
By filming on the actual locations traversed by Marco Polo, the series brings to life the authenticity of the local peoples from the standpoints of ethnology, historiography, culture and economics. We follow the exact route depicted in his book, Il millione, documenting the peoples, customs and cultures along the way to bring into sharp relief the cultural differences within the Asian mainland. Viewers are introduced to their development, becoming familiar with three completely different and, to us, relatively unknown spheres of civilisation and religion - Arabic Islam, Indian Hinduism and Oriental Buddhism. The host takes us through regions and cultures that may seem exotic - and, at times,dreamlike - in our search for the evidence of Marco Polo's passage.


By filming on the actual locations traversed by Marco Polo, the series brings to life the authenticity of the local peoples from the standpoints of ethnology, historiography, culture and economics. We follow the exact route depicted in his book, Il millione, documenting the peoples, customs and cultures along the way to bring into sharp relief the cultural differences within the Asian mainland. Viewers are introduced to their development, becoming familiar with three completely different and, to us, relatively unknown spheres of civilisation and religion - Arabic Islam, Indian Hinduism and Oriental Buddhism. The host takes us through regions and cultures that may seem exotic - and, at times,dreamlike - in our search for the evidence of Marco Polo's passage.
2013-02-13
7
#marcopolo
7.8Iconic snowboarder Travis Rice and friends 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.
7.3Filling the giant screen with stunning time-lapse vistas of Antarctica, and detailing year-round life at McMurdo and Scott Base, Anthony Powell’s documentary is a potent hymn to the icy continent and the heavens above.
6.0Noreno, a half-Roman, is entrusted with the mission of crossing the snowy mountains of Armenia, swarming with Parthian patrols, to seek help for his slowly dying men.
6.3You will see Travis Pastrana and the whole Nitro Circus crew perform some of the most ridiculous, awe-inspiring, and simply insane stunts ever caught on camera. Coming to you in three dimensional glory, it will feel like you are there sitting shotgun with the crew.
6.8A 12-year-old boy manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own, through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark, and a compass to help get him there.
6.3Newly widowed Frank Fogle embarks on a journey to Ireland to scatter his late wife’s ashes. His estranged son, Sean, recently released from prison, agrees to join only when his father promises that they’ll never see each other again following the trip. After revelations surface about an old flame of Frank’s wife and a charming hitchhiker with plans of her own intervenes, father and son find themselves drawn together in unexpected ways.
5.9A brother and sister's journey into the jungle to find their missing father.
6.5On the Arabian Peninsula in the 1930s, two warring leaders come face to face. The victorious Nesib, Emir of Hobeika, lays down his peace terms to rival Amar, Sultan of Salmaah. The two men agree that neither can lay claim to the area of no man’s land between them called The Yellow Belt. In return, Nesib adopts Amar’s two boys Saleeh and Auda as a guarantee against invasion. Twelve years later, Saleeh and Auda have grown into young men. Saleeh, the warrior, itches to escape his gilded cage and return to his father’s land. Auda cares only for books and the pursuit of knowledge. One day, their adopted father Nesib is visited by an American from Texas. He tells the Emir that his land is blessed with oil and promises him riches beyond his wildest imagination. Nesib imagines a realm of infinite possibility, a kingdom with roads, schools and hospitals all paid for by the black gold beneath the barren sand. There is only one problem. The precious oil is located in the Yellow Belt.
6.0A news team is sent to Burundi to capture and bring home a legendary 25-foot crocodile. Their difficult task turns potentially deadly when a warlord targets them for death.
6.3In feudal India, a warrior who renounces his role as the longtime enforcer to a local lord becomes the prey in a murderous hunt through the Himalayan mountains.
6.9An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
6.6With ruthless mobsters on her tail, a young woman with a split personality becomes entangled with a man on a pilgrimage across the country to scatter his brother's ashes.
7.6Years spent recording footage of creatures from every corner of the globe is bound to produce a bit of drama. Here's a behind-the-scenes look.
7.0When the tenacious young sailor Jessica Watson sets out to be the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop and unassisted around the world, many expect her to fail. With the support of her sailing coach and mentor Ben Bryant and her parents, Jessica is determined to accomplish what was thought to be impossible, navigating some of the world’s most challenging stretches of ocean over the course of 210 days.
6.1Adventurer Jack Hunter sets off in pursuit of a legendary tomb, meeting dangerous old adversaries, and even more dangerous old flames, along the way.
6.8One man’s journey to find meaning in Bill Murray’s many unexpected adventures with everyday people, rare and never-before seen footage of the comedic icon participating in stories previously presumed to be urban legend.
6.4Legends (and myths) from the life of famed American frontiersman Davy Crockett are depicted in this feature film edited from television episodes. Crockett and his friend George Russel fight in the Creek Indian War. Then Crockett is elected to Congress and brings his rough-hewn ways to the House of Representatives. Finally, Crockett and Russell journey to Texas and the last stand at the Alamo.
