Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Do dolphins think the way we do or are their brains wired in a very different way from ours? Will we communicate with them one day? Dolphins have been a source of curiosity to humans and have appeared in our stories and myths for thousands of years. What is the link between our two species? Why do we seem to be so interested and curious about each other?

Launched in 1982 by three friends in a Houston diner, Compaq Computer set out to build a portable PC to take on IBM, the world's most powerful tech company. Many had tried cloning the industry leader's code, only to be trounced by IBM and its high-priced lawyers. 'Silicon Cowboys' explores the remarkable David vs. Goliath story, and eventual demise, of Compaq, an unlikely upstart who altered the future of computing and helped shape the world as we know it today. Directed by Oscar (R)-nominated director Jason Cohen, the film offers a fresh look at the explosive rise of the 1980's PC industry and is a refreshing alternative to the familiar narratives of Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg.

Every day of our lives, we are bombarded by thousands of different images, images which affect us in countless different ways. But of all these there's one particular kind of image whose power is uniquely mesmerising, because while it terrifies us somehow it also comforts. But although it can manipulate us, it also reassures, It's the image of death.

Hollywood actor Jason Scott Lee has been a student of Bruce Lee's martial art Jeet Kune Do for 20 years and in Secrets Of Shaolin. He fulfils his lifelong dream of joining the institution that invented kung fu - Shaolin Temple. In an intense two-week kung fu bootcamp, Jason will not only discover Shaolin's centuries old secrets of turning the human body into the ultimate weapon, but also experience the spiritual effects of it's Zen Buddhist practices. Secrets of Shaolin promises to be a stunning, action-packed insight into the world's most famous martial art and a spectacular celebration of the place, people and culture that has inspired generations of fans.

Dr Nigel Spivey shows how The political power of art was discovered by kings and emperors in the ancient world, It was these leaders who first used imagery to manipulate their subjects, And today our modern politicians are exploiting those same visual strategies, This is the story of how those ancient leaders created techniques of visual persuasion so powerful they've still got a hold on us today.

Dr Nigel Spivey explores how art influences life by tracing the development of the image from cave paintings to our modern obsession with images. Dr. Spivey begins his investigation by travelling to the Cave of Altamira near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain, where in 1879 a young girls exclamation of 'Papa, look, oxen!' to her father, local amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, is explained to have meant that Maria had just become the first modern human to set eyes on the first gallery of prehistoric paintings ever to be discovered.