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Why Ships Crash (2022) #1396
FILM
Main
1 hour. BBC. On 23 March 2021, the Ever Given – one of the largest container ships ever built – ploughed into the sandy bank of the Suez Canal, blocking the entire waterway. It stopped all traffic in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world for almost a week, causing a ‘ship jam’ of over 300 vessels and delaying deliveries of billions of pounds of vital food, fuel and medical supplies. The disruption to the global supply chain lasted for months. How did such an advanced ship crash in one of the most closely monitored shipping lanes in the world? How did a team of engineers free the ship in just six days? And who or what is to blame? Using never-before seen footage, testimony from witnesses speaking for the very first time, and expert analysis, this documentary aims to uncover the inside story of the Ever Given accident. And with over 2,500 shipping incidents a year, the film also asks if this was just a freak accident or whether it reveals a serious weakness in the world’s critical supply chain. |
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The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words (2020) #1240
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. The story of the pioneering project to rehabilitate child survivors of the Holocaust on the shores of Lake Windermere. In the year that marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, this powerful documentary, which accompanies the BBC Two drama, The Windermere Children, reveals a little-known story of 300 young orphaned Jewish refugees, who began new lives in England’s Lake District in the summer of 1945. With compelling testimony from some of the last living Holocaust survivors, the film explores an extraordinary success story that emerged from the darkest of times, all beginning with the arrival of ten Stirling bombers carrying the 300 children from Prague to Carlisle on 14 August 1945. The survivor interviews include extraordinary first-hand accounts of both their wartime experiences, separation from their families and the horrors they experienced, but also their wonder at arriving in Britain and their lives thereafter. The children hailed from very different backgrounds, including rural Poland, metropolitan Warsaw Czechoslovakia and Berlin. Some had grown up in poverty, others in middle-class comfort. Their rehabilitation in England was organised by one charity, the Central British Fund (CBF). Leonard Montefiore, a prominent Jewish philanthropist, used his pre-war experience of the Kindertransport and successfully lobbied the British government to agree to allow up to 1,000 young Jewish concentration camp survivors into Britain. It was decided that the first 300 children would be brought from the liberated camp of Theresienstadt to Britain. And serendipitously, empty accommodation was found on the shores of Lake Windermere in a defunct factory. During the war, it had built seaplanes, but after D-Day the factory was closed, and the workers’ accommodation stood empty. With space to house them and in a truly beautiful setting, it was to prove the perfect location for these traumatised children. The CBF, however, was in uncharted territory. A project to mass-rehabilitate a group of traumatised children had never been attempted before. But in the idyllic setting of Windermere and with just the right team assembled, the children were given the chance to unlearn the survival techniques they’d picked up in the camps. With the freedom to ride bikes, play football, learn English, socialise with local teenagers and swim in the lake, they began to come to terms with the horrors they had experienced and the fact that their mothers, fathers and siblings had perished. Despite the fact that the UK government initially only offered two-year temporary visas, with strict immigration policies enforced in other countries and without families to return to, it soon became clear that there was nowhere else for most of the children to go. Many of the 300 stayed in the UK for their entire lives, becoming British citizens and raising children of their own. Now, 75 years later, the close friendships that were forged in Windermere remain and many consider each other as family. Reflecting on the survivors’ lives after Windermere, the film includes touching home movie footage and remarkable success stories, like Sir Ben Helfgott’s incredible weightlifting career, representing Britain at the 1956 Olympics, only eleven years after arriving in the UK. The documentary also tells the story of the charity they formed, the 45Aid society. With footage of their annual reunions, the documentary gives a sense of the generations of families who all trace their British beginnings to Windermere. |
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A Wild Year: The North York Moors (2020) #1558
DOCUMENTARY
Disk
14mins In the north east of England lies a wild and remote moorland - 550 square miles of windswept heather-clad uplands and deep, sheltered valleys or dales. These are the North York Moors. Over millennia, this spectacular landscape has been shaped by the elements - by water and ice - and more recently by people. Remote farmsteads are dotted all across the high country. On Dale Head Farm, the Barraclough family raise tough swaledale and cheviot sheep, animals bred for the moorland life. They can be left out on the hill year-round because over many generations they have built up an intimate knowledge of their patch - each flock is ‘hefted’ to the land. The flocks are brought down off the moors to the shelter of the dales a couple of times each year - in the spring for lambing and again in the summer to be shorn of their heavy winter coats. The best shearers can clip 300 sheep in a day. |
| 4 |
A Slow Odyssey: The Great Wall of China (2019) #1171
DOCUMENTARY
Main
90mins. BBC. Slow television. A spectacular aerial journey flying over the world’s longest man-made monument, the Great Wall of China. In classic slow-TV style - without commentary and using authentic location sound - fly 2,500 kilometres along the 2,300-year-old wall, from the Yellow Sea in the crowded east, near Beijing, to the remote Gobi Desert in the west. This epic adventure explores 20 location highlights of the UNESCO-world-heritage site, built by the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644, starting at Old Dragon’s Head on the east coast and ending at the extraordinary Jaiyuguan Fortress - once the gateway into China from the ancient Silk Road trading route. With the help of informative captions, witness the classic stone, crenellated walls, ramparts and watchtowers, which rise and fall over the high mountain ranges for the first 500 kilometres of the Great Wall, north of Beijing. Highlights include the famous tourist wall of Badaling, which has seen visits from 500 heads of state, including the Queen and US Presidents Nixon and Obama. It was the first section of the Great Wall to open to tourists in 1957. The middle section explores the rarely seen rammed-earth mud wall, built in provinces with few stone or brick