Last Watched

"Culture"  Sort by

Monty Don: Spanish Gardens

   2024    Art
Monty Don embarks on a journey across Spain, discovering gardens across the country’s diverse landscape and exploring its rich and varied history and culture. He will cover more than 4,000 kilometres to visit some of its most interesting gardens, community projects and parks in order to get under the skin of the country. His trips range from historic imperial palaces to cutting-edge modern gardens created by a new wave of Spanish designers working more closely with the landscape and the challenges of the climate.
“Spain's history and its landscapes, climates and cultures have huge diversity. And in this series, I want to get under the skin of the country by visiting as many gardens in Spain as I can so I can shed light on this nation's past, its future and its people. The result is a picture not just of its gardens but this fascinating country itself. Dramatic, proud, complex, but always compelling.”

Beyond Utopia: Escape from North Korea

   2024    Culture
The documentary tells the story of several families as they attempt to escape oppression in North Korea, revealing a world most of us have never seen. They grew up believing their land was paradise. Now, they risk everything in escaping it. In an unforgettable film, follow them on a treacherous journey to defect from their homeland of North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and possible execution looms over their passage.
Directed by Madeleine Gavin, the documentary centers around Pastor Seungeun Kim, a South Korean human rights activist and director of the Caleb Mission, which has rescued over 1,000 North Korean defectors since 2000.

To Kill a Tiger

   2022    History
(Click CC for subtitles) Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented. Nominated for Best Documentary Award, the film has an undeniable and unshakable power. It is one of those documentaries where anyone who watches it won’t be the same person by the end as they were when it started.
To Kill a Tiger offers the viewer remarkable access to village life, not just in the modest home where Ranjit’s family make roti on an open fire, but in the fields where they herd goats and collect water from a pump. The camera finds quiet details, like Ranjit’s daughter carefully weaving ribbons into her hair. Women and men insist that the community, not the criminal court, should solve the issue with a forced marriage—to remove the ‘stain on her’. The men become increasingly hostile—to the family, and eventually to the film crew itself.

The Last Repair Shop

   2023    Culture
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.

Grasslands

   2023    Nature
David Attenborough explores Britain and Ireland’s grasslands, revealing the creatures that create them and the extraordinary stories they hide. From the coastal flower meadows in the Scottish Outer Hebrides to the rich open landscapes in the mountains of southern Ireland, we enter surprising and dramatic worlds.
In southern England, we meet an extraordinary bee that lives in chalk grassland, one of our rarest habitats, laying her eggs in empty snail shells. Meanwhile, in the colourful machair of the Hebrides, ringed plovers and lapwings strive to rear their families of tiny fluffy chicks and to save them for marauding gulls.
We travel back in time to explore the vast wild grasslands once found throughout our isles, before meeting herds of semi-wild horses, where males battle fiercely for the females. Today, they are helping to turn some of this land back to wilderness. And in our precious remaining pockets of flower-rich meadow, a remarkable conservation success story plays out. Once extinct in our isles, England now has the largest known populations of large blue butterflies. Their survival relies on a game of deception with red ants, which are tricked into adopting the butterfly’s unassuming but predatory caterpillars.
Our story then journeys to the mountains. Each morning in early spring, feisty male black grouse battle for prime position on their frozen breeding grounds. Their sole mission is to impress a female. Meanwhile, on south-facing scree slopes, dozens of adders emerge from hibernation to perform a surprisingly delicate courtship routine.
The episode concludes with a mighty battle in the wild mountains of County Kerry. This is the scene of an epic and spectacular rut between the largest land mammals in Britain and Ireland, red deer.
The grasslands of Britain and Ireland are under threat. We have lost 97 per cent of our species-rich meadows in the last century, as modern agriculture replaces these precious habitats. This episode shows just how important different types of grassland are to the species which call these islands home.
Series: Wild Isles

Sweden: A Gangster Paradise

   2023    Culture
The once-quiet suburbs of Sweden's major cities are the epicenter of a vicious turf war between rival gangs competing for the drug trade. The fierce competition has resulted in a series of tit-for-tat killings with almost daily shootings and bombings. More than 45 people have been shot dead so far this year. Paraic O'Brien steps onto the frontline of Sweden's deadly gang war, as the country becomes one of the most lethal for gun crime in the whole of Europe.
From the front line of its lethal drug wars, a look at how Sweden has become one of Europe's deadliest hot spots for gun crime, with shootings often committed by children.
Beyond the Elements

Beyond the Elements

2020  Science
Dirty Money

Dirty Money

2018  Culture
The Keepers

The Keepers

2017  Culture
The Germanic Tribes

The Germanic Tribes

2007  History
Planet Earth

Planet Earth

2007  Nature
Clarkson Farm

Clarkson Farm

2021  Nature