Shot in and around Yakutsk, in a remote region of Siberia, this film wrestles with the complex realities of a people and place facing continual, rapid transformation under Russia’s drive for resource extraction.
Social & External
In the remote Russian Arctic, an aging scientist and his son are trying to recreate the Ice Age. They call their experiment Pleistocene Park – a perfect home for woolly mammoths, resurrected by modern genetics. But the mammoths are only a means to a bigger end: defusing a carbon timebomb frozen in the permafrost to slow the effects of global warming.
Could our mounting modern problems have ancient solutions? Travel to the depths of China to find out.
The year 2011 marked the 70th anniversary of the deportations of June 14 1941, when 15 425 residents of Latvia (Latvians, Jews, Russians, Poles) were deported to Siberia. Among them there were 3 751 children aged up to 16. During the process men were separated from their families and sent to gulags, where many were sentenced to death, while others were imprisoned in labour camps. The facts of history and dry and few, but many of the victims and their children and grandchildren are still among us. During the summer of 2010, people who were deported to Siberia in 1941 as children joined their own children and a video production crew to travel back to the far North of Russia.
Filmed immediately after the end of the civil war in Angola, Há Sempre Alguém Que Te Ama records the return of Pocas Pascoal to the country where she was born, in an attempt to reconstruct the episode that, in 1975, led to the capture of the director along with her mother and sisters. An intimate documentary about memory and self-(re)construction.
Really strange documentary of Wheeler Dixon production quality on the Tunguska Event and the possibility of it happening again causing an apocalypse (basically a meteor scare film) sprinkled with UFO conspiracy kooks, and other 'professionals', riddled with stock footage of all kinds, freaky moog music and sound fx, a Dr. Who rip-off end theme, Victor Buono as Homer the Archivist, a philosophical history recorder in a space ship with a HAL 9000 type talking computer named Ino, there's also another space ship with Egyptian looking aliens girls with pasties and see-thru blouses.
Like many St. Lawrence Island legends, this story is set in Siberia where Chukchi, the Reindeer People, live. Pelaasi, an elder from Gambell, speaks Siberian Yupik. His mythical story, about a man who goes out in search of a reindeer thief is an ungipaghaq, a tale that has been passed down unchanged through generations and believed to be based in truth.
Climate change has reached the indigenous Nenets people in the north of Siberia. The nomads' herds of reindeer move on thin ice. The warming in the Russian Arctic is becoming dramatically visible. Huge craters open in the thawing permafrost and expose dangerous viruses and bacteria. Forest floors dry out and the taiga catches on fire. The pack ice off the coast is melting and depriving polar bears of their habitat so that they approach human settlements in their desperation. The changes in the nature of the Arctic Circle combine with the measurements of researchers and observations of the indigenous people to form a disturbing overall picture: In the Russian Arctic, Pandora's box has been opened! The film team had the chance to shoot in regions that were been restricted areas for decades. The documentary shows in impressive and depressing images already existing effects, phenomena and ominous interlinkages of global warming.
This film pictures Siberia, land of the exiles, and its rapid growth in becoming a highly industrialized land. Focuses on the major manufacturing plants of the city of Irkutsk, which anticipates a population of one million by 1980.
In the middle of the Siberian taiga, 450 miles from the nearest village, live two families : the Braguines and the Kilines. Not a single road leads there. A long trip on the Ienissei River, first by boat, then by helicopter, is the only way to reach Braguino. Self-sufficient, both families live there according to their own rules and principles. In the middle of the village: a barrier. The two families refuse to speak. In the river sits an island, where another community is being built : that of the children. Free, unpredictable, wild. Stemming from the fear of the other, that of wild beasts, and the joy procured by the immensity of the forest, unravels a cruel tale in which tensions and fear give shape to the geography of an ancestral conflict.
"Shaman" was filmed on July the 16th, 1977 in the northernmost corner of Eurasia, on the Taymyr Peninsula, at the Avam river, concurrently with the shooting of the documentary "The Winds of the Milky Way". The Nganasan Shaman Demnime (1913-1980) was 64 years old at the time. The documentary about Demnime's incarnation ritual was completed 20 years later. The fifth and final documentary in Lennart Meri's "Encyclopaedia Cinematographica Gentium Fenno - Uricarum" series.
At 7:14 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated throughout our planet. The force of the explosion was two thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb. A woodland area the size of Luxembourg was eradicated in the Siberian taiga. This incident is recorded in history books as the Tunguska catastrophe. To this day, internationally renowned scientists of various disciplines argue about the causes of this disastrous explosion. The documentary discusses the latest and most controversial insights of these leading scientists. It identifies the reasons why Tunguska has evolved into a phenomenon and points out the curious results produced by this mythical event in culture and economy.
Naturalists Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns film recently discovered grizzlies on Siberia's Kamchatka peninsula.
St. Petersburg, Russia, December 30th, 1916. Grigori Rasputin is assassinated. The story of the humble peasant who became the most influential adviser to czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of the last czar, Nicholas II Romanov.
In 2021, an extreme heatwave gave rise to huge wildfires in the vast subarctic forests of Sakha, a northeastern republic in Siberia. The village of Shologon lies in this taiga landscape, shrouded in orange smoke and black ash. The forest is burning and the flames are approaching fast.
Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world and is also plagued by numerous terrorist organizations that repeatedly kidnap people. Accompanied by a military convoy, the travel group explores the country and the cultural traditions of two of the last nomadic tribes, the Woodabe and the Tuareg. From the capital Niamey in the southwest, the journey continues through the interior of the country to Iférouane, where the Nigerien tour guide provides information about the country and its people.
A unique story on the discovery of a 40-thousand-year-old, perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth. Cutting edge science and Arctic adventure come alive in this story of a unique discovery: a perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth that suddenly appears on a Siberian riverbank, triggering an extraordinary investigation into her life and death at the end of the Ice Age. Solving the mystery of her origins unites men whose lives are worlds apart except for their link to the woolly mammoth.
A window into Russia, unknown to Western man, and even to many Russians. "Russia - the largest country in the world. In many of its parts, it remains unknown world full of wonders. Let the world and will continue for the generations that come after us".
Imagine one of the most remote wildernesses in the world. Granddaughter Masha and Vladimir, the protagonists of this story from Central Siberia try the impossible to keep their nomadic traditions alive.
After 20 years of wandering taiga weather stations searching for a suitable place for having a life, Nataliya and Yuri Usovy settled on Olkhon island, on a remote weather station. They thought to find happiness here.
In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions.
This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
Years spent recording footage of creatures from every corner of the globe is bound to produce a bit of drama. Here's a behind-the-scenes look.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Documentary of the making of the sequel to the popular Schwarzenegger film, The Terminator.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
The story lives forever in this feature-length documentary that charts the making of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
A look behind the lens of Christopher Nolan's space epic.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.
A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.
The definitive 3½-hour documentary about the troubled creation and enduring legacy of the science fiction classic 'Blade Runner', culled from 80 interviews and hours of never-before-seen outtakes and lost footage.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
With mesmerizing footage and time lapses of animators at work, this behind-the-scenes special captures the artistry of a unique tale years in the making.
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
An intimate documentary delving into Rian Johnson's process as he comes in as a director new to the Star Wars universe.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.