The World According to Monsanto

French documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin has thoroughly researched her subject, through a three-year investigation in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Robin briefly explores Monsanto’s long history of producing toxic chemicals, such as PCBs and dioxin-laced Agent Orange, and interviews victims of the company’s chemical operations. However, the rest of the film devotes more attention to Monsanto’s 20-year old genetically engineered seed empire.

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The New Rulers of the World

In order to examine the true effects of globalization, Pilger turns the spotlight on Indonesia, a country described by the World Bank as a model pupil until its globalized economy collapsed in 1998. The film examines the use of sweatshop factories by famous brand names, and asks some penetrating questions. Who are the real beneficiaries of the globalized economy? Who really rules the world now? Is it governments or a handful of huge companies? The Ford Motor Company alone is bigger than the economy of South Africa. Enormously rich men, like Bill Gates, have a wealth greater than all of Africa.

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The Plane That Wouldn't Talk (Air Crash Investigation - National Geographic)

(Alternative Title: Mixed Signals)

Birgenair Flight 301 was a scheduled Puerto Plata-Gander-Berlin-Frankfurt flight. The Boeing 757-225 on the route, operated by Turkish-managed Birgenair partner Alas Nacionales, crashed. On takeoff, the captain finds that his air speed indicator (ASI) is not reading properly, though the co-pilot's ASI is showing the correct speed. Both pilots become confused and believe that both ASIs are malfunctioning. They lose control of the aircraft and it crashes in the Caribbean Sea shortly after take-off from Puerto Plata's Gregorio Luperón International Airport in the Dominican Republic. All 13 crew members and 176 passengers die.

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The Game of Their Lives - Chollima Chookgudan (BBC)

In 1966 the North Korean football team shocked the world by knocking out Italy at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough. Using archive footage and interviews with the seven surviving players, "The Game of Their Lives: (Chollima Chookgudan - 천리마 축구단), an award-winning documentary tells the remarkable and highly entertaining story of the pint-sized giant killers. Back then, the North Koreans became so popular at Middlesbrough, the manufacturing city in northeastern England that was their World Cup home base, that the local citizenry adopted them as their favorites.

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The Truth According to Wikipedia

Google or Wikipedia? Those of us who search online -- and who doesn't? -- are getting referred more and more to Wikipedia. For the past two years, this free online "encyclopedia of the people" has been topping the lists of the world's most popular websites. But do we really know what we're using? Backlight plunges into the story behind Wikipedia and explores the wonderful world of Web 2.0. Is it a revolution, or pure hype?

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The Road to Guantanamo

Winner of the Silver Bear at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, The Road to Guantanamo is a docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross. Filming took place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, which doubled as Cuba. Mat Whitecross is credited as co-director, and handled most of the interviews with the real-life counterparts to the main characters. The film uses interviews, news footage, and reenactments to tell the story of the Tipton Three, young British men of Pakistani descent who were detained for over two years without charges at Guantanamo Bay by the American military.

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The Bermuda Triangle - Beneath the Waves (BBC)

Woven around a compelling expedition narrative, this programme conducts a series of experiments to prove conclusively whether the most credible theories do in fact weigh up. The stories behind some of the most baffling of disappearances are told but it is science, not speculation, that writes the final chapter. Following the story of the search for Navy Flight 19, one of the most famous disappearances, photography both above and beneath the waves is combined with dramatic re-constructions and CGI to create a stunning visual feast. Five experiments tried to explore the most plausible theories.

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Thunderbolt of the Gods

Converging scientific and historical investigation has led to a new vision of the “Electric Universe” and a radical reconstruction of the past. According to proponents of this viewpoint, popular ideas in our cultures must now give way to a deeper appreciation of electrical phenomena and the vast record left to us by the ancients in their heavens-oriented petroglyphs, myths and symbols.

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The Elegant Universe (NOVA - PBS)

One of the most ambitious and exciting theories ever proposed—one that may be the long-sought "theory of everything," which eluded even Einstein—gets a masterful, lavishly computer-animated explanation from bestselling author-physicist Brian Greene. Also known as superstring theory, the startling idea proposes that the fundamental ingredients of nature are inconceivably tiny strings of energy, whose different modes of vibration underlie everything that happens in the universe. The theory successfully unites the laws of the large—general relativity—and the laws of the small—quantum mechanics—breaking a conceptual logjam that has frustrated the world's smartest scientists for nearly a century.

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The Cove

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Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary of 2009, THE COVE follows an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers as they embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Taiji, Japan, shining a light on a dark and deadly secret. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques, including hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide. The result is a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and arresting imagery, adding up to an unforgettable story that has inspired audiences worldwide to action.

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The Lost World of Lake Vostok (Horizon - BBC)

It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left - but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They’ve found one of the largest lakes in the world. It’s very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometres of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century.

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The Case for Christ

When hard-nosed investigative journalist Lee Strobel embarked on a journey to de-bunk the claims of Christ, he instead uncovered something far more: a life-changing, deep-rooted faith, as chronicled in his Gold Medallion award-winning, best-selling book, The Case for Christ.

Strobel, the former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, draws upon his legal background (Yale Law School) and his years as an award-winning reporter to methodically subject the claims of Christ to the scrutiny he used in investigating legal cases. With dogged research and unmatched skill, Strobel examines the historical accuracy of the Gospels, the personal claims of Jesus, and His resurrection from the dead. The result is a remarkable journey from atheism to faith through a two-year investigation of the Bible and the life of Jesus Christ.

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The Case for A Creator

As a high school freshman, Lee Strobel became convinced that God did not exist. Only the hard, empirical evidence of science could be trusted--and it appeared to point to a universe created by purely materialistic processes. Time, chance, and Darwinian evolution.

This atheistic worldview deeply influenced Strobel’s academic years and early career as an award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Then, in 1980, his wife’s conversion to Christianity led him on an intensive search for the truth about God. Not surprisingly, he began with science.

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The Protestant Revolution (BBC)

In this four part documentary from BBC Four, Historian Tristram Hunt looks at how Protestantism has affected people's lives in The Protestant Revolution. This is a story of a revolution which has affected every person in the West, and nearly every country in the world. It is a revolution which influences the very fabric of existence – from what we do for a living, to who we vote for, who we go to war with and how we see ourselves as individuals and as nations.The series investigates the scientific, cultural, economic and political aspects of the movement with the aid of key academic witnesses, and concludes that the reach of Protestantism is so profound that it is impossible to imagine the modern world without it.The series explores how the revolutionary nature of the Reformation shaped the world we live in today, from modern art to the war in Iraq.

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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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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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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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