Seven Wonders of the Buddhist World

Culture Documentary hosted by Bettany Hughes, published by BBC in 2011 - English narration

In this fascinating documentary, historian Bettany Hughes travels to the seven wonders of the Buddhist world and offers a unique insight into one of the most ancient belief systems still practised today. Buddhism began 2,500 years ago when one man had an amazing internal revelation underneath a peepul tree in India. Today it is practised by over 350 million people worldwide, with numbers continuing to grow year on year.

 In an attempt to gain a better understanding of the different beliefs and practices that form the core of the Buddhist philosophy and investigate how Buddhism started and where it travelled to, Hughes visits some of the most spectacular monuments built by Buddhists across the globe. Her journey begins at the Mahabodhi Temple in India, where Buddhism was born; here Hughes examines the foundations of the belief system - the three jewels. At Nepal's Boudhanath Stupa, she looks deeper into the concept of dharma - the teaching of Buddha, and at the Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka, Bettany explores karma, the idea that our intentional acts will be mirrored in the future. At Wat Pho Temple in Thailand, Hughes explores samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death that Buddhists seek to end by achieving enlightenment, before travelling to Angkor Wat in Cambodia to learn more about the practice of meditation. In Hong Kong, Hughes visits the Giant Buddha and looks more closely at Zen, before arriving at the final wonder, the Hsi Lai temple in Los Angeles, to discover more about the ultimate goal for all Buddhists - nirvana.

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Human Planet

Human Planet is an 8-part British television documentary series. It is produced by the BBC with co-production from Discovery and BBC Worldwide. It describes the human species and its relationship with the natural world by showing the remarkable ways humans have adapted to life in every environment on Earth.

Announced in 2007, the production teams based at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol and BBC Wales spent three years shooting over 70 stories in some of the most remote locations on Earth spanning about 40 countries. Each episode of the series focuses on a different human-inhabited environment, including deserts, jungles, the Arctic, grasslands, rivers, mountains, oceans, and the urban landscape.

For the first time on a BBC landmark series the production had a dedicated stills photographer, Timothy Allen, who documented the project photographically for the books and multimedia that accompany the series.

Human Planet was originally screened in the UK on BBC One each Thursday at 8pm over eight weeks, starting from 13 January 2011. Domestic repeats have been seen on Eden, with all 8 episodes aired over one week in April 2012. BBC Worldwide has since announced they have sold the broadcast rights to 22 international markets.

Human Planet was nominated for 7 BAFTA Television Craft awards, the most for any programme in 2011, and it won 2 of them, both for the Arctic episode, where Jason Savage won the factual editing prize, and Will Edwards, Doug Allan and Matt Norman won the photography (cinematography) prize. 

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Animals Are Beautiful People

Animals Are Beautiful People (aka Beautiful People) is a 1974 nature documentary about the wildlife in Southern Africa. It was filmed in the Namib Desert, the Kalahari Desert and the Okavango River and Okavango Delta. It was produced for cinema and has a length of slightly more than 90 minutes. 

This South African film tells about life in these areas in a humorous way. It was directed and written by Jamie Uys, who is most famous for his later film The Gods Must Be Crazy.

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Forest Elephants

Forest Elephants: Rumbles in the Jungle Deep in the rainforest of Central Africa lies an elephant oasis - a remarkable place that holds the key to the future for forest elephants. Over the last 20 years, Andrea Turkalo has been studying these enigmatic giants, getting to know over 4,000 intimately. She has begun to unravel the secrets of their complex social lives and the meanings of their unique vocalisations. New acoustic research is shedding light on the many mysteries that still surround forest elephant society. Will these endangered elephants finally speak out and tell Andrea what it is they need to survive?

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Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life

Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life is a 2009 television documentary about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary theory of evolution through natural selection, produced by the BBC to mark the bicentenary of Darwin's birth. It is part of the BBC Darwin Season. The presenter, David Attenborough, outlines the development of the theory by Darwin through his observations of animals and plants in nature and in the domesticated state, visiting sites important in Darwin's own life, including Down House, Cambridge University and the Natural History Museum, and using archive footage from Attenborough's many nature documentaries for the BBC. He reviews the development of the theory since its beginnings, and its revolutionary impact on the way in which humans view themselves - not as having dominion over the animals as The Bible says, but as part of the natural world and subject to the same controlling forces that govern all life on Earth.

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BBC - Planet Dinosaur

An astonishing six-part series that brings to life the most incredible creatures that ever existed. From Spinosaurus, the biggest killer to ever walk the Earth, to the immense sea-monster Predator X, and the deadly cannibalistic Majunasaurus - dinosaurs were more monstrous, more horrific and bizarre than ever before imagined. Combining a 3D graphic world, incredible CGI and stunning photo-real fight scenes, this is a whole new perspective on dinosaurs.

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BBC - The Life of Birds

The Life of Birds is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first transmitted in the United Kingdom from 21 October 1998.

A study of the evolution and habits of birds, it was the third of Attenborough's specialised surveys following his major trilogy that began with Life on Earth. Each of the ten 50-minute episodes discusses how the huge variety of birds in the world deal with a different aspect of their day-to-day existence.