7.1A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
7.1A family in emotional turmoil is taken by surprise in this quirky adventure where an eccentric 8-year-old American boy, Wes, has an existential epiphany - He believes that he is in fact a Mongolian goat herder.
6.5Harry Holt returns to Africa with his friend Martin Arlington to head up a large ivory expedition.
7.2The TARDIS crew lands in the Himalayas of Cathay in 1289, their ship badly damaged, and are picked up by Marco Polo's caravan on its way along the fabled Silk Road to see the Emperor Kublai Khan. The story concerns the Doctor and his companions' attempts to thwart the machinations of Tegana, who attempts to sabotage the caravan along its travels through the Pamir Plateau and across the treacherous Gobi Desert, and ultimately to assassinate Kublai Khan in Peking, at the height of his imperial power.
5.5Set at the time of Italian explorer Marco Polo's historic expedition to China ,during the reign of Monogol ruler Kublai Khan, it stars American actor Richard Harrison as Polo. Taking considerable liberties with the historic record, the film has Polo turning up as an Imperial Inspector assigned to root out Chinese rebles in the south, but eventually being won over to their cause.
6.3Assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to convert the court of Kublai Khan to Christianity, Marco Polo is abandoned in the mountains when the priests, doubting the very existence of China, turn back. Polo eventually pushes bravely forth alone toward the fabled country where he is accepted as an envoy into Khan's court. Marooned on the far side of the world, Polo, accompanied by his servant, Pedro, advances as a Mongol grandee for twenty extraordinary years. What he eventually brings back with him to the West is a chronicle that changed history forever.
7.2In this globe-trotting adventure, Marco Polo (Don Diamont) plays the famous 13th Century explorer who sets out from Italy to find his missing father, and along the way finds danger, excitement, and amazing discoveries at every turn. The supporting cast includes Oliver Reed, Jack Palance, and Herbert Lom.
6.0The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.
4.6Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
8.0In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is a 2008 PBS documentary film detailing Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's 1993 retracing of Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China.
5.0While it has been debated for many years, new evidence might finally put one debate to rest: Marco Polo has gone to China. Explore the mysteries of the historical figure in this documentary.
Part two of the Mysterious China series chronicles Marco Polo's adventures and discoveries along the Silk Road as he heads toward the Mongol Empire in China. This documentary reveals the pivotal trade route as experienced and written about by the 13th-century explorer. Follow the tracks of the Venetian adventurer -- one of the first Westerners to journey into China -- and uncover the mysteries of the Silk Road.
5.4Three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped inside a stalled elevator. What at first seems like an inconvenience rapidly escalates into a nightmare.
7.3A defiant warrior-monk arrives at Kublai Khan's court in chains and soon earns his tragic nickname in this 30-minute origin story.
7.3The tale about a magic fish and resentful lover whose fiancee went to a lazy fool.
8.0In rural Louisiana, 11-year-old Sabine's widower father misses Ash Wednesday Mass, so she pushes him to give up drinking for Lent. He breaks his vow, evoking the wrath of the ROUGAROU, a mythical bayou beast who punishes bad Catholics. Now Sabine has to step up to save him from the monster or risk losing her only living parent.
5.7Sultan Khan of Ottoman Empire has fallen in love with Princess Iren of Byzantium. When he asks her father Niktol for her hand he refuses and tries to kill Khan. The Sultan's armies then attack and overtake Constantinople (now renamed Istanbul). Niktol kills Princess Iren and flees with his army to the island of Lesbos. From Lesbos, Niktol launches a series of ruthless attacks on Turkish villages resulting in the death of one of the Sultan's guard's mother. The guard, Murat, is sent by the Sultan on a mission to avenge his mother's death and bring back the head of the man who killed Iren. Murat goes undercover in Lesbos posing as Royal Guard Kostas, seeking the killers.
0.0"Panic Bodies is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body's betrayals: disease, decline and death. The film is a panorama of emotionally charged recollections of strange relatives and estranged siblings, staged recreations of fast-fading pasts and personal mythologies, and reflections on the anxious states created by the body's fragile claims on time and space. It's about being a stranger in your own skin. Panic Bodies perfects the phantom quality of any good work about mourning, but it is not reducible to that. It is also enlivened by the intimacy that comes from having made a spectacle of personal secrets." (Kathleen Pirrie Adams, Xtra)
4.5INAATE/SE/ re-imagines an ancient Ojibway story, the Seven Fires Prophecy, which both predates and predicts first contact with Europeans. A kaleidoscopic experience blending documentary, narrative, and experimental forms, INAATE/SE/ transcends linear colonized history to explore how the prophecy resonates through the generations in their indigenous community within Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With acute geographic specificity, and grand historical scope, the film fixes its lens between the sacred and the profane to pry open the construction of contemporary indigenous identity.
7.4The Igasaki Clan reunites two years after defeating Kibaoni Gengetsu to determine who is the greatest ninja.