The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation

Christmas with the Desert Children

January 1974 •English

A short documentary about Father Christmas' annual six-day trek through the Australian desert aboard the Tea and Sugar Train.

Greening the Desert

February 2007 •English

Permaculture expert Geoff Lawton describes how he and a team of volunteers grew an oasis in arid, salty lowland, despite extremely high temperatures and minimal irrigation. The site is the lowest dryland expanse on Earth: a plain in Jordan, two kilometres northeast of the Dead Sea, and 400 metres below sea level.

Eden – In the heart of the red desert

September 2014 •French

Namib, an incredible spot is home to the highest sand dunes on Earth, along with 3500 species of plants of incredible diversity, all adapted to the arid climate. Elephants, antelopes, lions, giraffes and rhinoceros roam freely in the Namib with neither fence nor enclosure, as if at the dawn of time. Management of the protected areas has been entrusted to the local people and in particular to the Himba, the dominant tribe of the desert. Underground there are hidden treasures, diamonds, uranium and iron. From the beginning of the 20th century the Namib has attracted miners from all over the world, with an increasing appetite. Today, new mining projects threaten the ecosystem of the region. Olivia crosses the desert from the South to North, sharing the difficult everyday lives of the people of the desert. Exploring this rich but fragile garden of Eden, she attempts to understand why the survival of the desert is so important to the people and animals that live there.

Sinatra in Palm Springs

February 2018 •English

Palm Springs, a small desert oasis 100 miles East of Los Angeles was Sinatra's true home for 50 years. During his brief yet turbulent marriage to Ava Gardner his Palm Springs home was center stage. For the rest of his life, the Rancho Mirage compound on Frank Sinatra Drive, was the home he called "My Heaven". Palm Springs still feels the ghost of Frank Sinatra.

Fajr

April 2019 •Arabic

In the Moroccan desert night dilutes forms and silence slides through sand. Dawn starts then to draw silhouettes of dunes while motionless figures punctuate landscape. From night´s abstraction, light returns its dimension to space and their volume to bodies. Stillness concentrates gaze and duration densify it. The adhan -muslim call to pray- sounds and immobility, that was condensing, begins to irradiate. And now the bodies are those which dissolves into the desert.

Nazca Desert Mystery

November 2022 •English

One of the world’s greatest ancient enigmas, the Nazca lines are a dense network of criss-crossing lines, geometric shapes, and animal figures etched across 200 square miles of Peruvian desert. Who created them and why? Ever since they were discovered in the 1920s, scholars and enthusiasts have raised countless theories about their purpose. Now, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of long-hidden lines and figures as well as evidence of ancient rituals, offering new clues to the origins and motivations behind the giant desert symbols.

The Desert Wagon

March 2024 •Spanish

A couple of artists travels through the Mexico desert to present their puppet show.

L'expérience biosphère : 120 jours dans le désert

March 2024 •French

Hollywood in Deliblatska Pescara

February 1965 •German

Short documentary on the making of Henry Levin's Genghis Khan, which filmed on location in Yugoslavia. The final film's epic battle scenes are contrasted with the mundane reality of life on a film set.

Cierzo

November 2022 •Spanish

At the border between Navarre and Aragon we find the moors known as the Bardenas Reales, characterized by the dust and the omnipresence of the northern wind. This is a portrait of a land, but also a journey through Pilar’s memories. It is a glance at the past but also the present, and about how everything has changed, for better or worse.

The Garden of Stones

April 1976 •Persian

Secrets and mysteries lose power when they are spread too widely. This is what the villagers discover when they invade an old man's vision-inspired shrine to the namelessly holy.

Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life

February 2009 •English

Darwin's great insight – that life has evolved over millions of years by natural selection – has been the cornerstone of all David Attenborough’s natural history series. In this documentary, he takes us on a deeply personal journey which reflects his own life and the way he came to understand Darwin’s theory.

The Hunters

January 1957 •English

An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53. In addition to the giraffe hunt, the film shows other aspects of !Kung life at that time, including family relationships, socializing and storytelling, and the hard work of gathering plant foods and hunting for small game.

Genesis

September 2004 •English

An African narrator tells the story of earth history, the birth of the universe and evolution of life. Beautiful imagery makes this movie documentary complete.

A Day in Death Valley

January 1944 •English

A tour of the arid, inhospitable region of the southern California desert known as Death Valley, originally named because of the many travelers in the 1840s who died of thirst, starvation and/or exposure trying to cross it.

Origins of Life

June 2001 •French

A documentary that explores the natural world of the sea, from the single-celled organism to more complex forms of life, OCEAN ORIGINS was originally filmed in the IMAX large format, which adds a crispness and clarity to the images. This documentary film seeks to examine the process of evolution by looking at the many creatures of the sea that can illustrate the way multi-cellular life emerged over the course of four billion years. OCEAN ORIGINS is a creative film that uses fascinating documentary footage to look at scientific theories and principles in an interesting manner

Comment le chat a conquis le monde

November 2020 •French

The Sahara: The Forgotten History of the World's Harshest Desert

December 2006 •English

At once a vast expanse of mesmerizing desolation and the crucible of human history, the Sahara Desert has been both the battlefield of empires and the haunted wilderness at the margins of the known world for thousands of years. Shot on location, this exhilarating documentary brings to life the Sahara’s cruel history and the conflicts that still plague its people. THE SAHARA recounts the story of kings who once led caravans of 30,000 people across the desert, bearing riches beyond imagination. It tells of Roman death squads that exterminated the citizens of the Empire’s most bitter rival and how the Foreign Legion crafted a legend out of last stands and lost causes. From the fabled metropolis of Timbuktu to the shores of Tripoli, THE SAHARA is an illuminating exploration of this unforgiving and remote land of myth and mirage.

The Secret Life of Cats

June 2014 •English

It is believed that cats are just indifferent and egotistic; but they are more complex, interesting and even cuter than is commonly imagined. The astonishing process by which a newborn kitten becomes a fully grown cat reveals the amazing and true secret life of cats.

Willie and the Mouse

May 1941 •English

John Nesbitt's "Passing Parade" purports to show how the behavior of mice can be studied in relation to the interaction of school children.