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BBC - Frozen Planet

General Information

Nature Documentary hosted by David Attenborough, published by BBC in 2011 - English narration 

Information

Frozen Planet is a nature documentary series, produced and filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit. The production team, which includes executive producer Alastair Fothergill and series producer Vanessa Berlowitz, were previously responsible for the award-winning series The Blue Planet (2001) and Planet Earth (2006), and Frozen Planet is being billed as a sequel. Sir David Attenborough returns as narrator and as with Planet Earth, the series will be shot entirely in HD. The seven-part series will focus on life in the Arctic and Antarctic. The production team were keen to film a comprehensive record of the natural history of the Polar Regions, because climate change is affecting landforms such as glaciers, ice shelves, and the extent of sea ice. Sir David first visited Antarctica 17 years ago, but this was his first time ever to visit the geographical North Pole. To get there, meant flying in to a Russian ice camp on the frozen Arctic Ocean, where he could (after several days of bad weather) finally reach the pole itself by helicopter. He also returned to Scott's hut, a place he first visited several years ago, but still touches him today. This is the place where Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his men began their fateful journey to reach the geographical South Pole. "I remember very vividly indeed the first time I entered this extraordinary building…it was not like any other place - because it isn't like any other place on earth. If ever there was a place that held the personality of the people that had lived in it, a century ago, this surely must be it". Sir David authors On Thin Ice, the seventh film of the series, which explores the effects of climate change on the Polar Regions and the lengths that scientists are going to, to understand it. Some regions, like the Antarctic Peninsula, have warmed significantly in the years since Sir David first visited them. He explores what this means, not just for the animals and people of the polar regions, but for the whole planet. 

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2092588/

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BBC - Ancient Rome - The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire is a BBC One docudrama series, with each episode looking at a different key turning point in the history of the Roman Empire.

Factually accurate and based on extensive historical research, it reveals how the greed, lust and ambition of men like Caesar, Nero and Constantine shaped the Roman Empire.

It describes how Rome destroyed Carthage, was conquered by Caesar, how it suppressed the Jewish revolt, and converted to Christianity.

CGI is mixed with compelling drama and spectacular live-action battles to tell the definitive television story of how the Empire was formed, how it achieved maximum power, and why it eventually failed.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0864944/

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BBC - Oceans

Oceans cover two-thirds of the surface of our planet. The seas, which are vital to survival, have remained an enduring part of our human story
In June 2007 the Oceans team began a series of underwater scientific expeditions to build a global picture of our seas. Their search for answers took them on an voyage of discovery to the Arctic, Southern and Indian Oceans, the Atlantic, the Red Sea, the Sea of Cortez and the Mediterranean
Explorer Paul Rose led the team of intrepid adventurers, including environmentalist Philippe Cousteau (grandson of Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau), maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy Blue and marine biologist and oceanographer Tooni Mahto

The team ventured into some of the planet\'s most challenging environments and with the help of scientists and dive teams, they descended beneath frozen Arctic ice-sheets, dived into mysterious black holes in the Bahamas and plunged into the dark water with the fearsome Humboldt squid

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BBC - Life

Life is a nature documentary series made by BBC television, first broadcast as part of the BBC's Darwin Season[1] on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed "the struggle for existence". Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.

The UK broadcast of Life consists of ten 50-minute episodes. The opening programme gives a general introduction to the series, a second looks at plants, and the remainder are dedicated to some of the major animal groups. They aim to show common features that have contributed to the success of each group, and to document intimate and dramatic moments in the lives of selected species chosen for their charisma or their extraordinary behaviour. A ten-minute making-of feature Life on Location aired at the end of each episode, taking the total running time to 60 minutes.

Life is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in association with the Discovery Channel, Skai TV and the Open University. The original script, used in the British and Canadian versions of the series, was written and narrated by David Attenborough.

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BBC: Planet Earth Special Edition Hybrid

With a production budget of $25 million, the makers of The Blue Planet: Seas of Life crafted this epic story of life on Earth. Five years in production, with over 2,000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen filming across 200 locations, and shot entirely in high definition, Planet Earth is an unparalleled portrait of the third rock from the sun. This stunning television experience captures rare action in impossible locations and presents intimate moments with our planet’s best-loved, wildest, and most elusive creatures.

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BBC - Galapagos

Galápagos is a three-part BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Galápagos Islands and their important role in the formation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It was first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in September 2006. 
The series was filmed in high definition, produced by Mike Gunton and Patrick Morris of the BBC Natural History Unit and narrated by actress Tilda Swinton. The series was proposed to the BBC by the principal cinematographers Paul D. Stewart and Richard Wollocombe.

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BBC - How Earth Made Us

The incredible story of the natural forces that have shaped our history presented by Professor Iain Stewart. Our planet has amazing power, and yet that’s rarely mentioned in our history books.

This series tells the story of how the Earth has influenced human history, from the dawn of civilization to the modern industrial age. It reveals for the first time on television how geology, geography and climate have been a far more powerful influence on the human story than has previously been acknowledged.

A combination of epic story telling, visually stunning camera-work, extraordinary locations and passionate presenting combine to form a highly original version of human history.

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