Sangduen Chailert, or Lek, as she is generally known, has already rescued over 200 elephants. She has dedicated her life to saving the Asian elephant and founded a special camp, The Elephant Nature Park to protect them. We follow this winner of Time Magazine’s “Asian Hero of the Year” Award in her work. Lek is on a mission to save the Asian elephant in her native Thailand. This film looks at the plight of the Asian elephant, as it goes from being a widely used domestic animal, to becoming a burden on modernizing communities. With experts predicting its extinction within four decades, Lek’s work is needed now more than ever and she has gathered a large group of supporters and volunteers in her quest for a better future for the Asian elephant. This moving film demonstrates Lek’s natural understanding of and rapport with these huge animals and will stir the viewers emotions as it highlights the often desperate state some elephants are kept in.
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
A small leopard with aquamarine eyes learns the fundamental skills of survival during her first three years.
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
In a dark, ambiguous environment, minuscule particles drift slowly before the lens. The image focuses to reveal spruce trees and tall pines, while Innu voices tell us the story of this territory, this flooded forest. Muffled percussive sounds gradually become louder, suggesting the presence of a hydroelectric dam. The submerged trees gradually transform into firebrands as whispers bring back the stories of this forest.
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
This intimate portrait of a Thai boxer, from New York-based filmmaker Josh Hayward, reveals the rituals and pressures experienced in Bangkok's boxing culture—an environment of grueling physical and psychological tension.
A vivid journey into the mysterious subterranean world of mycelium and its fruit— the mushroom. A story that begins 3.5 billion years ago, fungi makes the soil that supports life, connecting vast systems of roots from plants and trees all over the planet, like an underground Internet. Through the eyes of renowned mycologist Paul Stamets, professor of forest ecology Suzanne Simard, best selling author Michael Pollan, food naturalist Eugenia Bone and others, we experience the power, beauty and complexity of the fungi kingdom.
Snow blankets the trees and green lights dance in a star-filled sky. For a brief time during the festive season, our thoughts turn to a winter wonderland, far to the north. It’s a place best known to outsiders as Lapland, the magical home of Santa Claus. But far from the festive lights, Santa’s home is even more enchanting than you may realise.
Following Sir Brian May over a decade-long journey to understand the crisis caused by bovine tuberculosis and his opposition to the controversial badger cull, implemented to curb the spread of the disease in cattle. It’s a story surrounded by controversy, but one little known to many - a tale of tragedy for both humans and animals.
As the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba is host to spectacular wildlife found nowhere else on the planet: from the jumping crocodiles of the Zapata swamp to the world's tiniest hummingbird, from thousands of migrating crabs to giant, bat-eating boas that lie in wait for easy prey. Decades of a socialist, conservation-minded government, American embargoes and minimal development have left the island virtually unchanged for 50 years. As international relations ease, what will become of this wildlife sanctuary?
Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.
People go and search for the legendary Bigfoot creature.
A dazzling journey through time via the remarkable images of National Geographic photographer Frans Lanting and his epic "LIFE" project, which presents a stunning interpretation of life on Earth, from the Big Bang through the present.
Travel to Alaska's great wilderness, a place of incomparable beauty and power where you will witness close-up the amazing cycles of life in one of the last pristine corners of our planet Earth. Soar over Mt. McKinley, the tallest people in North America, crown jewel of the vast Alaska range, piercing clouds nearly four miles high. Explore the vibrant territory beneath this stunningly beautiful mountain. Watch caribou roam the plains, listen to the haunting howl of the wolf, witness the flight of the majestic golden eagle, meet a mother grizzly and her two cubs as they emerge from winter's hibernation. You'll be swept up in the drama and beauty of this unique wilderness and you'll enjoy for many years to come its unforgettable scenery.
Ocean Voyagers explores the familiar themes of motherhood and parenting in a world as unfamiliar as it is breathtaking. Featuring a precocious newborn humpback calf and his enormous 40 ton mother, we are taken on a journey of discovery into their world.
In this special documentary that inspired a two-season television series, scientists and other experts speculate about what the Earth, animal life, and plant life might be like if, suddenly, humanity no longer existed, as well as the effect humanity's disappearance might have on the artificial aspects of civilization.
Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.
A stunning and intimate portrait of the Arhuaco indigenous community in Colombia. In 1990, in a celebrated BBC documentary, the Arhuaco made contact with the outside world to warn industrialized societies of the potentially catastrophic future facing the planet if we don’t change our ways. Now, three decades later, with the advances of audio/visual technology, we go back to the Snowy Peaks of Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria to illuminate their ethos against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile world.