Social & External
Narration
A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.
The thousand-year-old tradition of pottery in the Indian subcontinent is now under threat. With the market being flooded with plastic in the evolution of civilization, today this Pal community is becoming displaced.
Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 28, 1895, the historic day on which the first cinema performance took place.
Banksy is the world's most infamous street artist, whose political art, criminal stunts and daring invasions have outraged the establishment for over two decades. Featuring rare interviews with Banksy, this is the story of how an outlaw artist led a revolutionary new movement and built a multi-million dollar empire, while his identity remained shrouded in mystery.
Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice is a documentary presented by English anatomist Dr. Alice Roberts that reveals some of the secrets of one of the most widely known extinct animals ever. Humans have been transfixed by the Wolly Mammoth since the end of the last ice age when there were still herds of them roaming the continents of Asia and Europe. Despite many people knowing about the great Woolly Mammoth until recently very little was known about them despite ancient humans living along side them for so long; few documented accounts exist.
The Victorian era is often cited for its lack of sexuality, but as this documentary reveals, the period's artists created a strong tradition surrounding the classical nude figure, which spread from the fine arts to more common forms of expression. The film explains how 19th-century artists were inspired by ancient Greek and Roman works to highlight the naked form, and how that was reflected in the evolving cultural attitudes toward sex.
In 150 years, twice marked by total destruction —a terrible earthquake in 1923 and incendiary bombings in 1945— followed by a spectacular rebirth, Tokyo, the old city of Edo, has become the largest and most futuristic capital in the world in a transformation process fueled by the exceptional resilience of its inhabitants, and nourished by a unique phenomenon of cultural hybridization.
This award-winning 1982 documentary includes in-depth interviews with Willem and Elaine de Kooning as well as archival footage of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Harold Rosenberg in conversation.
Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.
Until his death in 1994, the twentiethcentury master Paul Delvaux was the last surviving member of the first generation of surrealist painters. In this portrait, he reminisces about his family, himself, his art and the various phases of his career. He explains that all his visual ideas are derived from childhood memories and the film shows the way in which these scenes have been incorporated into his work. The painter is seen as a young man (the earliest footage dates from 1945) and the film includes some unique shots of the extraordinary Musée Spitzner.
One of the 20th century Belgian artists who was the most idolized, exhibited, published, sold... Yet the artist himself, Jean-Michel Folon (1934-2005), whose work became controversial because deemed insipid, with its mannerisms, pastel tones and colors, remains little-known. Through previously unseen archive footage, Gaëtan de Saint-Rémy offers him a voice.
This series incorporates the latest animated 3D films to explore recent discoveries about human history, especially in Asia.
In the docudrama "Les Derniers Secrets de l'humanité" (The Last Secrets of Humanity), author and director Jacques Malaterre and paleoanthropologist and professor at the Collège de France Yves Coppens reveal the incredible adventure of Asian prehistory. How does science help to reconstruct these bygone times in images? Thanks to discoveries made at excavation sites and in analysis and genetics laboratories, researchers are now revealing this distant, vanished past.
A compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage of Michael Jackson as he prepared for his series of sold-out shows in London.
Chaos reigns at the natural history museum when night watchman Larry Daley accidentally stirs up an ancient curse, awakening Attila the Hun, an army of gladiators, a Tyrannosaurus rex and other exhibits.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
John Shepherd spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of miles into space. After giving up the search, he makes a different connection here on earth.
Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.
In August 1961, speleologists from Italy’s booming North arrive on a Calabrian plateau where time stands still. The intruders discover one of the world’s deepest caves, the Bifurto Abyss, under the gaze of an old shepherd, the only witness of the pristine territory.
In this compelling documentary, members of the Thai youth soccer team tell their stories of getting trapped in Tham Luang Cave in 2018 — and surviving.
In 2009 John Jones entered Nutty Putty Cave with his brother Josh. What happened next has been a topic of much discussion and controversy ever since. Over 127 rescuers responded to the call for aid, and each one has their own take on the events. A story about love, life, and human connection. Ultimately it is the story about how clearly you can see what matters most when you are at the edge of life and death. Made with cooperation from members of John's immediate family.
This documentary follows a team of local archaeologists excavating never before explored passageways, shafts, and tombs, piecing together the secrets of Egypt’s most significant find in almost 50 years in Saqqara.
Based on the true nail-biting mission that captivated the world. Twelve boys and the coach of a Thai soccer team explore the Tham Luang cave when an unexpected rainstorm traps them in a chamber inside the mountain. Entombed behind a maze of flooded cave tunnels, they face impossible odds. A team of world-class divers navigate through miles of dangerous cave networks to discover that finding the boys is only the beginning.
The background and career of Tony Parker, whose determination led him to become arguably the greatest French basketball player.
Dick Proenneke retired at age 50 in 1967 and decided to build his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park. Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself. The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness.
A look at the work and surprising success of a four-year-old girl whose paintings have been compared to the likes of Picasso and has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Celebrate the legacy of Stan Lee as the co-creator of such legendary characters as Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, The Avengers, and hundreds more.
Three boys and two girls go backpacking from the city to a paradisiacal island. There they rent motorcycles, travel around the prettiest and most remote spots, camp out in the woods, on a coastal cliff, get drunk and swim in the sea. The following day they enter a deep, maze-like cave to explore it and get lost inside.
A documentary highlighting the Soviet Union's legendary and enigmatic hockey training culture and world-dominating team through the eyes of the team's Captain Slava Fetisov, following his shift from hockey star and celebrated national hero to political enemy.
Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud travel throughout Europe to film brown bears, wild horses, wolves and other animals in their natural habitat.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.