two airplanes, the Grzimeks found out that the migration of the herds was different than assumed.

Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.

August Klar has a dream. He’s trying to make a movie, that has never been done before. His ambitions are high, his methods are unconventional and to some extendeds even absurd - But his biggest obstacle is: August has no clue how to make a movie. The Documentary „How to Poetry Film“ follows the young Slam Poet through the Development process of his first shortfilm and dares to take a look at what lies between Euphoria and Rock Bottom while portraying the mind of wild creative that struggles to catch up with his ideas...

National Geographic filmmakers, Dereck and Beverly Joubert, explore how some animals are thrust together by the forces of nature-sometimes through a millennium of evolution or even last year’s drought. In the aftermath of strange elephant deaths, they piece together a visually stunning story that confirms their theory that lions were hunting elephants. Narrated by Jeremy Irons.

Near the region of Angkor Watt, a group of children capture a baby elephant and are just growing attached to it when it is sold to a travelling safari. Pursuing the new owner, a boy manages to steal it back, and the children free it to return to its mother.

An elephant torn from her family, ill and locked up for half a century; an industry that is reluctant to cease to exist; economic and political interests that ruined her life; and a society that has changed forever. Caravan is the story of the elephant Pelusa and the historic journey that will make her the first elephant in South America to cross two countries. Risking her life to touch another elephant for the first time, Pelusa´s caravan will undoubtedly set a precedent that will not only leave the business of elephants in captivity mortally wounded, but will open the possibility for 10 other elephants that are in captivity today in Argentina and more than 40 in the region. What justifies captivity during a lifetime of a species? Does the fact that the existence of wild animals in zoos continue to be legal makes it an ethical attraction? Is it possible to reconvert zoos into a conservation space?

An elephant born in captivity seeks to achieve something resembling freedom.

Disneynature’s Elephant follows African elephant Shani and her spirited son Jomo as their herd make an epic journey hundreds of miles across the vast Kalahari Desert. Led by their great matriarch, Gaia, the family faces brutal heat, dwindling resources and persistent predators, as they follow in their ancestors’ footsteps on a quest to reach a lush, green paradise.

This unique historical film follows the struggle in Kenya's Tsavo National Park against bow and arrow poachers who kill elephants and rhino, and the story of hand-rearing elephant and rhino orphans whose mothers were killed by poachers.

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

David Attenborough investigates the remarkable life and death of Jumbo the elephant - a celebrity animal superstar whose story is said to have inspired the movie Dumbo. Attenborough joins a team of scientists and conservationists to unravel the complex and mysterious story of this large African elephant - an elephant many believed to be the biggest in the world. With unique access to Jumbo's skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History, the team work together to separate myth from reality. How big was Jumbo really? How was he treated in captivity? And how did he die? Jumbo's bones may offer vital clues.

Great herds of Asian elephants once roamed from Baghdad to Beijing. Now only remnants of these once mighty herds survive, protected today by the Indian government. It is here that filmmaker Naresh Bedi turns his camera, capturing an intimate portrait of thee largest of land mammals. An adult elephant eats 300 pounds of green fodder and drinks 40 gallons of water a day. This film follows these gentle giants as they forage and feed, wallow in watering holes, dust their skin with dirt, and care for their young.

Sangduen Chailert, or Lek, as she is generally known, has already rescued over 200 elephants. She has dedicated her life to saving the Asian elephant and founded a special camp, The Elephant Nature Park to protect them. We follow this winner of Time Magazine’s “Asian Hero of the Year” Award in her work. Lek is on a mission to save the Asian elephant in her native Thailand. This film looks at the plight of the Asian elephant, as it goes from being a widely used domestic animal, to becoming a burden on modernizing communities. With experts predicting its extinction within four decades, Lek’s work is needed now more than ever and she has gathered a large group of supporters and volunteers in her quest for a better future for the Asian elephant. This moving film demonstrates Lek’s natural understanding of and rapport with these huge animals and will stir the viewers emotions as it highlights the often desperate state some elephants are kept in.

S Arthurem za slony

On the northern bank of the Sand River in the Mala-Mala Game Reserve in South Africa, seven magnificent creatures reside in an area the size of Manhattan Island. Tracking them for 24 hours reveals a never-ending daily drama.

This story began with a blind, bull elephant called Pla-Ra. Paul Barton took his piano to ElephantsWorld, a Sanctuary on the banks of the River Kwai in Thailand and began playing to the elephants while they were eating. "They were all having Barna Grass and it was that time of the day, when the elephants get to eat a lot and they don't waste a moment because they know that moment won't last forever," Paul recalls. "Pla-Ra was behind the piano with a mouthful of barna grass and I started to play Beethoven. Pla-Ra was chewing, and as soon as I played the first chords, he stopped eating with stalks of Barna grass protruding from each side of his mouth, and that's the way he stayed until the end of the piece." "Each time I played music for Pla-Ra, whether flute or piano, there was an identical reaction. Pla-Ra would stand for a while, and then he would curl his trunk and hold his trunk in his mouth until the piece was over. No matter how long that piece was, he would stay like that." ...

Follow filmmakers as they capture the epic journey of African elephants across the Kalahari desert. The team faces extreme weather, inaccessible terrain, crocodile-infested waters and close encounters with lions in order to shine a light on these remarkable creatures and their ancient migrations.

Ashley Bell and a team of elephant rescuers led by world renowned Asian elephant conservationist Lek Chailert, embark on a daring 48-hour mission across Thailand to rescue a 70-year old captive blind Asian elephant and bring her to freedom.