BBC Documentaries Collection

BBC Monitor Lizard Africas Greatest Thief



David Attenborough narrates a documentary about the life and crimes of Africa's most notorious raider the monitor lizard. To feed its monster appetite, it will steal from under the noses of humans, lions and crocodiles, but with its criminal lifestyle comes extreme danger. The Nile Monitor is Africa's largest lizard and most notorious 'raider' - its ultimate challenge is to steal the heavily guarded eggs and young of the Nile crocodile - can this expert thief pull it off?


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BBC Earth Pilgrim a year on Dartmoor



First Aired: Fri 18 Jan 2007, 8.00pm BBC Two

This exquisitely photographed film is a spiritual journey into the ethereal landscape of Dartmoor with Satish Kumar, the world-renowned ecologist, former Jain monk and pilgrim for peace.

Through changing seasons, Satish walks the moor and explores ancient woods and rivers, which are home to a wealth of wildlife including red deer, emperor moths, starling roosts, kestrels and foxes. His meditations on the natural world are lyrical, uplifting and timely.

From the producer of the Emmy and RTS award-winning Mississippi: Tales of the Last River Rat.


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BBC Natural World Saved by Dolphins



First Aired: Fri 8 Feb 2008, 8.00pm BBC Two
6/8, Winter Season, 2008

Since ancient times there have been stories of dolphins rescuing humans at sea. But is there any truth behind them, or are they just myths and legends?

Set against the stunning backdrops of the Red Sea and New Zealand's North Island, the film dramatises two events where dolphins apparently saved humans from shark attacks.

By drawing on survivor interviews and the expertise of the world's leading dolphin scientists, this films reveals what makes dolphins want to save human lives.

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FPS: 25.00
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Sampling Rate 48 kHz
No of Channels: 2
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Subs: None
Length: 00:48:28
File Size: ~639 MB (1/7 of DVD5)


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BBC Full Circle with Michael Palin 1997



Michael Palin’s fascinating journey around the 18 countries on the Pacific Rim

“This is the richest, longest, most ambitious and most exhausting of all the journeys. There was so much to do and so many different terrains, climates, foods and illnesses to experience that at one point it seemed like we were engaged on the ultimate new Olympic event - Full Circling.”
Michael Palin

Michael’s journey through all the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean was anything but ‘pacific’ as blizzards, Bogota’s Bullet Street and an Alaskan abandonment pushed him and the crew to the limit. But there was time for adventure including crawling through the Viet Cong’s Cu Chi tunnels, sharing a feast with head-hunters in Borneo and helicoptering into New Zealand’s Tasman glacier.
(1997)



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BBC Looking For China Girl (2005)



DivX | 512x288 | Runtime: 48min | 480MB

Twenty-five years ago, to stop the countrys spiralling birth rate, Chinas communist government decreed that couples should have just one child. And influenced by Chinese tradition, couples usually want a son and not a daughter. According to official figures, about 117 boys are born for every 100 girls. Many reasons have been given for the fact that more boys are born than girls, including selective abortion or infanticide, under-reporting of female births and adoption.

This film follows 24-year-old Xinhau Lu, who still lives with his parents on a small farm in rural China, as he searches for a wife. Knowing he would not attract a bride in his impoverished circumstances, he travels 860 miles to Beijing, in the hopes of finding work and attracting a bride. His loneliness is evident when he attends the wedding of a more fortunate childhood friend.

Some young women across China are being kidnapped and sold as brides. We meet Qing, only 16 years-old when she was snatched and forced to live with a desperate bachelor. There are women, like Shao Ying, who are making successful careers and enjoying the single life.

The Chinese government believes that within 15 years as many as 40 million men will be permanent bachelors.


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BBC Louis Theroux Twilight Of The Porn Stars 2012



In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. 15 years later, he returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn on the internet. Louis revisits some of the original programme’s contributors as well as meeting the latest crop of porn performers dreaming of porn stardom.


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BBC The Genius Of Photography



The Genius Of Photography is the BBC’s most comprehensive look at one of the world’s most influential art forms – exploring every aspect of photography from daguerreotype to digital.
Featuring many of the greatest photographs ever taken – and the photographers who took them – this new, six-part series looks at the history of photography, from Man Ray and Walker Evans to more contemporary geniuses such as Richard Avedon, Sally Mann and Martin Parr.

