After returning from Afghanistan with severe depression and PTSD, Harry Turner went to the Peruvian Amazon to end his life. There, he met conservationist and scientist Samantha Zwicker, and through their work together raising orphaned wildlife he is finding a reason to live. 'Wildcat' takes viewers to the remote Las Piedras River to witness how two orphaned ocelots and the solitude of the rainforest help a young man and young woman with traumatic pasts. This feature-length documentary is an intimate, character-driven story about the impact of wild places on us - and our impact on them.
(Click CC for subtitles) Descending to remarkable depths below the sea on one single breath, Alessia Zecchini enters what she describes as the last quiet place on Earth. The Italian champion is determined to set a new world record in freediving, a dangerous extreme sport in which competitors attempt to reach the greatest depth without the use of scuba gear. Freedivers are often subject to blackouts upon ascent, necessitating the help of safety divers like Stephen Keenan, a free-spirited Irish adventurer who fell in love with the sport in Dahab, Egypt. Having formed a special bond on the freediving circuit, Alessia and Stephen train together to make an attempt on Dahab’s legendary Blue Hole and its challenging 85-foot-long tunnel 184 feet below the Red Sea, their fates inextricably bound together.
Does Infinity exist? Can we experience the Infinite? In an animated film created by artists from 10 countries, the world's most cutting-edge scientists and thinkers go in search of the infinite and its mind-bending implications for the universe. It doesn’t behave like we’re used to. It’s a monster that needs to be tamed. It creates and destroys mathematicians. It’s infinity! You know, the thing that goes on and on and on and never ends. Here we have theoretical physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, theoretical cosmologists talking about infinity – what it is, how it works, where we can find it, etc., and their concepts and explanations are illustrated by a variety of nifty animations in a variety of visual styles ranging from literal to metaphorical. Directors Jonathan Halperin and Drew Takahashi solicit experts to help them tackle the most maximal topic in the history of everything from a few different angles. Y when you think about it for a second, the only possible conclusion one can arrive at is a sublime and confounding realization that, on a cosmic scale, humans are naught but grand ignoramuses.
The film is a descriptive time-lapse journey about the magical, mysterious and medicinal world of fungi and their power to heal, sustain an contribute to the regeneration of life on Earth that began 3.5 billion years ago. Imagine an organism that feeds you, heals you, reveals secrets of the universe and could help save the planet. You'll see it through the eyes of mycologists, like renowned Paul Stamets, about the unlimited potential of fungi in the fields of food, medicine, expanding consciousness, bioremediation, neurogenesis and treating end-of-life anxiety.
Follow the dramatic personal journey of Hugh Herr, a biophysicist working to create brain-controlled robotic limbs. At age 17, Herr’s legs were amputated after a climbing accident. Frustrated by the crude prosthetic limbs he was given, Herr set out to remedy their design, leading him to a career as an inventor of innovative prosthetic devices. Now, Herr is teaming up with an injured climber and a surgeon at a leading Boston hospital to test a new approach to surgical amputation that allows prosthetic limbs to move and feel like the real thing. Herr’s journey is a powerful tale of innovation and the inspiring story of a personal tragedy transformed into a life-long quest to help others.
From a primate that’s no bigger than a mouse, to a chameleon that can fit on your fingertip, the natural world is full of fantastically small animals. Biologist Patrick Aryee explores the fascinating secrets behind these miniature marvels and shows that they’re not the underdogs you might think they are. Super Small Animals follows him as he meets the leading experts on these pint sized superstars, and finds out what makes them some of the most successful on the planet. First up, he reveals the huge benefits that being small can bring. There’s the little lemur whose diminutive frame helps it to exploit a unique gap in the eco-system, the tiny hummingbird that uses its size to out-maneuver the competition, and the world’s smallest seahorse that never has to leave home. He also explores why small animals are proportionally the strongest in the world, and introduces a peanut-sized beetle that can pull over a thousand times its own weight. Next he explores the challenges that animals face when they shrink in size, and the ingenious ways they overcome them. We find out how the smallest armadillo in the world manages to control its temperature in the searing desert sun, and the how the world’s smallest fish can survive in nothing more than a puddle, because it never really grows up. Patrick meets a secretive hippo that lives in the dense jungle, and looks like it’s been shrunk in the wash, and some of the world’s smallest snakes that give birth to enormous babies. He also meets a scientist that studies how really tiny spiders have a surprising trick that enables them to travel an incredible 40 miles per day, using almost no energy. Then there are the animals that refuse to be pigeon holed as small, and manage to punch way above their weight. He puts some astonishing invertebrates to the test, to see how they work together to become much bigger than the sum of their parts and meets a pint-sized predator that takes on some of the largest and most dangerous creatures on the planet, getting hands on to discover how its build helps it to be brave. Finally he uncovers the incredible lengths that deep sea anglerfish go to in order to be big and small at the same time, and has an endearing encounter with a tiny carnivore that manages to be small in just one direction. Whether their size helps them to hunt, hide or survive, all these remarkable animals prove that good things really do come in small packages.
'Wildcat' takes viewers to the remote Las Piedras River to witness how two orphaned ocelots and the solitude of the rainforest help a young man and young woman with traumatic pasts. This feature-length documentary is an intimate, character-driven story about the impact of wild places on us - and our impact on them.