
27 Feb 2022

Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History
Stephen Fry embarks on a journey to discover the stories behind some of the world's most fantastic beasts that have inspired myths and legends in history, story-telling and film.
The first documentary ever to reveal the true story of Bram Stoker and his legendary novel...
This exhaustive documentary attempts to tell the history of Bram Stoker's influential novel Dracula, explaining both the historical antecedents to the story, as well as offering look at Stoker's life in order to help illuminate this enduring horror tale, and exposing some of the myths surrounding vampires that have long been accepted as fact.
Narrator
Self

Dracula (archive footage)
Self
Dracula / Vlad Tepes (archive footage)
Self

Nosferatu (archive footage)
Additional Narration

27 Feb 2022

Stephen Fry embarks on a journey to discover the stories behind some of the world's most fantastic beasts that have inspired myths and legends in history, story-telling and film.

01 Jan 1991

A history of the famous vampire of books and movies, using film clips, previews and other methods.


No one could spin a yarn to make a sale like Ray Lum. Twenty years after their initial meeting, Bill Ferris returned home to Mississippi in the early ‘70s with a camera. The result reveals a look back at the colorful rhythms of Ray’s life—at home, at the auction, joking with strangers outside country stores— and provides a glimpse at Southern manhood, friendship and loss. Now nearly Ray’s age when they first filmed, Ferris has become a Grammy Award winning documentarian and renowned folklorist. Using never before seen 16mm footage and new animations, OKAY, MR. RAY is a short documentary film about how even the tallest tales help us keep the memory alive of the ones we love.
01 Jan 1954
No overview found

01 Jan 1979

For the 'Are'are people of the Solomon Islands, the most valued music is that of the four types of panpipe ensembles. With the exception of slit drums, all musical instruments are made of bamboo; therefore the general word for instruments and the music performed with them is "bamboo" ('au). This film shows the making of panpipes, from the cutting the bamboo in the forest to the making of the final bindings. The most important part of the work consists in shaping each tube to its necessary length. Most 'Are'are panpipe makers measure the length of old instruments before they shape new tubes. Master musician 'Irisipau, surprisingly, takes the measure using his body, and adjusts the final tuning by ear. For the first time we can see here how the instruments and their artificial equiheptatonic scale-seven equidistant degrees in an octave-are practically tuned.

12 Dec 2013

Diabolical. Seductive. Immortal. Vampires have been an icon of evil in folklore and popular culture for more than three centuries, yet only one name still personifies the ultimate aristocrat of bloodlust. Now join the world’s foremost experts on Dracula – including academics, authors and horror historians – as they explore the untold story of the Transylvanian Count, from the legend of Vlad The Impaler and Bram Stoker’s celebrated novel through its landmark stage productions and classic movie adaptations.

19 Sep 2020

A lighthouse keeper prepares his earthly funeral while trying to reconnect with his inner elf. Hulda and Trausti have shared a roof on the Icelandic coast for over seventy years. Her love of books is matched by his love of stones. When he tells her he wants to change his name to Elf she warns him that the family will reject him. Now, as his one hundredth birthday nears and Trausti senses the hand of death upon him, he is searching for an elf’s coffin…

10 Feb 2000

Walker takes us on a personal journey into a world of myth and imagination that he learned from his grandmother. He travels from the Moors of Devon and the Highlands of Scotland to the brooding Celtic landscapes of Ireland and the intimate hills of Cape Breton, in his search of this potent “otherworld” of the imagination.
05 Apr 2022
A group of teenagers go out to a den in the woods for a night of drinking, unaware that their behaviour touches on issues of ritual, folklore, mysticism and UFOs.

25 May 2018

In the frigid waters off of Russia’s Bering Strait, Inuit and Chukchi hunters today still seek out the giant sea mammals that have provided their people with food since time immemorial. It is known, that the whale hunting today is controversial and subject to international criticism and regulations. But the Inuit and Chukchi hunt is permitted by international law because of the whaling is the foundation of their culture and their life. The contemporary story of elders Aleksandr and Aleksei blends seamlessly with that of “the woman who gave birth to a whale” and other ancient myths, told here in vivid animation, in this ongoing struggle for survival and preservation of a traditional lifestyle in one of the most remote places on earth.
01 Jan 1970
Martin Slivka's documentary film about Karol Plicka (1894-1987), the founder of Slovak cinematography.

13 Jul 2023

No other country in Europe has more bears than Romania. There are probably over 6000. Especially in Transylvania, they often come dangerously close to humans. As a result, people in many places are at their wits' end. The film follows a female bear and her three cubs as they leave the protection of the Carpathian forests and become 'problem bears'. Their dramatic fate highlights the challenges of bear-human coexistence. Is there still a common future in densely populated Europe?
01 Jan 1977
No overview found
A powerful cultural documentary about a Caribbean father and son who return to Grenada to reclaim ancestral stories. Blending folklore, myth, and underwater visuals, the film preserves Black heritage and reframes the feared Jab Jab as a symbol of resistance and identity.
01 Jan 1984
No overview found
01 Jan 1996
No overview found

01 Apr 2021

No overview found

22 Aug 2024

In the summer of 1961, a group of young Italian anthropologists made a clandestine journey through Spain, in order to record popular songs that supported anti-Franco resistance. As a result of their work, they were prosecuted and their recordings were censored. Sixty years later, and guided by Emilio Jona, aged 92, the last living member of that group of travellers, we recover the unpublished recordings and reconstruct the journey, today, across an emotional and political landscape, regaining historical memories through these songs, as relevant today as they were then.

24 Feb 1972

In a remote mountainous village elderly people no longer deemed productive are stoned to death.

01 Jan 1992

Short documentary on the making of Francis Ford Coppola's "Dracula" (1992).