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Blood Transfusions
Original Title: Les Transfusions Sanguines Nuisibles
Duration: 12’23’’
Producer: Hélène Leroux
Director: Jeanita Richard
Company: Société Radio-Canada
Scientific Field: Medical
Year: 2008
Country: Canada
Half of all patients who receive a blood transfusion don’t need one. These unnecessary transfusions often do more harm than good: they’re associated with high incidences of death, infection and medical complications. However, doctors continue prescribing them as if they could do no wrong.
Brain that Changes Itself, The
Original Title: Les Etonnants Pouvoirs de la Transformation du Cerveau
Duration: 70’
Producer: Gordon Henderson
Director: Mike Sheerin
Company: 90th Parallel Film & TU
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences / Medical
Year: 2009
Country: Canada
Breaking the Maya Code
Original Title: Breaking the Maya Code
Duration: 116’
Producer: Rosey Guthrie
Director: David Lebrun
Company: Night Fire Films
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology / History
Year: 2008
Country: USA
The complex and beautiful Maya hieroglyphic script was until recently the world’s last
major un-deciphered writing system. BREAKING THE MAYA CODE is the story of the 200
year struggle, often hampered by misconceptions and rivalries, that has ultimately
unlocked the secrets of one of mankind's great civilizations and re-connected modern
Maya with their extraordinary past. It’s an epic tale that leads from the jungles of
Guatemala to the snows of Russia, from ancient Maya temples to the dusty libraries of
Dresden and Madrid. The film is based on the book of the same title by Michael Coe,
called by the NY Times “one of the great stories of twentieth century scientific discovery.
By-Pass 1.0
Original Title: By-Pass 1.0
Duration: 19’17’’
Producer: Hadrien Calmet
Director: Hadrien Calmet
Company: Barcelona Supercomuting Center
Scientific Field: Medical / Technologies
Year: 2008
Country: Spain
This documentary tries to show and explain what cardiovascular diseases are.
From different point of view, one is nutritionist, other is cardiologist.
The nutritionist tries to answer how they characterized, dangers and rick factors.
But also she tries to promote the Mediterranean diet and how to look after your self.
The cardiologist explains what kinds of actions are possible in surgery.
What is the evolution of the treatment concerning cardiovascular diseases?
And to finish, how the numerical simulations can help the surgeon.
The third part a short explication about numerical simulations in science
applied of medicine.
And the last part is fluid dynamics simulation about the blood flow
in a stenosed artery.
Carl Djerassi – Vienna’s Lost Son
Original Title: Carl Djerassi – Wiens Verlorener Sohn
Duration: 42’13’’
Producer: Eberhard Büssem
Director: Eberhard Büssem
Company: BR Alpha
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences / History
Year: 2008
Country: Germany
World famous chemist Carl Djerassi, “father of the birth control pill”, art collector and author, calls himself an “intellectual polygamist”. The film takes him through his life and works, from Vienna via Sofia, San Francisco and London. The 85 year old Scientist, art collector and author tirelessly travels the whole world, giving scientific lectures, reading from his numerous books and visiting the performances of his plays. After 50 years of exceedingly successful scientific research, Djerassi then became a proliferous novel writer and dramatist. Over the past 20 years he has written 20 “Science in Fiction” plays, novels and so far four autobiographies whereby he describes the human side of scientists and their personal conflicts. He mainly deals with the motivation to become famous and achieve affirmation through scientific successes.
Catastrophe
Original Title: Catastrophe
Duration: 48’17’’
Producer: Sarah Winter
Director: Sophie Harris
Company: Pioneer Productions
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences
Year: 2008
Country: UK
Evolution is a savage, imperfect and violent process. It’s survive or perish. 99% of all the creatures that have ever lived, no longer exist. They were wiped-out in a series of global catastrophes. Each disaster changed the course of evolution on earth. Without them mankind, nor any of the life we see around us, would be here today. The earth’s history of catastrophes has both moulded the planet and determined evolution. For each disaster led to another leap forward on the evolutionary trail form single celled bacteria to humankind itself.
Cell, The
Original Title: Les Mystères de Monte Sana
Duration: 82’
Producer: Luc Martin Gousset / Serge Gordey / Ilan Ziv
Director: Leo Singer / Nicolas Wadimoff
Company: Point du Jour
Scientific Field: Genetics / Medical
Year: 2006
Country: France
Drama-documentary on the dreams and nightmares of stem cell research.
The year is 2026. Monte Sana is an exclusive retirement community in the south of France where all the ailments of old age (strokes, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s) can be cured or contained with the latest stem cell therapies. The old are getting younger, death is being postponed… Following a serious incident, a young TV reporter investigates, looking at the early stages of stem cell research back in 2006.
Changing Valley
Original Title: Promena Udoli
Duration: 57’
Producer: Czech Television
Director: Marie Sandova
Company: SANDA / s.r.o.
