Best Free Documentaries

We are not alone

2011-10-02T11:45:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - SIRENIA - The Path To Decay.

Some examples of the numerous life forms living on our body made visible by scanning electron microscopes.
Excerpt from the documentary «The invisible world».

The Day The Earth Nearly Died - BBC Documentary

2011-09-26T12:35:00.001-07:00

Lacuna Coil – Daylight Dancer lyrics.

250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the land and oceans teemed with life. This was the Permian, a golden era of biodiversity that was about to come to a crashing end. Within just a few thousand years, 95% of the life forms on the planet would be wiped out.

Reader, I married him

2011-09-16T11:29:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - Bad Meets Evil & Bruno Mars – Lighters Daisy Goodwin delves into one of the most successful literary genres - romantic fiction. From Jane Austen to the present day, via Mills & Boon, this three-part series explores the enduring appeal of the love story and the integral part it plays in readers' lives.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Jilly Cooper, Joanna Trollope, Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes contribute to this episode looking at how the romantic fiction industry has grown and why it remains so popular. Daisy performs a scientific experiment to explore whether reading romantic novels can lower stress levels.

HEROES
Daisy Goodwin finds that heroes of the 19th century - Darcy, Rochester and Heathcliff remain firm favourites for today's women. She creates an E-Fit of her Mr Darcy and goes to America in search of Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind. Interviews with P D James, Joanna Trollope and Andrew Davies.

HEROINES
Contrary to what cynics might expect, romantic heroines have both reflected the times and have been role models for women. Daisy visits the set of the BBC's new Jane Eyre and spends a day with a Yorkshire book group. With Barbara Taylor-Bradford, Sophie Kinsella and Marina Warner.

Light Fantastic

2011-09-15T08:12:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - Dead By Sunrise – Too Late.

Light Fantastic explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted - light.

1. Let There be Light
Monday 7 August 2006 1.50am-2.50am (Sunday night) Greek and Arab scholars, and later Europeans such as Descartes and Newton all tried to understand light to gain a better understanding of God. Episode one shows how much of modern science's origins came from the desire to penetrate the divine nature of light.

2. The Light of Reason
Tuesday 8 August 2am-3am (Monday night) The second programme explores the link between the development of practical tools that manipulate light and the emergence of new ideas. For example, Galileo's observation that the sun did not go around the earth, was made with a telescope that had been invented for Venetian soldiers and traders.

3. The Stuff of Light
Wednesday 9 August 2am-3am (Tuesday night) Episode three charts the discovery of the true nature of light and its impact on the modern world. All of today's technologies - electricity, mobile communications and our ability to illuminate the world 24 hours a day - stem from unravelling the mystery of light.

4. Light, The Universe and Everything
Thursday 10 August 2am-3am (Wednesday night) In the final programme Simon Schaffer finds that as more people were able to manipulate light, the more puzzling and tricky it became. This led to investigations into the strange relationship between light, the eye and the mind, and the development of new technology such as photography and cinema.

Warts and All - Portrait of a Prince

2011-09-14T09:30:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - Dead by april – losing you.

Colourful series marking the 200th anniversary of one of the most explosive and creative decades in British history. It presents a vivid portrait of an age of elegance presided over by a prince of decadence - the infamous Prince Regent himself, a man with legendary appetites for women, food and self-indulgence. Yet this was the same man who would rebuild London, carving out the great thoroughfare of Regent Street and help establish the Regency look as the epitome of British style through his extravagant patronage of art and design.

In this first episode, historian Dr Lucy Worsley chronicles the Regency's early years, which culminated in victory over Napoleon in 1815, and explores the complicated character of the Prince Regent, a man with legendary appetites for women, food, art and self-indulgence.

For Lucy, the Regency was an age of contradictions and extremes that were embodied in the person of the Prince Regent himself. She uncovers Prince George's modest childhood; bright and talented, the young George was beaten with a whip by his tutors and it was small wonder that he would later rebel, eventually embracing a scandal-ridden lifestyle that included illegal marriages and discarded mistresses.

