Svalbard is a norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean where the world's northernmost city is situated. It is a place where the underground, terrestrial and spatial universes blend into each other starting from a coal mine up to Venus.
The actor Gøril Mauseth goes on a 11.000 kilometer travel with the Trans-Siberian to play Anna Karenina in a new language in Leo Tolstoj's Russia, discovering the language, and the reasons Tolstoj wrote what he wrote, changing her forever.
Chaco Canyon, located in northwest New Mexico, is perhaps the only site in the world constructed in an elaborate pattern that mirrors the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon. How did an ancient civilization, with no known written language, arrange its buildings into a virtual celestial calendar, spanning an area roughly the size of Ireland?
Three Frenchmen go out on their first polar expedition to the largest polar desert in the world. Sarek, in the north of Sweden.
Nikolai and Vegard were childhood friends who spent their free time on the ski slopes. Now, Nikolai has become a professional skier, while Vegard lives in caves and trains obsessively to complete a perilous and physically demanding ski tour. This is a story about friendship and setting ambitious goals.
Two parallel stories are gradually unfolding the everyday life of two very different persons - that of 86-year-old Sara and 7-year-old Mihka - both residing in Guovdageaidnu - Kautokeino, in the middle of the Norwegian arctic tundra, through the drastic change of the arctic seasons and the passage from the long winter’s darkness to the never-ending light of the summer season.
A documentary chronicling the history of the telescope from the time of Galileo. Featuring interviews with leading scientists discussing Galileo's first use of the telescope to the latest discoveries in cosmology.
Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.
At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the Earth. Several international teams of scientists have been competing in a frantic race to detect it, in uncharted territories, far beyond Neptune. The recent discovery of several dwarf planets, with intriguing trajectories, have put astronomers on the trail of this mysterious planet. Why is this enigmatic planet so difficult to detect? What would a ninth planet teach us about our corner of the universe? Could it help us unlock some of the mysteries of our solar system?
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.
This feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - among nature's more spectacular phenomena – are a veritable obsession. The film follows 4 of them as they travel incredible distances to witness the last total eclipse of the millennium as it sweeps eastward across Europe to India. At various points along the way enthusiasts Alain Cirou in France, Paul Houde in Austria, Olivier Staiger in Germany and Debasis Sarkar in India offer their impressions of the historic event.
Shot mainly using spy cameras, this film gets closer than ever before to the world's greatest land predator. As the film captures its intimate portrait of polar bears' lives, it reveals how their intelligence and curiosity help them cope in a world of shrinking ice.
An incredible travel through space and time between the walls of the Paris Observatory, which is celebrating its 350th birthday. Place of discoveries such as speed of light or Neptune’s existence, it is still today one of the oldest operating observatories and the greatest hub in the world for astronomy and astrophysics researches, second only to Harvard.
Documentary which uses the latest, most detailed imagery to reveal the monthly life cycle of the moon. From Wales to Wyoming, Hong Kong to Croydon, the programme finds out how the moon shapes life on Earth, as well as exploring its mysterious dark side and discovering how the moon's journey around Earth delivers one of nature's most awe-inspiring events - a total solar eclipse. And at the end of a remarkable year of lunar activity, we find out why so many supermoons have been lighting up the night sky.
Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shrouded in a dense, toxic atmosphere. Scientists are now unveiling daring new strategies to search for clues from a time when the planet was alive.
Four exceptional astronomers celebrate 50 years of work and friendship on a return road trip in the southwestern United States, recapturing youthful adventures and recounting each other's influences on the most exciting period in astronomy’s history. Roger the instrument-maker, Donald the theoretician, Nick the visionary, and Wal the observer. Together they represent the most productive period astronomy has ever had. They helped build the world’s biggest observatories and made revolutionary discoveries about the evolving universe, discoveries that have the power to change the way humanity sees itself. Alison Rose’s film is a funny, insightful, humbling and intimate portrait of friendship, as the men reflect on how their profound work on the universe has reflected back on the individual, affecting their sense of religious faith, how life may have purpose, and what is knowable and unknowable.
With Olin's 85-year-old father as guide, we experience Norway's most adventurous valley, Oldedalen in Nordfjord. He grew up here, and here generations before him have lived in balance with nature.
To understand firsthand what the United States of America can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully “invades” some to see what they have to offer.
The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every continent, this is architectural magic on a cosmic scale.