Encounter with Disaster

A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse

An innovative documentary that illustrates how weather works by performing brave, ambitious (even unlikely) experiments that show how nature transforms simple ingredients like wind, water and temperature into something spectacular and powerful.

In September of 1938, a great storm rose up on the coast of West Africa and began making its way across the Atlantic Ocean. The National Weather Bureau learned about it from merchant ships at sea and predicted it would blow itself out at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, as such storms usually did. Within 24 hours, the storm ripped into the New England shore with enough fury to set off seismographs in Sitka, Alaska. Traveling at a shocking 60 miles per hour -- three times faster than most tropical storms -- it was astonishingly swift and powerful, with peak wind gusts up to 186 mph. Over 600 people were killed, most by drowning. Another hundred were never found. Property damage was estimated at $400 million -- over 8,000 homes were destroyed, 6,000 boats wrecked or damaged.

The storm of 1993 that ravaged the Eastern Seaboard was bigger than any since the 1800s. Most were expecting only more unseasonable warmth, and were caught off-guard by the hurricane winds, massive thunderstorms, and fierce blizzards. Meteorologists puzzled over bizarre reports from their computers. Late warnings went largely unheard. Video footage from Florida to Maine documents nature's savagery.

In 1980, the eruption of Mount St. Helens leveled 230 square miles, sent 540 million tons of ash and volcanic rock twelve miles into the air, and blasted one cubic mile of earth from the crest of the Cascade Mountain Range. Illustrates the terrifying fury of the most destructive volcanic disaster in American history through aerial photography and survivors' own words. Shows examples of nature's plant and animal recovery seventeen years later.

Global warming in context. What the climate of the past tells us about the climate of the future.

Ring of Fire is about the immense natural force of the great circle of volcanoes and seismic activity that rings the Pacific Ocean and the varied people and cultures who coexist with them. Spectacular volcanic eruptions are featured, including Mount St. Helens, Navidad in Chile, Sakurajima in Japan, and Mount Merapi in Indonesia.

As co-created by environmentalists Stephan Poulle and Nicolas Koutsikas, the documentary Gulf Stream and the Next Ice Age argues and provides evidence for the idea that mankind is wreaking permanent and potentially irreversible damage on the ecosystem by interfering with the natural course of the Gulf Stream. Koutsikas and Poulle suggest that this interference, in turn, will prompt a new Ice Age that virtually destroys the modern world.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MARY ELLEN PAYNE. Following the events of the Great Flood of 2016 that wreaked havoc on southern Louisiana, the late Mary Payne takes a moment to talk about her experiences during and after the destruction.

"Trouble the Water" takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her Ninth Ward neighbors trapped in the city. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, it is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

The last representatives of Mixteco culture inhabit a village in the Sierra Madre. Deprived of their identity by modern civilization, they are facing an even bigger threat: a landslide that may destroy the village during the next torrential rains. The mayor tries to prevent the disaster. He wants to invite a geologist, so that the approaching danger can be officially confirmed. But no help is coming and the inhabitants must simply wait for the disaster.

Nashville Rises is the first documentary film about the city of Nashville, Tennessee's response to the 2010 Tennessee floods. It premiered at the 42nd Nashville Film Festival on April 14, 2011 and received the festival's "Ground Zero Tennessee Spirit Award for Best Short Documentary Film". The film was narrated by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Zac Adams.

An experimental short film about the Earthquake, that is still ongoing in Turkey.

In the lush depths of the rainforest, Vilma and Andrés find themselves gripped by an eerie premonition, a haunting sense of a catastrophe looming on the horizon-a disaster they have never encountered in reality but have always feared in their imaginations. As the dense foliage and ominous whispers of the forest heighten their senses, Vilma and Andrés are propelled into a profound introspection.

Filmed mostly with drones, this short film shows what happened before, during and after the devastating earthquake that struck Mexico City in September 19, 2017. Through sound recordings of the rescue operations, accounts from survivors and journalistic chronicles, this film reflects the uncertainty and bewilderment caused by the quake.

“Archeology” and “Archive” share the same roots. Both words come from “Arkhé”, the Greek word for “origin”. In the ruins of buildings, lost forever by earthquakes, as in the depth of the archives, we dig. What happened the morning of the big earthquake? The morning of September 19th 1985 is fading away in our memories. These recordings have never been seen. Unedited images of the catastrophe dug out by the archaeological adventure of an archivist that suffered with them. He dug and suffered until he could no longer see.

The two NZ survivors of the deadly White Island eruption tell their remarkable story of survival.

This astounding documentary delves into the mysteries of the Tunguska event – one of the largest cosmic disasters in the history of civilisation. At 7.15 am, on 30th June 1908, a giant fireball, as bright the sun, exploded in the sky over Tunguska in central Siberia. Its force was equivalent to twenty million tonnes of TNT, and a thousand times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. An estimated sixty million trees were felled over an area of over two thousand square kilometres - an area over half the size of Rhode Island. If the explosion had occurred over London or Paris, hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed.

A compilation of various accidents, disasters, executions, and other acts of mayhem and human feats caught on film.

On December 9, 2019, New Zealand's most active volcano erupted, engulfing 47 day trippers in a toxic ash cloud. 21 lost their lives that day and in the following weeks. Whakaari: A Heroes' Story paints a picture of the chaos and the bravery, and the complex rescue mission to save those stranded on the island.