Tales of Television Centre
Various actors, presenters, directors and other staff who have worked at the iconic BBC Television Centre at Shepherd's Bush in London reminisce about their time there.
Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Kenya and Uganda to uncover the stories behind Britain's favourite drink, meeting the people who pick, pack and transport tea.
Various actors, presenters, directors and other staff who have worked at the iconic BBC Television Centre at Shepherd's Bush in London reminisce about their time there.
Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida.
In Africa, poachers brutally maim and kill elephants for their ivory, much of which is exported to China or smuggled into the United States. The profits help fund terrorist organisations, and are used to buy guns and artillery. WILD DAZE takes an unflinching look at these problems from various perspectives, and shows how the slaughter has decimated the elephant population, left survivors traumatised, and seriously harmed the forests of Eastern and Southern Africa.
Undercover reporter Mark Daly reveals racism among police recruits in Manchester, England.
Art critic Alastair Sooke tracks down the ten most expensive paintings to sell at auction, and investigates the stories behind the astronomic prices art can reach. Gaining access to the glittering world of the super-rich, Sooke discovers why the planet's richest people want to spend their millions on art.
The Tea Explorer documentary follows the journey of tea enthusiast Jeff Fuchs along the Tea Horse Road, a 1300-year-old trade route in the Himalayas. It combines the author's passion for both tea and mountains, tracing the route's history, meeting the people who live along it, and exploring the significance of tea in the region.
Graham Bell and Ed Leigh journey southwards through the frozen province of British Columbia, Canada, towards the home of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. En route, they travel through remote communities cut off from civilisation through the winter, learning how the locals survive off the land. Leigh and Bell experience this harsh life for themselves alongside miners, loggers and hunters, and find out what it is like to function and work in such harsh conditions. Their journey ends with a gruelling trek on foot through the spectacular Coast Range Mountains into Whistler, one of the Olympic venues.
Researchers discover that Aliens from another world assisted in the evolution of man and were the genesis of a very real bloodline that remains intact today. The Aliens left Earth millennia ago, but the signs are growing daily.
Documentary about freestyle competition and hip-hop culture in Argentina.
Kay Mander kept training and social issues to the fore in the 1940s with her innovative documentaries. Mander, now living in Kirkcudbrightshire, recalls her life and work, with clips from many of her films.
A Ghanaian fashion student and a Nigerian squash player are among the Africans making a life in 70s Britain.
During its nine-month-long season, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express makes over 60 journeys, covering 150,000 kilometres, with the majority of trips between London and Venice. The train is comprised of 17 unique 1920s carriages that have transported a host of elite individuals across Italy, Switzerland, and Turkey for more than a century. This documentary follows the stories of the staff and passengers as the train makes its way across Europe, with some customers having paid more than £2,000 for the privilege.
Historian William Dalrymple travels to Hyderabad in India to explore the remarkable 18th-century love affair between a British diplomat and the Muslim princess he married. Tensions ran high when an Englishman fell for a Mughal ruler's daughter.
A documentary directed by Hori Teiichi who was a production assistant on the 1994 documentary Otentousama ga Hoshii and has worked in a wide variety of genres from pink films to ordinary theatrical releases. The lifestyle and scenery of Osawa, a village situated 740 meters up on the mountainous slopes of Hamamatsu city's northern region in Shizuoka Prefecture, are the focus of this first installment to the "Tenryu-ku" series. It straightforwardly captures the tea harvest in late May and the tea processing conducted in a factory while showcasing mist shrouded tea fields drummed by rain as well as the beauty of the glistening green of the tea leaf shoots.
Sudan, Southern Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains in Africa. Scenes from the forgotten war that the fighters of the Nuba people have held since 2011 against the government of President Omar al-Bashir and the Sudanese army, which crudely show the hard daily life of Hannan, a brave woman fighting for the survival of her family; Jordania, a promising student; Mosquito, a reckless journalist; and Al-Bagir, a rebel leader.
This is the dramatic global story of the first year of COVID-19, tracing the devastation caused by the spread of the virus across four continents.
A celebration of the diversity of Ethiopia's culture and wildlife. It journeys from North to South - spanning mountains, rainforests and the hottest place on Earth. It documents Muslims mixing with Christians as they have for over a millennia and the 'honey people' of the forest, filmed here for the first time. Visually stunning and unsentimental, this is Ethiopia as you've never seen it before.
Julia Bradbury heads for Iceland to embark on the toughest walk of her life. Her challenge is to walk the 60 kilometres of Iceland's most famous hiking route, a trail that just happens to end at the unpronounceable volcano that brought air traffic across Europe to a standstill in 2010 . With the help of Icelandic mountain guide Hanna, Julia faces daunting mountain climbs, red hot lava fields, freezing river crossings, deadly clouds of sulphuric gas, swirling ash deserts and sinister Nordic ghost stories as she attempts to reach the huge volcanic crater at the centre of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier.
In the late 70s and early 80s, ET phoned home on Atari 2600 and became the video game that New Media magazine later described as having toppled a billion dollar industry. We know the industry rose again as a pale, commercial version of its old self, but… did you ever wonder what it was like back in the wild days when the titans of gaming clashed, not on Wall Street, but inside the minds of designers? Want to learn first hand how the barren valley south of The Bay gave birth to cult celebrity that died as quickly as it was born? Take the ride with the folks who made it happen. Walk on walls, smoke the evil weed, and plunge head first into the uncharted (undocumented) world that was game production back in the bad old days.
Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.