Scientific Field: Environment / Experimental
Year: 2008
Country: Czech Republic
The documentary narrates about the change of Radlice valley in Prague over the years 2004 – 2008. The architect Josef Pleskot in co-operation with an investor (ČSOB) and building contractor (SKANKA) realized an outstanding edifice which matches a generous way the current demands of environmental responsible construction.
Charles Darwin – The Devil’s Chaplain?
Original Title: Charles Darwin – Kaplan des Teufels?
Duration: 53’
Producer: Eike Schmitz
Director: Eike Schmitz
Company: Atlantis-Film, Berlin
Scientific Field: History
Year: 2009
Country: Germany
The film Charles Darwin – The Devil’s Chaplain? traces Darwin’s dramatic transformation from a student of theology to the founder of modern biology. We accompany him on his sea voyage on the „Beagle“ around the world. We witness him become a passionate researcher of exotic species on the Cape Verde Islands, South America and the Galapagos Islands, and we follow his career as a scientist in Victorian England. The film focuses on Darwin’s conflict between exploring the truth in the face of religion.
Che Guevara, the Body and the Legend
Original Title: Che Guevara, il corpo e il mito
Duration: 52’50’’
Producer: Raffaele Brunetti
Director:
Company: B&B Film
Scientific Field: History
Year: 2007
Country: Italy
The Cold War ended and the Soviet Union was dissolved. Only then was it possible
to look beyond the myth of Che Guevara and begin to search for his “ghostly”
remains, gone missing for some 30 years. From 1967 (the year of Che’s execution)
to 1997 (the year his body was recovered) international political events kept the
remains of Ernesto Che Guevara hidden from the world, making the recovery of
history’s most famous revolutionary all but impossible.
Thanks to the accounts of those people who came into direct contact with Guevara’s
corpse, the documentary reveals the last hours of Ernesto Guevara, the reasons that
led to the disappearance and later to the recovery of his remains and the role that the
vanished corpse with its amputated hands played in the creation of the legend of
“Che”. The film will reveal how during the Cold War the agreements for a “peaceful
coexistence” between United States and Soviet Union led to to Che Guevara leaving
Cuba, his death and the disappearance of his corpse. Corpse which could only be
searched for after the fall of the Soviet Union, its bureaucracy and imperialism having
been opposed by Che during the final period of his life.
The grandiose funeral processions in Cuba, which after 30 years was able finally to
celebrate the re-possession of their national hero’s remains, were not enough to put
Che’s legacy to rest.
Cherche Toujours
Original Title: Cherche Toujours
Duration: 51’
Producer: Serge Lalou
Director: Mathies Thery / Etienne Charlou
Company: Les Films d’ Ici
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences
Year: 2008
Country: France
Circumnavigation of Physics, A
Original Title: Φυσικής Περίπλους
Duration: 36΄
Producer: NΗRF
Director: Kostas Vrettos
Company:
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences
Year: 2008
Country: Greece
In 36 minutes the documentary presents a history of 26 centuries of Physics from Thales to Einstein.
Basic concepts of Physics such as space-time and mass-energy are presented through a simple and understandable narrative accompanied by an appealing and pictorial form of cinematographic visualisation.
The cinema can become a telescope and a scientific tool, while scientific research and observations have the ability to influence modern trends in visual arts (Dali, Picabia, Matisse, etc.)
The British actor, Gary Barber, takes on the role of Einstein and the scientific supervision and presentation is by Dr. Giannis Petsalakis, Research Director in the Institute of Theoretical and Physical Chemistry of the National Hellenic Research Foundation.
The production was completed within the framework of EPAN-KPS 2000-2006, Action 4.4.5 “Open Doors – 2nd Cycle”
The documentary has been distibuted to Upper High Schools throughout the country with the objective of familiarising school pupils with the amazing world of Physics.
Cloud Mystery, The
Original Title: The Cloud Mystery
Duration: 52’30’’
Producer: Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen
Director: Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen
Company: Mortensenfilm
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences / Space / Nature / Climate
Year: 2008
Country: Denmark
While CO 2 emissions rise, global warming seems to have stopped.
The Earth has now for 10 years refused to obey the computer predictions of a warmer Earth.How timely, then, is this new TV documentary that offers a completely different scientific perspective on climate change.
The Cloud Mystery tells the story of the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and his twelve-year battle to prove that clouds, not human activity, govern the climate - and that the clouds take their orders from the Sun and the stars. The science is rich, extending from events millions of years ago to previously unknown chemistry going on in the air over our heads today, driven by cosmic rays coming from exploded stars. Equally dramatic is the personal fight faced by Dr Svensmark and a small group of brilliant colleagues around the world, to win a hearing for an amazing discovery that was never politically correct.
If the Svensmark theory is right, the unusual quietness of the Sun this year promises more cosmic rays, more clouds and colder weather to come. It's time to prepare TV viewers for a head-to-head conflict between climate predictions.
