Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Snowboarding as you've never seen it, unless you are one of the handful of daredevils willing to risk life and limb for the glory revealed here. Jaw dropping footage with a pulse-pounding soundtrack, shot in some of the most rugged, remote and beautiful snow country on the planet. "The Art of Flight" gives iconic snowboarder Travis Rice and friends the opportunity to redefine what is possible in the mountains. Experience the highs, as new tricks are landed and new zones opened, alongside the lows, where avalanches, accidents, and wrong-turns strike. Directed by Curt Morgan ad converted by Venture 3D, one of Hollywood's leading 3D conversion companies, the feature combines meaningful storytelling and sport progressing action with some of the most captivating 3D visuals to date. The film was shot using state of the art equipment and technologies, much of which was custom designed for this project. The film transcends snowboarding with an inspirational message about adventure and exploration.

Painted over five centuries ago, Filippo Lippi's nativity is like none other: it shows the birth of Christ in a dark, wooded wilderness. There are no shepherds, kings, ox, ass – there is no Joseph. Its beauty inspired Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. But it also conceals a deeply personal story. It was painted for Cosimo de Medici, a wealthy banker who feared that his money was dragging him straight to hell. The artist's life was equally surprising. One of the most celebrated painters of his day, Filippo Lippi was also a Carmelite friar, but he was no stranger to the temptations of the flesh, to which he frequently yielded. Shortly before painting his Adoration, he caused uproar by seducing a twenty year-old nun. His paintings rejoice not only in divine beauty, but in the beauty of women. In later times, the Adoration's history was interwoven with that of rulers and dictators. It became a bargaining chip after Napoleon's allies seized twenty merchant ships. And in the 20th century, it was hidden by the Nazis in a potassium mine, where specialist american officers, known as Monuments Men, stumbled upon it. they were now told to get it ready to be shipped out. In an unprecedented turn of events they refused. This is the only known case in the whole of the Second World War of American officers refusing an order. It was sent to the National Gallery of Art, but in 1949 Lippi's Adoration was returned to Germany.

Here, Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes. With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, Aleks explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers. Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.

This documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps. The Hereford Mappa Mundi, the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world, its ambition to picture all of human knowledge in a single image is breathtaking. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous 'monstrous races' which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.

Dr Alice Roberts asks one of the great questions about our species: are we still evolving? There's no doubt that we're a product of millions of years of evolution. But thanks to modern technology and medicine, did we escape Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest? Alice follows a trail of clues from ancient human bones to studies of remarkable people living in the most inhospitable parts of the planet and the frontiers of genetic research, to discover if we are still evolving - and where we might be heading.

The Indian Ocean is the third largest body of water on Earth at more than 6,000 miles wide and covering 13% of the world's surface. It is home to 5,000 species of fish, many of which only exist in the Indian Ocean. But it is also an ocean under threat from global issues such as over-fishing and climate change, which make this an ocean on the edge.