Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Professor Mary Beard looks beyond the stories of emperors, armies, guts and gore to meet the everyday people at the heart of Ancient Rome's vast empire. In this programme, Mary asks not what the Romans did for us, but what the empire did for Rome. She rides the Via Appia, climbs up to the top seats of the Colosseum, takes a boat to Rome's port Ostia and takes us into the bowels of Monte Testaccio. She also meets some extraordinary Romans: Eurysaces, an eccentric baker, who made a fortune out of the grain trade and built his tomb in the shape of a giant bread oven; Baricha, Zabda and Achiba, three prisoners of war who became Roman citizens; and Pupius Amicus, the purple dye seller making imperial dye from shellfish imported from Tunisia. This is Rome from the bottom up.

For centuries, man has yearned for an earthly paradise, and no place better encapsulates this desire than Shangri-La - but was it ever real? The tale of an earthly paradise is among the most enduring myths in the world. From Sumerian epic to the 'islands of the blest' in Celtic literature, it has been a recurring theme through many bodies of literature and for thousands of years. Not surprisingly, then, modern people have also been drawn to the dream of a lost paradise where the ravages of time and history have been held back, where human beings live in harmony with nature, and where the wisdom of the planet is saved for future generations. In other words, to a Shangri-La.

Dr Iain Stewart investigates the counter-attack that was launched by the global warming sceptics in the 1990s. At the start of the 1990s it seemed the world was united. At the Rio Earth summit the world signed up to a programme of action to start tackling climate change. Even George Bush was there. But the consensus didn't last.
Iain examines the scientific arguments that developed as the global warming sceptics took on the climate change consensus. The sceptics attacked almost everything that scientists held to be true. They argued that the planet wasn't warming up, that even if it was it was nothing unusual, and certainly whatever was happening to the climate was nothing to do with human emissions of greenhouse gases. Iain interviews some of the key global warming sceptics, and discovers how their positions have changed over time.

Andrew Graham-Dixon explores how Russia changed from a feudal nation of aristocratic excess to a hotbed of revolution at the beginning of the 20th century and how art moved from being a servant of the state to an agent of its destruction. From monuments that celebrate the absolutism of the tsars to the epic Russian landscape as inspiration; from the design and construction of gold and glittering palaces to the minutiae of diamond-encrusted Faberge eggs; and eventually to the stark and radical paintings of the avant-garde, the journey through Russian art history is one of extraordinary beauty and surprise.

It tells the stories of six fathers separated from their children after a conflicting divorce and the difficulties to maintain the link with their children. Contains critical material regarding the functioning of the courts and alleges unequal treatment of the couples in conflict. The film had its premiere scheduled for 2014 but was suspended. The Argentinean judge Guillermo Blanch ordered producers to refrain from any transmission and / or retransmission of images or videos without the consent referrals of several people interviewed." The famous journalist and psychologist Liliana Hendel says in the documentary 'is difficult for a woman deviseth that she was beated, or their children, or that he does not give money or any form of violence'... 'the opposite of what usually happens, that any citizen is innocent until it is proven otherwise, I believe that in situations of domestic violence, cause the scale of the problem the burden of proof must be reversed. That is, if I say that he is guilty, he is guilty until proven innocent'. The Argentinean deputy Gladys González argue the documentary supports Parental Alienation Syndrome, a entity that does not exist and it has not been recognized by any health institution in the world, and with the deputy Cornelia Schmidt-Liermann signed a statement rejecting the SAP in the Chamber of Deputies

Professor Brian Cox concludes his exploration of our place in the universe by asking what next for the ape that went to space. Our future is far from certain. In Florida, Brian joins the latest efforts to protect Earth from potential catastrophic events. He joins a team of Nasa astronauts who are training for a future mission to an asteroid - should we ever discover one coming our way - under 30 feet of water in a submerged laboratory that simulates space. It is just one example of how, for our long-term survival, space exploration may well be vital. It is a view shared by Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, who tells Brian what it was like to escape the confines of the planet. It is a dream that both Nasa and now commercial companies share as they race to get humans back into deep space.
But space travel, like every leap our civilisation has ever made, requires energy. Here too, scientists are hard at work attempting to safeguard our future. At the National Ignition Facility in California, Brian witnesses the world's most successful fusion experiment in action. He believes that if their mission succeeds, our civilisation will have unlocked a way to the stars that will not destroy the planet in the process. Brian concludes by returning to the top of the world in Svalbard, where he gains access to our civilisation's greatest treasure, locked away in a vault buried deep in the permafrost.