Produced in the 1970s, and at the time dubbed “The greatest wildlife film ever” by the BBC, this dramatic film records the struggle in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park to protect elephants from bow and arrow hunters supplying a rampant international ivory trade…. The film follows Tsavo’s warden, the late David Sheldrick, and his ranger force in their daily fight against armed poachers intent on wiping out Tsavo’s magnificent elephant herds and its dwindling population of Black Rhinos. We also follow the story of the baby elephants, rhino and other animals that have been orphaned due to poaching, and watch them as they are hand-reared and eventually return to the wild.
Category: Documentary
A portrait of Raymond Francombe, jobbing gardener and composer. Ray is a familiar figure around the centre of Bristol. What will not be known by most of those who pass him every day is that for years he has been composing sacred music – and, until this programme was made, he had never actually heard a note of it performed. In this film Derek Jones gets to know Ray, and attempts to have his music professionally assessed.
In 1974 the film Emmanuelle redefined the adult movie, with the British Board of Film Certification chairman James Ferman describing it as making “sex respectable in cinema”. With an X certificate it made a star of actress Sylvia Kristel and launched one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In the programme film-maker Alex Cox reviews the controversy, the censorship, and the way that Emmanuelle altered what was acceptable for film-makers to show on screen.
This film reveals the extraordinary story of the Japanese Kamikazes of World War II and the world’s first suicide bombing campaign. Using archive, drama reconstructions and interviews with the survivors and their relatives, this film explores how thousands of young Japanese men were persuaded to sacrifice their lives in the name of war, and the lasting effect it has had on their families.
Father James Harold Flye is best known as the life-long friend and mentor of writer James Agee. In this touching portrait of James Flye, the man to whom the Letters of James Agee to Father Flye were written, Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Ross Spears gives us a record of several visits with Father Flye spanning a ten-year period and culminating with the occasion of Father Flye’s 100th birthday.
The life and work of writer James Agee provides the substance of this engrossing documentary by Ross Spears. Spears put together a portrait of Agee with excerpts from his prose and interviews with the people who either worked with him or provided material for his books. Among those interviewed are President Jimmy Carter, critic Dwight Macdonald, historian and writer Robert Fitzgerald, and John Huston, who worked with Agee on The African Queen. Agee’s three former wives, his priest (Father James Frye), and other personal friends round out the picture of this hard-drinking, chain-smoking, intense writer who died as a result of a heart attack at the age of 45.
Mel Tormé hosts this retrospective of the most prolific period of Frank Sinatra’s career from the beginning to mid-60s. Told through interviews with colleagues and entertainment experts along with clips from live performances, film and TV.
While working on a documentary, Michel Negroponte encounters a homeless woman in Central Park who claims to be Robert Ryan’s daughter. What more, the woman, Maggie, says she’s the god Jupiter’s wife and periodically receives radio transmissions from him. Intrigued, Negroponte abandons his old project and starts interviewing Maggie. The result, after two years, is a film that attempts to separate fact from fiction and reconstruct the fascinating real life of this endearingly eccentric woman.