Many geneticists and archaeologists have long surmised that human life began in Africa. Dr. Spencer Wells, one of a group of scientists studying the origin of human life, offers evidence and theories to support such a thesis in this PBS special. He claims that Africa was populated by only a few thousand people that some deserted their homeland in a conquest that has resulted in global domination.
A New Yorker journeys to the jungle in the Darien Gap of Panama to reconnect with an indigenous tribe he met and photographed 20 years ago. Their reunion highlights the profound power of photos and the human connection that transcends cultural barriers.
A research-based essay film, but also a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into a few democratic nation states.
For Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlic, a locked door in her mother's apartment in Belgrade provides the gateway to both her remarkable family history and her country's tumultuous political inheritance.
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.
Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac were two friends who grew up together sharing the common bond of basketball. Together, they lifted the Yugoslavian National team to unimaginable heights. After conquering Europe, they both went to USA where they became the first two foreign players to attain NBA stardom. But with the fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991, Yugoslavia split up. A war broke out between Petrovic's Croatia and Divac's Serbia. Long buried ethnic tensions surfaced. And these two men, once brothers, were now on opposite sides of a deadly civil war. As Petrovic and Divac continued to face each other on the basketball courts of the NBA, no words passed between the two. Then, on the fateful night of June 7, 1993, Drazen Petrovic was killed in an auto accident. This film will tell the gripping tale of these men, how circumstances beyond their control tore them apart, and whether Divac has ever come to terms with the death of a friend before they had a chance to reconcile.
The Weight of Chains is a Canadian documentary film that takes a critical look at the role that the US, NATO and the EU played in the tragic breakup of a once peaceful and prosperous European state - Yugoslavia. The film, bursting with rare stock footage never before seen by Western audiences, is a creative first-hand look at why the West intervened in the Yugoslav conflict, with an impressive roster of interviews with academics, diplomats, media personalities and ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslav republics. This film also presents positive stories from the Yugoslav wars - people helping each other regardless of their ethnic background, stories of bravery and self-sacrifice.
Three Croatian activists struggle to change the world. As children, they lived through the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. But now, amid the aftershocks of socialism's failure, they fight in their own way for a new leftism. In the middle of the struggle, a skeptical American is won over by their cause and even goes to jail with them. The activists, whether clashing with police or squatting in an old factory, risk everything to live their politics. But as the setbacks mount, will they give up the fight? The film, shot during years of fieldwork with a Croatian anarchist collective, applies EnMasseFilm's unique blend of observation, direct participation and critical reflection to this misunderstood political movement. Its portrayal of activism is both empathetic and unflinching -- an engaged, elegant meditation on the struggle to re-imagine leftist politics and the power of a country's youth.
This eye-opening and bittersweet chronicle of the Yugoslavian film industry recounts how the cinema was used—often with direct intervention from President Josip Broz Tito—to create and recreate the young nation’s history, replete with heroes and myths that didn’t always hew closely to reality.
In 2013, the world's media reported on a shocking mountain-high brawl as European climbers fled a mob of angry Sherpas. Director Jennifer Peedom and her team set out to uncover the cause of this altercation, intending to film the 2014 climbing season from the Sherpa's point-of-view. Instead, they captured Everest's greatest tragedy, when a huge block of ice crashed down onto the climbing route...
On 11th of July 1995, the most mortifying crimes after World War II in Europe destroyed the Bosnian town of Srébrenica. Shootings and deportations beyondimagination were preceded by a betrayal of humaity: while 40,000 civilians were looking into the sky of Srébrenica, waiting for a sign from the international community, guaranteeing their protection, the headquarters of the United Nations decided to surrender. The betrayal kill 8,372 men, women and children. Sky above Srebrenica (101 minutes) is based on protocols of the secret crisis meetings of the UN headquarters. In a unique way never before released original material of the consequences is shown next to those who are responsible for these.