Ep 1 – Fixing the Shadows
Fixing the Shadows tells the story of the birth of photography itself and the profound question that it raised, and which has never been satisfactorily answered: what is photography for? Detailing the rival methods of the pioneers Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre for ‘fixing the shadows’, the programme examines how photography took its place alongside other new technologies like the railway and telegraph to transform our understanding of the modern world. It describes how pioneer photographers like the portraitist Nadar asserted the status of photography as an art only for this status to be transformed by the Kodak revolution, which put the camera into the hands of the masses who unlocked its potential for surreality, randomness and surprise. Finally it examines
the case of Jacques-Henri Lartigue, the schoolboy photographer who demonstrated the true genius of photography in the hands of the amateur. Includes interviews with Chuck Close and David Byrne

Ep 2 – Documents for Artists
In the decades following the First World War, photography was the central medium of the age. “Anyone who fails to understand photography”, said the Hungarian artist and photographer Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, “will be one of the illiterates of the future”. Precise, objective, rational and apparently machine-like, it was used to promote the radical utopia of the Soviet Union and to bring order and clarity to the chaos of Weimar Germany. But while some prized photography for its ability to objective documents others were using it to explore the irrational, the subjective and the surreal, photography’s natural language. The Genius of Photography – Documents for Artists examines in detail the work of some of the greatest and most influential modern photographers: Alexander Rodchenko, August Sander, Man Ray, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans and Bill Brandt. With contributions from Martin Parr, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joel Meyerowitz and Mark Haworth-Booth.

Ep 3 – Right Time, Right Place
Being in the right place at the right time, the decisive moment, getting in close — in the popular imagination this is photography at its best, a medium that makes us eyewitnesses to the moments when history is made. But just how good is photography at making sense of what it records? Is getting in close always better than standing back, and just how decisive are the moments that photographers risk their necks to capture? Set against the backdrop of the Second World War and its aftermath, The Genius of Photography – Right Place, Right Time examines how photographers dealt with dramatic and tragic events like D-Day, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, and the questions their often extraordinary pictures raise about history as seen through the viewfinder. With contributions from Magnum legends Philip Jones Griffiths and Susan Meiselas, soldier-lensman Tony Vaccaro and broadcaster Jon Snow.

Ep 4 – Paper Movies
The American photographer Garry Winogrand said that he took photographs to “see what the world looked like photographed”. Photographers have always had this as their mission statement, but the three decades from the late 1950’s onwards was the real golden age of the photographic journey. The Genius of Photography – Paper Movies relives the journeys that produced some of the most acclaimed paper movies. The programme takes a fascinating look at Robert Frank’s odyssey through 50s America, William Klein’s one-man assault on the sidewalks of New York, Garry Winogrand’s charting of the human comedy in Central Park Zoo, Tony Ray Jones’s dissection eccentricity at the English seaside, and finally, William Eggleston’s guide to Memphis and the American South. Episode four of the series also examines the arrival of colour as a credible medium for serious photographers, as controversial at the time as Dylan going electric.
Contributors include legendary photographers like William Klein, William Eggleston, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Joel Meyerowitz, Martin Parr and artist Ed Ruscha.

Ep 5 – We are Family
Having conquered the street and the road, photographers approached the final frontier: the family and the self. The Genius of Photography – We are Family is about what happens when photography translates personal relationships into photographic ones, when strangers, celebrities, lovers and children get fed to the camera. It’s also about what happens when photographers turn their cameras on themselves—what they choose to reveal, and just what they try to conceal.
The chronological heartland of the programme is the me decades of the 1970’s and the 1980’s. From Diane Arbus’s freaks (we meet Colin Wood, the manic boy clutching the hand grenade in Central Park) to Richard Avedon’s confrontations with celebrities like Marylin Monroe, from the confessional diaries of Larry Clark and Araki, to the uncomfortably intimate family portraits of Sally Mann and Richard Billingham, the series takes a photographic journey into some of the most intriguing ideas of the photographic self, including an unforgettable encounter as Nan Goldin photographs Joey the transsexual.

Ep 6 – Snap Judgements
The final programme, The Genius of Photography – Snap Judgements, asks what a photograph is worth these days. One answer is $2.9m, the record-breaking price achieved by an Edward Steichen print auctioned at Sotheby’s in February 2006. The other answer is around 1/29th billionth of that figure based on the calculation that some 29 billion photographs will be taken in 2006 by phone cameras alone. Photography has never been so valuable and so ubiquitous. From America to China and on to Africa, the programme examines how the business of being a photographer has been changed by the market’s sudden interest in what was once the poor relation of the art world.
The series culminates in an examination of the impact of the digital post-production techniques that make anything possible, and looks at the rediscovery of techniques which are taking photography back to the 19th century.
With contributions from Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson and one of China’s leading photographer Wang Qingsong.




Sample Screen Shot

BBC 100 Years Of Wildlife Films

This new two-hour documentary is the centrepiece in a dazzling wildlife season on BBC Four.

Bill Oddie highlights the passionate, eccentric and pioneering individuals who have often risked life and limb to break new boundaries in wildlife films. He charts the extraordinary changes in technology that have driven the industry forward, and reveals how the last hundred years of wildlife films has as much to do with our social attitudes as it has to do with the animals themselves.

With stunning, exciting and sometimes shocking footage, the documentary explores the changing trends throughout the last century, from shooting animals for fun in the 1930s to campaigning to save them from extinction today. As Oddie says: "To me the ultimate aim, the hope, the prayer behind every wildlife film... it's to make us care about the natural world and say 'here's something we love - we don't want to lose it'."