So how did this overweight popinjay preside over an age in which art and culture mattered? A tour of his treasures in the Royal Collection shows Lucy that George was a genuine connoisseur, buying up Rembrandts and French furnishings while his excesses were at the same time inspiring satirical caricatures that mocked him as the 'Prince of Whales'. And she investigates George's collaboration with portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence, who left the definitive images of Regency society and became George's flatterer-in-chief; Regency wags laughed at how his paintings magically transformed an overweight bald fifty-something into a 'well-fleshed Adonis'.

Meanwhile, the long war with France was having a huge impact on the British psyche; travel and trade with Europe were impossibly restricted. Lucy follows in the footsteps of painter JMW Turner who, unable to travel to the continent, toured the south coast in 1811 and captured startling images of a country at war. George liked to think of himself as a man of fashion, and Lucy takes us through surviving accounts from his tailors that reveal his shopaholic ways. These were the years in which the Prince's sometime friend Beau Brummell, the famous dandy, ruled fashionable London like a dictator, and Lucy samples a bit of butch Regency style by trying on some of the fashions he popularised, as well as joining Brummell biographer Ian Kelly on a tour of London's fashionable Regency haunts. She also discovers Brummell's spectacular fall from favour, after loudly referring to the Regent as someone's 'fat friend'.

Lucy visits the battlefield of Waterloo and discovers that the site became a prototype of battlefield tourism - Turner, Byron and many others all visited in the years after the battle and Lucy handles some grisly memorabilia purchased by Lord Byron.

The episode concludes with the most spectacular royal art commission of them all - Lawrence's series of paintings in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle, paid for by George to memorialise his victory over Napoleon. Never mind that George wasn't at any of the battles - this was an age in which appearance and reality fused together to create monumental art.

ABSOLUTE ZERO

2011-09-13T10:27:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - «Echoes Of Eternity – Voices In A Dream»

This two-part scientific detective tale tells the story of a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn't exist, electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to 38 miles per hour.

Each film features a strange cast of eccentric characters, including: Clarence Birds Eye; Frederic 'Ice King' Tudor, who founded an empire harvesting ice; and James Dewar, who almost drove himself crazy by trying to liquefy hydrogen.

Absolute zero became the Holy Grail of temperature physicists and is considered the gateway to many new technologies, such as nano-construction, neurological networks and quantum computing. The possibilities, it seems, are limitless.

Time Shift - Italian Noir: The Story of Italian Crime Fiction

2011-09-06T12:02:00.001-07:00

The Best Music Day - Frank Ocean – Novacane

Documentary which profiles a new wave of Italian crime fiction that has emerged to challenge the conventions of the detective novel. There are no happy endings in these noir tales, only revelations about Italy's dark heart - a world of corruption, unsolved murders and the mafia.

The programme features exclusive interviews with the leading writers from this new wave of noir, including Andrea Camilleri (creator of the Inspector Montablano Mysteries) and Giancarlo De Cataldo (Romanzo Criminale), who explains how his work as a real-life investigating judge inspired his work. From the other side of the law, Massimo Carlotto talks about how his novels were shaped by his wrongful conviction for murder and years spent on the run from the police.

The film also looks at the roots of this new wave. Carlo Emilio Gadda (That Awful Mess) used the detective novel to expose the corruption that existed during Mussolini's fascist regime and then, after the Second World War, Leonardo Sciascia's crime novels (The Day of The Owl) tackled the rise of the Sicilian mafia. These writers established the rules of a new kind of noir that drew on real events and offered no neat endings.

Also featuring Italian writers Carlo Lucarelli and Barbara Baraldi, the film uses rarely seen archive from Italian television.

The Ghostvillage Project

2011-08-11T11:56:00.001-07:00

This short documentary was shot in October 2009 on the remote Cowal Peninsula in the west of Scotland. It details arts collective Agents Of Change's transformation of an abandoned village of Pollphail into an open-air art gallery.

Six artists - Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126 and Derm - were given free reign to paint anywhere in the complex.

