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.
Winner of the Best Documentary Short Award, the film tells the story of four unassuming heroes who ensure no student is deprived of the joy of music. It is also a reminder of how music can be the best medicine, stress reliever and even an escape from poverty. Since 1959, Los Angeles has been one of the few United States cities to offer and fix musical instruments for its public school students at no cost. Those instruments, numbering around 80,000, are maintained at a Los Angeles downtown warehouse by a handful of craftspeople. The film profiles four of them, each specializing in an orchestra section, as well as students whose lives have been enriched by the repair shop's work. The film concludes with a performance by district alumni.
Without words, Ron Fricke shows us the world, with an emphasis not on 'where,' but on 'what's there.' It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred Balinese Hindu men perform kecak, the monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky. (Click CC for places description)
The film is focused on and celebrating the radical changes in postwar Britain under the Labour government of Clement Attlee, which came to power in 1945. Relying primarily on archive footage and interviews, and without a narrative voiceover, the documentary recounts the endemic poverty in prewar Britain, the sense of optimism that followed victory in World War II and the subsequent expansion of the welfare state, founding of the National Health Service and nationalisation of significant parts of the UK's economy. The film documents the extent to which these achievements, as the filmmaker Ken Loach sees them, have since been subject to attack in the decades that followed, particularly under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s
A definitive account of Putin's power and how it changed the modern world. The series is an exploration of how Vladimir Putin brought his knowledge of spy-craft to bear on his leadership of Russia, how his personal experiences have influenced his politics and how modern Russia has been created through an acute sense of betrayal, pride and anger. The first episode takes viewers on a journey into the mind of one of the 21st century's most influential leaders, offering a portrait of a politician who modelled himself on the Russian James Bond and whose presidency reads like a spy thriller. We will see how Putin escapes poverty by joining the KGB, his reinvention as a political fixer in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and how he gets into position to take over from President Yeltsin.
There is a contest each year that can change a young skater's life. There are no pros with million dollar endorsement deals here, just real kids with real lives and everything on the line. This is the story of a few of the best, from France, Brazil and the USA, as they risk everything for a chance of a lifetime. Motivation 3: The Next Generation is a proper follow-up to The Motivation but this time the stakes are so much higher. We're in deep with real kids escaping poverty and violence, crashing in skate-houses or still living with mom. For all of these kids a win at Tampa Am could mean a way out and an opportunity to do what they love for a living-skate.
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.