Plus, film-makers explain the challenges that filming animals can pose, we find out more about the pioneers, discover who was first to film underwater - and who narrowly escaped death to get the shots they wanted.

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BBC Sexism in Football (2012)


Sexism in Football?
Broadcast: BBC 1
Wednesday 04 April 2012
22:45 - 23:35


Gabby Logan explores sexism in football, hearing stories from influential women working across the men's game.
Just how bad is it? From Karren Brady in the boardroom to the most powerful woman in football, UEFA's Karen Espelund, one thing is common - they have all experienced discrimination. Other contributors include the first female Match of the Day commentator, Jacqui Oatley; Robbie Savage, Lawrie Sanchez and the recently-appointed first woman on the FA Board, Heather Rabbatts.


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Dylans Folk The Pure The Bad and The Holy 2007


Documentary about the American folk revival, the milieu from which the nascent Bob Dylan emerged in the early 1960s and whose crucible was the Newport folk festival. In 1963 it provided the perfect platform for Dylan, under the patronage of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, to be acknowledged as the principal voice of folk music at the age of just 22. Other stars of the time such as Baez, Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Muddy Waters and Mahalia Jackson are also featured.


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BBC Racism A History



New series exploring the impact of racism on a global scale, as part of the season of programmes marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.


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Storyville Cuban Punch Up The Boys who Fought for Castro (2011)



Documentary which follows the stories of three young hopefuls through eight dramatic months of training and education as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives so far, Cuba's National Boxing Championship for Under-12s. But during the season, crisis strikes - Fidel Castro is taken ill and all of Cuba's Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA. As the championship draws closer, the Cuba that the boys have been taught to believe in is at a historic crossroads.


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BBC Michael Palin Great Railway Journeys 1980



Great Railway Journeys, originally titled Great Railway Journeys of the World, is a recurring series of travel documentaries produced by BBC Television. The premise of each programme is that the presenter, typically a well-known figure from the arts or media, would make a journey by train, usually through a country or to a destination to which they had a personal connection


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BBC Blackbeard



This is the true story of Edward Teach, who went on to become the most notorious pirate the world has ever known. Loved by some, hated by many, feared by everyone, his reign of terror along the east coast of America and rash decision to strike at the heart of the government drove the authorities to put an end to piracy once and for all…

Based on the stories of Blackbeard and other pirates who lived at that time, this immersive, beautifully shot drama reconstructs in vivid detail a larger-than-life man and the fascinating historical period in which he lived. A gripping tale of skullduggery, heroism, cunning and revenge!


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BBC Predators



Predators uncovers the crucial split-second decisions between predator and prey — the moments where life hangs in the balance.

Through action replays, computer animation and on-board cameras, the hunter and the hunted are analysed from any angle. It reveals the strength, determination and tactics of the hunter and the skilful strategies of the hunted. It’s not blood, guts and predictable results. It’s the behind-the-scenes drama of a battle of wits that will determine success or failure: how to get a meal, or escape becoming one.

Part 1: The Ultimate Predators

These are nature’s most charismatic killers. Breathtaking images from a miniaturised camera attached to a golden eagle show how it twists through the skies and hurtles across the ground to dispatch its quarry with extraordinary speed. The great white shark’s most dangerous attack behaviour is deconstructed and explained. So too is the explosive strike strategy of the Nile crocodile. But predators don’t always have it all their own way — one mistake and the predator’s edge can be lost through injury, which prey can exploit.

Part 2: Nowhere To Hide

Enter a realm of senses that we can only marvel at. In whick seek and destroy experts detect even the faintest clues and where a breath, a footstep, a heart-beat, even an electrical pulse is enough to sign a death warrant.

See how hammerhead sharks use their heads like metal detectors to locate buried fish by the minute electrical fields they generate and how the star-nosed mole, probably the most bizarre looking predator of all, has the greatest sense of touch in the animal kingdom. Our familiar world grows alien as we discover how predators really seek out their prey.

Part 3: Special Agents

An octopus carries a hidden cache of devastating power tools whilst, in the desert, corolla spiders build beautiful but deadly quartz minefields. Torpedo rays blast prey with electric stun guns. There’s even an expert safe-cracker: the aye-aye, which listens for its prey as it taps its way along a branch.

Part 4: The Skills To Survive

The race between predator and prey is a close thing — escape can be as likely as kill as the prey runs for its life. In the battles for survival predators use an impressive array of hardware and senses. But, unless they use the right strategy and tactics, they have little chance of success.

Part 5: Mass Attack

Ferocious, alien giant hornets in Japan swarm together to devastate a hive of bees. But this tactic can also work for prey — we see how a million starlings create an awe-insiring spectacle as they confuse attacking peregrine falcons.

Part 6: Natural Born Predators

Some predators are born knowing what to do, pre-programmed for the kill — others need a lifetime of learning. What does it take to become a predator?


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