War Photographer

This is a film about a committed, shy man, who is considered one of the bravest and most important war photographers of our time - but hardly fits the cliché of the hard-boiled war veteran. War Photographer tells the story of the American photographer James Nachtwey, about his motivation, his fears and his daily routine as a war photographer. If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about 'exposure time' in the very moment of dread?

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Worse Than War (PBS)

“Worse Than War” is a two-hour television companion to Mr. Goldhagen’s 2009 book of the same title, an examination of the causes of genocide and ethnic cleansing along with his recommendations for how to prevent them. We see him visiting scenes of mass murder in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, Guatemala and Germany, where he talks to survivors and perpetrators, often posed within beautifully photographed landscapes.

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Kung Fu Monks: Secrets of the Shaolin Temple (National Geographic)

National Geographic’s Kung Fu Monks: Secrets of the Shaolin Temple is about the Shaolin monks who are famous all around the world for their elegant display of martial arts. For thousands of years, the Shaolin monks have trained the top Kung Fu masters and played a pivotal role in China’s history. Today, the secrets of the Shaolin Temple is spread around the world by Shi Yan Ming,a former Shaolin monk who bravely escaped from the Shaolin troupe during their USA tour. Many people, including popular ones becomes his students, although others derided him for leaving the sacred temple.

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The Invisible World (National Geographic)

This classic 1979 National Geographic documentary film brings us unfamiliar landscapes and exotic creatures--this time, however, they are all lurking on the everyday surfaces that surround us. The Invisible World picks up where our eyes leave off, exploring details too small or fast for humans to grasp. Many events take without our human eye cannot perceiving because these occurrences are too small, too large, too fast, too slow, or beyond the spectrum of visible light. Hence, entire worlds might escape our inspection if it were not for some extraordinary photographic techniques, sophisticated cameras, and imaging devices. Much of the film focuses on microscopic events that, magnified thousands of times, eerily replicate occurrences in the larger world.

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A War on Science (BBC - Horizon)

When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.

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The President's Guide to Science (BBC - Horizon)

This documentary was first aired in September 2008, a few months before Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush as America's president. The US president, regardless of who he / she is, has the power to save our planet or destroy it with the touch of a button. To become the most powerful man on Earth, no qualification is necessary.

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Mr. & Mrs. Bin Laden

Mr. & Mrs. bin Laden tells the story of the fourth son of Osama bin Laden's controversial marriage to a British grandmother twice his age.

It was always the most unlikely of marriages: a 51-year-old grandmother and five-time divorcée from Cheshire, to a 26-year-old Saudi man who already had a wife and child himself. The fact that the man Jane Felix Browne married was also the son of the world's most-wanted terrorist, and she is now Osama bin Laden's daughter-in-law, made the story almost unbelievable. But the truth about the relationship between Mrs. bin Laden and the young and severely smitten Omar bin Laden is wonderfully elusive. After all, Jane claimed that she knew from first glance that they would be married.

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The Privileged Planet

There is an opinion, common among scientists and intellectuals, that our Earthly existence is not only rather ordinary, but in fact, insignificant and purposeless. The late astronomer Carl Sagan typifies this view in his book "Pale Blue Dot":

But perhaps this melancholy assumption, despite its heroic pretense, is mistaken. Perhaps the unprecedented scientific knowledge acquired in the last century, enabled by equally unprecedented technological achievements, should, when properly interpreted, contribute to a deeper appreciation of our place in the cosmos.

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