Passions For The Mammoth

During the last Ice Age, millions of large animals roamed the Earth, from wooly mammoths and giant sloths to cave lions and saber-toothed cats. But as the temperatures rose, three-quarters of these species died out. What happened? Can environmental changes alone really explain this mass extinction, or did humans - who at this very time were beginning their conquest of the planet - play a key role? To find out, researchers around the world are hunting and studying fossils in their search for answers to solve the mystery of the Ice Age giants.

The year 2011 marked the 70th anniversary of the deportations of June 14 1941, when 15 425 residents of Latvia (Latvians, Jews, Russians, Poles) were deported to Siberia. Among them there were 3 751 children aged up to 16. During the process men were separated from their families and sent to gulags, where many were sentenced to death, while others were imprisoned in labour camps. The facts of history and dry and few, but many of the victims and their children and grandchildren are still among us. During the summer of 2010, people who were deported to Siberia in 1941 as children joined their own children and a video production crew to travel back to the far North of Russia.

Titans of the Ice Age transports viewers to the beautiful and otherworldly frozen landscapes of North America, Europe and Asia ten thousand years before modern civilization. Dazzling computer-generated imagery brings this mysterious era to life - from saber-toothed cats and giant sloths to the iconic mammoths, giants both feared and hunted by prehistoric humans.

Could our mounting modern problems have ancient solutions? Travel to the depths of China to find out.

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.

Climate change has reached the indigenous Nenets people in the north of Siberia. The nomads' herds of reindeer move on thin ice. The warming in the Russian Arctic is becoming dramatically visible. Huge craters open in the thawing permafrost and expose dangerous viruses and bacteria. Forest floors dry out and the taiga catches on fire. The pack ice off the coast is melting and depriving polar bears of their habitat so that they approach human settlements in their desperation. The changes in the nature of the Arctic Circle combine with the measurements of researchers and observations of the indigenous people to form a disturbing overall picture: In the Russian Arctic, Pandora's box has been opened! The film team had the chance to shoot in regions that were been restricted areas for decades. The documentary shows in impressive and depressing images already existing effects, phenomena and ominous interlinkages of global warming.

A documentary about the 1999 discovery of a Mastodon skeleton in a Hyde Park backyard.

Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibility of it happening again causing an apocalypse (basically a meteor scare film) sprinkled with UFO conspiracy kooks, and other 'professionals', riddled with stock footage of all kinds, freaky moog music and sound fx, a Dr. Who rip-off end theme, Victor Buono as Homer the Archivist, a philosophical history recorder in a space ship with a HAL 9000 type talking computer named Ino, there's also another space ship with Egyptian looking aliens girls with pasties and see-thru blouses.

Like many St. Lawrence Island legends, this story is set in Siberia where Chukchi, the Reindeer People, live. Pelaasi, an elder from Gambell, speaks Siberian Yupik. His mythical story, about a man who goes out in search of a reindeer thief is an ungipaghaq, a tale that has been passed down unchanged through generations and believed to be based in truth.

The film details the early years of the legendary Siberian Punk/Rock group 'Гражданская Оборона' (Grazhdanskaya Oborona), and its frontman, Egor Letov.

In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.

In the middle of the Siberian taiga, 450 miles from the nearest village, live two families : the Braguines and the Kilines. Not a single road leads there. A long trip on the Ienissei River, first by boat, then by helicopter, is the only way to reach Braguino. Self-sufficient, both families live there according to their own rules and principles. In the middle of the village: a barrier. The two families refuse to speak. In the river sits an island, where another community is being built : that of the children. Free, unpredictable, wild. Stemming from the fear of the other, that of wild beasts, and the joy procured by the immensity of the forest, unravels a cruel tale in which tensions and fear give shape to the geography of an ancestral conflict.

A well-preserved mammoth carcass is found in the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, opening up the possibility of a world-changing “Jurassic Park” moment in genetics.

About 3 thousand years ago, apparently due to climate change, musk oxen in Eurasia became completely extinct. They remained only in hard-to-reach places in North America and Greenland. To return the musk oxen to their historical homeland, scientists decided to conduct an experiment and brought 30 musk oxen to Taimyr. To find out how the experiment went, 35 years later we set off on a long trip to Taimyr and there we try to meet musk oxen.

In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.

In Northern Russia, a few dozen people still live in their traditional houses surrounded by water, stone, and sand. Cut off from vital infrastructure, almost forgotten by regional governance, these people have to cope with their everyday struggles.

Captain Kleinschmidt leads an expedition sponsored by the Carnegie Museum to the arctic regions of Alaska and Siberia to study the natives and the animal life.

A scientist wants to recover some mammoth DNA to clone a live mammoth. So he finds a buried mammoth in the vast, rock hard permafrost of Siberia, digs it out in the middle of a blizzard and flies it home. Of course he needed a little help. So he befriended an arctic nomad who knows ever rill, rock, pond and stream in the entire region. As background to the quest, National Geographic relates the migratory history of the mammoth family.

Le monde perdu des mammouths

Captured by the Red Army during World War II, Hungarian soldier András Toma was admitted to a Soviet psychiatric hospital. After disappearing from prisoner-of-war records, he was presumed dead in Hungary. Because his name was incorrectly recorded in medical documents and he spoke only Hungarian—mistaken by staff for incoherent speech—Toma spent decades misunderstood and isolated in the institution. Fifty-three years later, a visiting Slovak doctor recognised his language, triggering an investigation by Hungarian authorities. Toma was repatriated in 2000, believed to be the last prisoner of war from World War II to return home.