resources, which is much more fragile. More than a third of the entire Great Wall has been destroyed by nature, war and progress over the last three centuries. There is a significant meeting of two Chinese icons as the Great Wall crosses the great Yellow River, known as the cradle of Chinese civilisation. In the final third of the journey, the wall stretches off across desolate floodplains as it starts to border the remote western Gobi Desert. Flying high above one of the last remaining ancient walled towns, its name becomes obvious - Yongtai or ‘Turtle Town’ – as its 17th-century walls and watchtowers resemble the shape of a turtle. The final dramatic climax comes at the Qilian Gorge, 80 metres above a roaring river, with the snow-capped mountains of the Tibetan plateau in the distance. The end tower is just a few kilometres from the impressive double-walled Jaiyuguan Fortress, whose three gigantic temple towers dominate the landscape, brandishing the words: ‘The First and Greatest Pass under Heaven’. This was the intimidating welcome to all new arrivals entering China from the west along the Silk Road. A Slow Odyssey is a TV first, showing The Great Wall as it has never been seen before – entirely from the air. |
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The Post (2017) #1300
FILM
Main
Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk. A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government. About the 'Pentagon Papers' - prior to the Watergate affair.. |
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The United States of Television: America in Primetime (2013) #745
DOCUMENTARY
Main
4x1 hour episodes. Alan Yentob presents the first in a series of star-studded documentaries on the history of primetime television in America. With a potential audience in excess of 300 million to please, the most popular and enduring drama series and sitcoms have had to track the dramatic changes that have transformed America since the age of mass television began in the 1950s, so this more than an entertainment history, it's a social history of the 'United States of Television'. Man of the House traces the trajectory of the archetypal American dad from the breadwinning patriarch of the 'Honey I'm Home' 1950s to the angst-ridden, plate-spinning multitasker who has to build his home on the shifting sands of the 21st century. From the cast iron certainties and benign omniscience of Jim X (Father Knows Best) and Andy Griffith to the crippling anxieties and bad choices Tony Soprano and Homer Simpson, Man of the House takes us on the rollercoaster ride of six decades of American masculinity. Includes interviews with legendary creators, stars, writers and producers: Ron Howard (The Andy Griffith Show), David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Rob Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show), David Chase (The Sopranos), John Hamm (Mad Men). James L. Brooks (The Simpsons) and many more. |
| 7 |
Les Mis at 25 (2012) #732
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Les Miserables is the world's best-loved musical. It has been seen by 57 million people and in 2010 celebrated its 25th anniversary with its two largest ever productions at London's O2 Arena. Matt Lucas, a lifelong fan of 'Les Mis', was invited to fulfil his dream of performing in these shows alongside more than 300 stalwarts from previous productions. This documentary tells the story of a musical that many thought would fail, but which became a worldwide phenomenon with unforgettable songs like I Dreamed A Dream. We follow Matt as he prepares for the performance of a lifetime, we hear from those involved with the show's creation, including Cameron Mackintosh and Michael Ball, and of course we enjoy wonderful moments from the show itself. |
| 8 |
Les Mis at 25 (2012) #1347
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Les Miserables is the world's best-loved musical. It has been seen by 57 million people and in 2010 celebrated its 25th anniversary with its two largest ever productions at London's O2 Arena. Matt Lucas, a lifelong fan of 'Les Mis', was invited to fulfil his dream of performing in these shows alongside more than 300 stalwarts from previous productions. This documentary tells the story of a musical that many thought would fail, but which became a worldwide phenomenon with unforgettable songs like I Dreamed A Dream. We follow Matt as he prepares for the performance of a lifetime, we hear from those involved with the show's creation, including Cameron Mackintosh and Michael Ball, and of course we enjoy wonderful moments from the show itself. Better quality than the poor 732. |
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Panda Makers (2010) #309
DOCUMENTARY
Main
Directed by Andrew Graham-Brown. With David Attenborough. Giant Pandas were on the brink of extinction but now they are coming back, thanks to an extraordinary conservation project. The Chengdu Research Base in central China is at the heart of a project to breed 300 pandas, and then start introducing them back into the wild. It is the most ambitious and controversial conservation effort ever mounted. Shot over two years, this film follows the pandas and... |
| 10 |
Panda Makers (2010) #567
FILM-DOCUMENTARY
Main
Directed by Andrew Graham-Brown. With David Attenborough. Giant Pandas were on the brink of extinction but now they are coming back, thanks to an extraordinary conservation project. The Chengdu Research Base in central China is at the heart of a project to breed 300 pandas, and then start introducing them back into the wild. It is the most ambitious and controversial conservation effort ever mounted. Shot over two years, this film follows the pandas and... 60 mins. Single disk |
| 11 |
Panda Makers (2010) #809
DOCUMENTARY
Main
Directed by Andrew Graham-Brown. With David Attenborough. Giant Pandas were on the brink of extinction but now they are coming back, thanks to an extraordinary conservation project. The Chengdu Research Base in central China is at the heart of a project to breed 300 pandas, and then start introducing them back into the wild. It is the most ambitious and controversial conservation effort ever mounted. Shot over two years, this film follows the pandas and... |
| 12 |
The Soloist (2009) #300
FILM
Main
Directed by Joe Wright. With Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener, Tom Hollander. A Los Angeles journalist befriends a homeless Juilliard-trained musician, while looking for a new article for the paper. |
| 13 |
300 (2006) #40
FILM
Main
Directed by Zack Snyder. With Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West. King Leonidas of Sparta and a force of 300 men fight the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. |
| 14 |
The Wicker Man (2006) #40
FILM
Main
Directed by Neil LaBute. With Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Leelee Sobieski, Kate Beahan. A sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island discovers there's a larger mystery to solve among the island's secretive, neo-pagan community. This is the second film on this disk - you need to fast forward '300' to get to it... |