Through the conversation with Yugoslav film authors and excerpts from their films, this documentary film tells a story of a film phenomenon and censorship, and its focus is, in fact, a painful epoch of Yugoslav film called “a Black Wave”, which was the most important and artistically strongest period of Yugoslav film industry, created in the sixties and buried in the early seventies by means of ideological and political decisions. The film tells a great “thriller” story of the ideological madness which characterised the totalitarian psychology having left multiple consequences felt up to our very days. It stresses similarities between totalitarian regimes defending their taboos on the example of the persecution of the most important Yugoslav film authors. Those film authors have, however, made world careers and inspired many later authors. The film is the beginning of a debt pay-off to the most significant Yugoslav film authors.
This documentary was inspired by the artistic life of Serbian actress Sonja Savić. Being a wonder child, a star of Yugoslavian cinematography, a sex symbol, and urban legend of the eighties generation, a fighter against establishment, Sonja Savić had always attracted attention. Simply put, she always looked, spoke and thought differently from others, she was entirely autonomous, an authentic phenomenon of Serbian culture. In the documentary SONJA, friends and colleagues of Sonja Savić testify on many aspects of her life and work, and a special emphasis is put on Sonja’s libertarian, rebellious, Don Quixote type of nature.
Emir Kusturica views himself as a rock musician and believes that he became a world-famous filmmaker by pure chance, as he shoots his movies only in between concert tours with the “No Smoking Orchestra” band. At these little pinpoints of time he gets “Palms d’Or” at Cannes, “Golden Lions” in Venice, builds his own villages, a power plant and a piste and regrets not becoming a professional football player. Kusturica’s own living is very much similar to his movies, where shoes are polished with cats, death is treated like a story from tabloid press, and life is a miracle...
They were called ‘the golden generation’, the young Yugoslavian soccer players who won the Junior World Soccer Championships in 1987 in Chile. They became world-famous and today play in Rome, Milan and Madrid. But the country they represented in Chile no longer exists. Director Vuk Janic talks with soccer heroes like Zvonimir Boban and Sinisa Mihajlovic and visits the neighbourhoods they grew up in. Via the soccer, he tells the story of the disintegration of his country. The supporter riots in 1990 during the match between Red Star Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb heralded the imminent war. Shortly after, the team fell apart. Seven years later, as national players of Croatia and little Yugoslavia, they compete in two charged qualification matches for the 2000 European Championships. Soccer is not war, but the war is never far away. The first match in Belgrade has to be cancelled due to NATO bombings, and the two national hymns are drowned in deafening whistles from the audience.
The interview, held on January 4, 2001, was the last given by Professor Milton Santos, who died from cancer on June 24 of the same year. The geographer is gone, but his thoughts remains. Its political and cultural ideals inspire the debate on Brazilian society and the construction of a new world. His statement is a true testimony, a lesson that the world can be better. Based on geography, Milton Santos performs a reading of the contemporary world that reveals the different faces of the phenomenon of globalization. It is in the evidence of contradictions and paradoxes that constitute everyday life that Milton Santos sees the possibilities of building another reality. He innovates when, instead of standing against globalization, proposes and points out ways for another globalization.
Explores the plans for the construction of the monumental dam on China's Yangtze River, the structure that when completed in 2009 will become the Three Gorges Dam. It is slated to be 610 feet high, 1.3 miles across, creating a reservoir 400 miles and the largest power plant in the world.
This first-person documentary provides an inside look into the terrifying and bloody events that shook Central Europe in the 1990s, as the filmmaker takes a trip along the road that once united the disparate states of Yugoslavia, from Slovenia to Macedonia. A film about memory, hatred, love and hope.
True stories of the Croatian People's struggle to overcome oppression from communist Yugoslavia and the 1990's fight to save their war ravaged homeland.
A documentary-narrative film which looks at real events and personal phenomena of artist Zarko Lausevic. "Laush" above all tells a story of an evil time we've all been through, represents both sides and is made with empathy and respect towards everyone involved in the tragic incident. Through recreations, narration, memories of colleagues and quotes from the book "A Year Passes, a Day Will Never Pass" which the artist wrote during the hardest stage of his life, the weight of his fate is presented. The aim of this project is to portray the life of brilliant actor, who in the midst of great fame, disappeared from the scene through the cruelty of dubious times.