Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

The rock revolution of the 1960s seen through the life and music of Jimi Hendrix. We see how he became the first, ultimately doomed, icon of rock. The Birth Of Rock also explores the influence of rhythm & blues on a generation of British musicians such as The Rolling Stones, Cream and The Who, and how the song-writing of Bob Dylan and studio developments of The Beatles transformed the possibilities and ambitions of rock.

The film tells the story of an overlooked genius: Claude Shannon. In a blockbuster paper in 1948, Claude Shannon introduced the notion of a 'bit' and laid the foundation for the information age. His ideas ripple through nearly every aspect of modern life, influencing such diverse fields as communication, computing, cryptography, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cosmology, linguistics, and genetics. But when interviewed in the 1980s, Shannon was more interested in showing off the gadgets he'd constructed -- juggling robots, a Rubik's Cube solving machine, a wearable computer to win at roulette, a unicycle without pedals, a flame-throwing trumpet -- than rehashing the past.
Mixing contemporary interviews, archival film, animation and dialogue drawn from interviews conducted with Shannon himself, The Bit Player tells the story of an overlooked genius who revolutionized the world, but never lost his childlike curiosity.

The film recounts the story of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II and follows bomber crews on dangerous missions to destroy targets inside German-occupied Europe. The Documentary honors the heroes of the Group and portrays the intensity of war, the dangers that the airmen face, and the friendships and relationships that develop. This unit from the Eighth Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress suffered tremendous losses in combat, with 177 aircraft missing in action, flying its last mission on 20 April 1945.
Meet the airmen who inspired the tv series 'Masters of the Air' as they share the harrowing and transformative events of the 100th Bomb Group. The interviews with the real-life heroes are revealing, and the wealth of newsreel footage compiled in the documentary is utilized with a sharp eye for detail.

Dr Adam Rutherford takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride as he explores the consequences of one of the biggest scientific projects of all time - the decoding of the entire human genome in 2000. In The Book of Life Adam discovers that every human carries the entire story of life on earth hidden in his or her DNA and sees how we are all linked directly to the origins of life and to the first creatures with backbones. He also investigates the implications of the fact that for much of its existence, the human race was an endangered species.

After 400 BC, a new philosophy was born in South east Asia, generated from the ideas of Buddha, a mysterious Prince from India who gained enlightenment while he sat under a large, shapely fig tree. He remains one of the most legendary and influential of all religious progenitors, but what of his actual life? In this biographical documentary, director David Grubin tells the historical tale of Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC), from his initial enlightenment through his death around the age of 80. In the process, Grubin makes an unusual point: that Gautama never once claimed to be God or God's emissary, but instead sought to find a way to bring peace and alleviation from suffering to others in a cruel and often insane world. In telling this story, Grubin combines a number of elements including original animations, testimony by contemporary Buddhists such as the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, glimpses of sculptures and paintings that help tell Gautama's story, and much more. Narrated by Richard Gere

Jessie Buckley narrates the extraordinary story of the first transatlantic communications cable. In 16 August 1858, a short message is telegraphed from County Kerry to Newfoundland, 3,000km away: ‘Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men.’ The Morse code message is conducted along the new underwater transatlantic telegraph cable laid across the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. Sending the same message by ship would have taken at least ten days, but the transmission takes just hours and heralds the dawn of the modern communications age.
The quest is driven by visionaries and pioneers. Among them are Cyrus Field, a wealthy businessman who, despite his immense success, ends his life in poverty; Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and Morse code; Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer who pushes boundaries and budgets; and Belfast physicist Lord Kelvin, who calculates how to achieve what had hitherto been deemed impossible. Together, their ingenuity and relentless pursuit helps realise one of the great scientific accomplishments of their age for which Valentia, on Ireland’s remote western coast, is ground zero.