Splendour of the Heavens

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Sprout. In the vacant lots against the hammering of buildings always under construction, between walls of granite, cement and sheet metal with rust, moss and cats; on the hillside between the train and the river, next to the traffic on the highway, facing the subway, vegetable gardens sprout. In this city, the choreography of ancient gestures of cultivating the land is repeated day after day, without fail. Sowing, digging, harvesting, watering, eating, talking, resting and returning the next day. The longest day of the year brings S. João and nobody goes to bed, but when the sun rises, the discreet gestures of resistance will restart.

At Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, “Near Earth Asteroids: Dr. Anne Virkki” tells the story of Research Scientist Anne Virkki and her ongoing studies on asteroids and their threat to humanity. Originally from Finland, Anne Virkki shares her experience in education as well as her studies on asteroids, including her work hunting and tracking asteroids headed for Earth.

At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. The recent discovery of several dwarf planets, with intriguing trajectories, have put astronomers on the trail of this mysterious planet. Why is this enigmatic planet so difficult to detect? What would a ninth planet teach us about our corner of the universe? Could it help us unlock some of the mysteries of our solar system?

Destination astéroïdes

Part of the Almost Famous series. Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she pushed through the skepticism from her superiors to make one of the greatest astrophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. While Jocelyn was belittled and sexually harassed by the media, the Nobel Prize was awarded to her professor and his boss.

The earliest surviving celluloid film, and believed to be the second moving picture ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), possibly on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince's son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince's mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds.

Between 1990 and 1993, at a time when rap was not yet on the radio in France, Olivier Cachin hosted a musical TV show on M6 called "RapLine". The show exclusively devoted to rap and other alternative music. This cult show presented all the facets of these emerging movements through interviews, lives and clips made especially for the show, around fifty clips were produced by RapLine. Another sequence of the show consisted of broadcasting new US rap clips subtitled in French.

The early retired Gert spends the last summer in his garden, a place that has become a real home for him. The garden will be demolished to create a shopping center on its grounds. The only thing Gert can do is remember memories of happy times he spent with his family in the garden.

The first feature from Alison McAlpine is a dialogue with the heavens—in this case, the heavens above the Andes and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where she alights on the desert- and mountain-dwelling astronomers, fishermen, miners, and cowboys who live their lives with reverence and awe for the skies.

What forms might life take in the Solar System and beyond? In the Academy's newest original planetarium show, see how a deeper understanding of Earth might help us locate other living worlds, light years away.

Cave paintings and lunar calendars exist in the caves and remains of prehistoric hunters studied recently. What if Prehistoric Man were clever enough to develop in depth scientific knowledge? As unlikely as it may seem, new data tend to prove that Prehistoric Man actually invented Astronomy!

Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in an elaborate pattern that mirrors the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon. How did an ancient civilization, with no known written language, arrange its buildings into a virtual celestial calendar, spanning an area roughly the size of Ireland?

Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shrouded in a dense, toxic atmosphere. Scientists are now unveiling daring new strategies to search for clues from a time when the planet was alive.

Loran, a filmmaker from the notorious suburb Gottsunda, grapples with the desire to move away but is torn by loyalty to his childhood friends who lead a criminal life. "G" marks Loran's farewell to Gottsunda but completing the film in a changed community tests his sense of belonging and identity.

Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia

The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe.

From the “integration model” to the “Islamist fanatic”, France fantasizes about these children of immigrants who grew up with it. Like every month “What I’m Meddling With!” presents portraits, the result of an in-depth investigation, to give a face to today's questions. The program, broadcast in the thematic evening of the Franco-German channel Arte, is made up of 2 ambivalent documentaries: "Les Lumières De La Zone" and "Les Soldats De Dieu" followed by debates.

Isamu Noguchi was a sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman. Throughout his life he struggled to see, alter, and recreate his natural surroundings. His gardens and fountains were transformations meant to bring out the beauty their locations had always possessed.

A Eurovision singer, Iceland's strongest woman, a male model, a plumber who wants to direct movies. They all work in the shopping mall that this documentary focuses on ... most of them want to get out, even just to the bigger mall down the road.