
Documentary-maker Simon King follows a family of meerkats in the Tswalu National Park in South Africa, winning their trust and using modern filming techniques to capture their secret lives, including their constant struggle to find food and potentially deadly encounters with snakes, scorpions and cheetahs.

Documentary-maker Simon King follows a family of meerkats in the Tswalu National Park in South Africa, winning their trust and using modern filming techniques to capture their secret lives, including their constant struggle to find food and potentially deadly encounters with snakes, scorpions and cheetahs.
2002-10-13
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6.8A coming of age story following a young meerkat pup, Kolo, growing up in the Kalahari desert; and an inspiring look at how one family's connection to each other and their surroundings is a model of resilience and fortitude for us all. Shot using ground-breaking techniques, this dramatised documentary is a one-of-a-kind presentation from The Weinstein Company and the BBC, featuring narration by Paul Newman.
7.4African Cats captures the real-life love, humor and determination of the majestic kings of the savanna. The story features Mara, an endearing lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom; Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns; and Fang, a proud leader of the pride who must defend his family from a once banished lion.
7.6A film crew follows two leopard cubs as they make the fascinating journey from infancy into adulthood in this up-close-and-personal nature documentary.
6.1A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
7.7Disneynature’s Elephant follows African elephant Shani and her spirited son Jomo as their herd make an epic journey hundreds of miles across the vast Kalahari Desert. Led by their great matriarch, Gaia, the family faces brutal heat, dwindling resources and persistent predators, as they follow in their ancestors’ footsteps on a quest to reach a lush, green paradise.
7.4Animals Are Beautiful People (also called Beautiful People) is a 1974 South African nature documentary written, produced, directed, filmed and edited by Jamie Uys, about the wildlife in Southern Africa, presented with comedic elements. It was filmed in the Namib Desert, the Kalahari Desert and at the Okavango River and Okavango Delta. It was the recipient of the 1974 Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film. The film, a critical and commercial success, was independently made by Uys, also known for his later African comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980).
7.3An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
7.2In the remote and forgotten wilderness of Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, one of nature's last great mysteries unfolds: the birth, life and death of a million crimson-winged flamingos.
7.6A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
6.5Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
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.
7.6An epic story of adventure, starring some of the most magnificent and courageous creatures alive, awaits you in EARTH. Disneynature brings you a remarkable story of three animal families on a journey across our planet – polar bears, elephants and humpback whales.
6.3In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. 15 years later, he returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn on the internet. Louis revisits some of the original programme's contributors as well as meeting the latest crop of porn performers dreaming of porn stardom.
6.7A behind the scenes look into George Romero's groundbreaking horror classic Night of the Living Dead.
7.7A baby pufferfish travels through a wondrous microworld full of fantastical creatures as he searches for a home on the Great Barrier Reef.
7.6A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
7.6When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
7.5In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
6.7A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
0.0This Traveltalk series short gives a glimpse into South African history, albeit from a white person's viewpoint. South Africa is a union of four separate states: the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal, and the Cape Provence.
0.0Blue Whales: Return of the Giants 3D takes viewers on a journey of a lifetime to explore the world of the magnificent blue whale, a species rebounding from the brink of extinction. Following two scientific expeditions—one to find a missing population of blues off the exotic Seychelles Islands, the other to chronicle whale families in Mexico’s stunning Gulf of California—the film is an inspirational story that transforms our understanding of the largest animal ever to have lived.
9.0Jhalana’s refuge, India's urban leopard habitat, is controlled by the strong and experienced Bahadur. But his dominance is being challenged – by his son, Rana! Once a quiet youngster, Rana has grown into an ambitious young male. But in the animal kingdom, power is not inherited – it is fought for with strength and persistence. Rana is not content with just securing his place; he wants more. To fulfill his ambitions, he forms a bond with one of his father's females, and what begins as a simple interaction soon turns into a powerful partnership. The aging Bahadur has held his territory for six years and will not tolerate his son's claim. Rana faces a decision: retreat or fight. But Rana follows his instincts.
8.7Leopards are considered to be extremely shy big cats. Only a few animals can match the elegance of these feline predators. The cautious hunters are rarely seen in the wild for more than a few seconds. The cats can be observed more extensively when they rest asleep in a tree and recover from the mostly nocturnal hunt. But a leopardess has switched to hunting in broad daylight. Its home along the brook bed of the Olare Orok offers everything a mother needs to protect and nourish its offspring: picturesque rocks and dense bush, a landscape in which the big cat can disappear in seconds to sneak up on potential prey, which includes warthogs and antelopes. But hyenas and lions are always ready to contest for its territory and nourishment. The renowned wildlife filmmaker Reinhard Radke managed to capture astonishing insights into the social life and hunting tactics of the ambush hunters in the Maasai Mara.
6.6What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
7.1Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
0.0Introduced by Sir David Attenborough, and presented by environmentalist Chris Baines, The Living Thames is an odyssey along the river as it meanders through London and flows out to sea, exploring its ever-changing ecology.
A look at the life on the Galápagos Islands.
0.0A showcase for breathtaking shark behaviour, covering a wide variety of species across the coastal waters of the US.
7.6A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
0.0Robi Watkinson and Emma Hodson travel across Britain and the Netherlands documenting the story of the rewilding movement from its inception, to the return of the beaver, bison and perhaps one day, the lynx to Britain.
0.0“Aguas Negras” is an experimental documentary about the Cuautitlán River. The film examines the passage of time and the pollution of the river by focusing on conversations with multiple generations of women in the filmmaker's family that have grown up by the river in a municipality identified as having the highest perception of insecurity in the State of Mexico.
6.6While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.
6.6Follow ocean legend Sylvia Earle, renowned underwater National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry, writer Max Kennedy and their crew of teenage aquanauts on a year-long quest to deploy science and photography to inspire President Obama to establish new Blue Parks to protect essential habitats across an unseen American Wilderness.
10.0Renowned actress Michelle Yeoh journeys home to Malaysia to get to know her adopted orangutan, learning from the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre about the efforts being made to safeguard and sustain this endangered species.
0.0Traversing 700,000 square kilometers over 700 days, the filmmakers bring the stories of five people who crisscross the Yellow River to perform their art. At the center of the web is Su Yang, a contemporary artist and musician and his exchange with traditional practitioners of Qin Opera, Shadow Puppetry, Hua’er, and Shaanbei Storytelling.
8.7Squirrels are among the most widely known and recognized mammals. In many parts of the world they gladly join us for our lunches in city parks, amaze us with their acrobatics and entertain our children as cartoons on TV. Squirrels live in an extraordinarily diverse range of habitats. Some can fly, some can swim, some live in trees or underground, others love icy wastelands or burning hot deserts. But don’t let their cuteness fool you! They may be small, but squirrels are one of the most successful species on the planet. And they have big families. This blue-chip documentary explores some of the most fascinating squirrel species and shows how they became so successful dealing with extreme environments and curious (human) neighbors. 'Going Nuts' unveils the enchanting world of one of the “most watched” mammals on the planet.
0.0The plains of Africa have always been a hotbed of predator action, but lurking in its rivers is perhaps its most elusive killer: the Goliath tigerfish. Legends say they are man-eaters, that even crocodiles fear them. Locals call them "demon fish" but angling legend Andy Coetzee calls them something else: an obsession. He dives into the predator-infested Okavango Delta and the treacherous Congo River on a mission to finally land what is considered to be the hardest fish in the world to catch.
0.0In East Africa, millions of animals are migrating over long distances. Among them is a young zebra who is trying to escape the fearsome predators that are an ever-present danger.