The brutalist 1970s concrete structures had never seen human inhabitants - the site was constructed ostensibly as a base to house workers needed to construct concrete oil rigs, but the plan was subsequently abandoned - but were ideally suited to the separate styles and methods employed by the collective.

Working together on huge collaborative walls and individually in hidden nooks and crannies all over the site the artists realised long held dreams and were inspired by the bleakness and remoteness of the site. Drawing on the history of the village the artists' stated intent on completion of the project was to populate the ghostvillage with the art and characters that it deserved.

Inspired by the marked contrast between the architecture and the surrounding landscape of rolling hills, forests and lochs, the artists worked for three days through challenging physical conditions to produce foreboding yet hauntingly beautiful artwork all over the site. The viewer is rewarded with a unique insight into the world of the graffiti artist and an opportunity to experience the creative process behind such a huge undertaking.

Sights and Sounds of India

2011-04-05T07:48:00.001-07:00

Music day: Three track

Yes, the Taj Mahal is stunning, but so are many other sights and sounds in the world's second most populous country.

The story of India - amazing BBC documentary series

2011-04-04T10:26:00.001-07:00

Music day: In Flames – Touch Of Red

The Story of India is a BBC TV documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, about the 10,000-year history of the Indian subcontinent in six episodes. It was originally aired on the BBC in six episodes in August and September 2007 as part of the BBC season "India and Pakistan 07", which marked the 60 years independence of India and Pakistan. In the United States, PBS broadcast the series on three Mondays, January 5, 12 and 19, 2009 from 9 to 11 PM. An accompanying text was published by BBC Books.

As in most of his documentaries, Wood explains historical events by travelling to the places where they took place, examining archeological and historical evidence at first hand and interviewing historians and archaeologists, as well as chatting with local people.

Explore - Argentina - Patagonia to the Pampas 3 of 4 - BBC Travel Documentary

2011-04-03T06:42:00.001-07:00

Music day: Breaking Benjamin – Breath

Explore - Argentina - Patagonia to the Pampas 3 of 4 - BBC Travel Documentary, recorded 12.02.2011 Simon Reeve leads a team of presenters on a journey through the spectacular landscapes of Argentina, from the vast ice fields of Patagonia to the wide-open plains of the pampas.

In the south, a group of indigenous people are locked in a historic dispute with the area's biggest landowners, Italian clothing giants Benetton; in Buenos Aires, the children of the disappeared are seeking to find out the truth of what happened to their parents at the hands of Argentina's generals; and in the pampas we meet one of the last true gauchos, whose way of life is being destroyed by an argricultural revolution.

On the way, we take in one of the greatest matches in world football, visit a penguin colony on the edge, and meet a bishop with a rather unorthodox interest in Evita.

BBC - Human Planet - Honey Guide Bird

2011-04-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

Music day - Arch Enemy – Dead Eyes Eyes See No Future

The Honey Guide Bird & Maasai people communicating with each other to find honey.

The Brain: A Secret History - Mind Control

2011-02-25T14:30:00.001-08:00

This is a scientific journey that goes to the very heart of what we hold most dear - our free will, and our ability to control our own destiny.

In a compelling and at times disturbing series, Dr Michael Mosley explores the brutal history of experimental psychology.

To begin, Michael traces the sinister ways this science has been used to try to control our minds. He finds that the pursuit of mind control has led to some truly horrific experiments and left many casualties in its wake. Extraordinary archive captures what happened - scientists systematically change the behaviour of children; law abiding citizens give fatal electric shocks; a gay man has electrodes implanted in his head in an attempt to turn his sexuality.

Michael takes a hallucinogenic drug as part of a controlled experiment to try to understand how its mind-bending properties can change the brain.

Newly discovered planet to save human race?

2011-02-20T05:20:00.001-08:00

A team of astronomers from the University of California and The Carnegie Institute of Washington say they've found a planet like ours, 20 light years (120 trillion miles) from Earth. RT talks to Space entrepreneur Jeff Manber about the prospects of the discovery.

Gelada Monkey Army Raids Ethiopian Harvest - Human Planet: Mountains, preview - BBC One

2011-02-13T05:12:00.001-08:00

In the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia, a harvest is under attack from a ravenous enemy. Twelve year old Dereje steps up to defend his crops from the cunning Gelada monkeys.

Human Planet — The Jungle

2011-02-12T13:42:00.001-08:00

Human Planet Documentary «The Jungle». BBC

Top Gear, Season 16 Ferrari 458 Vs Sls AMG Vs 911 GT3 RS

2011-02-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sedicesima stagione del programma televisivo automobilistico più famoso al mondo, che conta 350 milioni di spettatori in tutto il globo. I presentatori del Programma sono Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond e James May. Prima puntata della 16a stagione, i 3 presentatori metteranno a confronto 3 auto: Jeremy guiderà la Mercedes Sls AMG, James la Ferrari 458 Italia e Richard la Porsche 911 GT3 RS; I 3 uomini per questa sfida si sono recati in America! Sottotitoli in italiano.

Would you like Top Gear? I like Top Gear!

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats

2011-01-13T10:28:00.001-08:00

Documentary which takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world, presented by superstar boffin Professor Hans Rosling, whose eye-opening, mind-expanding and funny online lectures have made him an international internet legend.
Rosling is a man who revels in the glorious nerdiness of statistics, and here he entertainingly explores their history, how they work mathematically and how they can be used in today's computer age to see the world as it really is, not just as we imagine it to be.
Rosling's lectures use huge quantities of public data to reveal the story of the world's past, present and future development. Now he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes.
The film also explores cutting-edge examples of statistics in action today. In San Francisco, a new app mashes up police department data with the city's street map to show what crime is being reported street by street, house by house, in near real-time. Every citizen can use it and the hidden patterns of their city are starkly revealed. Meanwhile, at Google HQ the machine translation project tries to translate between 57 languages, using lots of statistics and no linguists.
Despite its light and witty touch, the film nonetheless has a serious message - without statistics we are cast adrift on an ocean of confusion, but armed with stats we can take control of our lives, hold our rulers to account and see the world as it really is. What's more, Hans concludes, we can now collect and analyse such huge quantities of data and at such speeds that scientific method itself seems to be changing.
BBC The Joy of Stats

Must See Documentaries - The Corporation

2011-01-01T09:55:00.001-08:00

Must See Documentaries - The Corporation

Walace and Gromit making

2010-11-20T13:21:00.001-08:00

«Walace and Gromit» making.

Planet Earth BBC — Snow Leopard in the Wild

2010-11-16T11:16:00.001-08:00

Planet Earth BBC-First ever of the Himalayan Snow Leopard in the wild caught on film. This video clip is from the Planet Earth series by the BBC.

Schopenhauer - Sea of Faith - BBC documentary

2010-11-15T10:15:00.001-08:00

Excerpt on Arthur Schopenhauer, focusing on the influence of Eastern thought upon his philosophy. Taken from the 1984 BBC documentary, «Sea of Faith».

Oh, my new blog - The Best Music Day. Love, Molfly.

2057 The Body part 1

2010-10-31T06:25:00.001-07:00

Part one of the 2057 series documentary made by the discovery channel with michio kaku the renowned physicist. The body episode is a fascinating look at future healthcare presented in an entertaining drama type of show.

My 14 Most Favorite Documentaries

2010-10-31T04:38:00.001-07:00

I know this isn't a top 10 list or anything because I can't narrow it down more than this... but these are all great documentaries in my opinion. Let me know what you think if you have seen any?

Clifftop 2008 [1/2 hour Documentary]

2010-10-02T02:58:00.001-07:00

A documentary look at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival - aka Clifftop - a unique festival in that a very large percentage of the participants are musicians. Each night at any given moment, there are literally a hundred jam sessions going on. The doc also explores the evolving concepts behind Old Time. Also featured are interviews and performances of legendary West Virginia fiddler Lester McCumbers.