Concordia, Austral Sciences
Original Title: Concordia, Sciences Australes
Duration: 34’
Producer: Marcel Dalaise / CNRS Images
Director: Marcel Dalaise
Company: CNRS
Scientific Field: Astronomy / Climatology
Year: 2008
Country: France
This Franco-Italian station has been built in the heart of the Antarctic plateau, on the Dome C site, at an altitude of 3233 metres, of which 3200 metres is ice. It is a unique place dedicated to science.
The 3270 metre drilling called Epica has enabled climates from up to 800,000 years ago to be decoded. As well as glaciology, other activities are also developed on the site. The CNRS Image team also follows astronomers and seismologists in their work.
The beginning of February will see the back of summer technicians and researchers, and only 13 Italian and French researchers will winter there. They will stay in this remote and extreme world. Outside of time a place, for nearly 10 months.
Cracking the Colour Code
Original Title: Cracking the Colour Code
Duration: 3x52’
Producer: Andrew Ogilvie / Fabrice Esteve
Director: Hugh Piper / Olivier Lassu
Company: Electric Pictures and Gedeon Programmes
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology / Technologies
Year: 2008
Country: Australia
Taking the globe as its canvas, and drawing on science, history, art and other disciplines, CRACKING THE COLOUR CODE is a visual exploration of how we view colours, how we make them, and the meanings they hold in our world. From ancient ochre cave paintings in Australia to Masai tribal rituals in East Africa; and from India’s holi festival to one of the world’s leading colour forecasters in downtown Manhattan, the series journeys across sixteen countries and six continents. CRACKING THE COLOUR CODE is not only beautiful to watch, but is destined to become the primary reference on the subject for millions of viewers worldwide.
Cracking the Maya Code
Original Title: Cracking the Maya Code
Duration: 56‘46’’
Producer: Sarah Holt / Rosey Guthrie / David Lebrun
Director: David Lebrun
Company: A NOVA Production in association with Night Fire Films and ARTE France
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology / History
Year: 2008
Country: USA
The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script, carved on monuments, painted on pottery, and drawn in hand-made bark books. Until recently, the script was the world’s last major undeciphered writing system. Through a dazzling series of ingenious breakthroughs the Maya code has finally been cracked. For the first time, NOVA presents the definitive inside story of how the decoding was done, told by the experts at the epicenter of perhaps the greatest of all archaeological detective stories. With magnificent footage of Mayan temples and art, this documentary is many years in the making and culminates in the fascinating account of this once magnificent ancient civilization’s masterful method of communication.
Crayfish in the Jam Jar, The
Original Title: Mein Isental
Duration: 43‘30’’
Producer: Jan Haft / Udo A. Zimmerman / Bayerischer Rundfunk
Director: Jan Haft
Company: nautilusfilm GmbH
Scientific Field: Environment / Wildlife / Nature
Year: 2008
Country: Germany
The Crayfish in the Jam Jar is an authentic and intimate portrait of a habitat, its wildlife and a man who has lived here all his life. When he was a boy, he caught fish and crayfish in jam jars and started to thoroughly observe the valleys unique nature and all the changes that came as time went by. Because agriculture in the Isen Valley still is often carried out on small parcels of land and some farmers still do not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers there is plenty of wildlife in this small unknown paradise. Located in Southern Germany, the valley of the river Isen is a not only unusually species-rich but also a beautiful landscape formed by the glaciers of the last ice age.
Semi-natural living spaces like the Isen Valley are gradually disappearing worldwide, hardly noticed by anyone because it happens so quietly and so unobtrusively. Slowly but steadily colors, sounds and diversity are all vanishing. Big changes are now starting to have an impact on this land: Global warming has already brought new species to the valley. Other intruders were brought here by man and changed the fauna of the river Isen. Like an unstoppable green avalanche, a monotonous forest of maize has gradually crossed the hills and is heading for the valley ever since politicians turned farmers into energy providers, with the aim of satisfying our society's endless greed for more energy.
Curious: Mind / Brain / Machine
Original Title: Curious: Mind / Brain / Machine
Duration: 56‘46’’
Producer: Mark Mannucci / Tara Thomas / Jared Lipworth
Director: Mark Mannucci
Company: A co-production of Thirteen/WNET New York and the California Institute of Technology
Scientific Field: Space / Experimental / Medical / Technologies
Year: 2007
Country: USA
Moving, human, funny and strange — this episode features stories about people who are transforming our understanding of the brain. An exploration of the similarities between moral and economic decision-making, and the story of a boy who was born without a corpus collosum—the part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres, gave us the opportunity to highlight some of the very latest human brain function research. And from the inner working of a fly brain and the latest in learning robots, we are able to explore the challenges and advances in human efforts to create artificial consciousness.
Curious: Survival
Original Title: Curious: Survival
Duration: 56‘46’’
Producer: Mark Mannucci / Tara Thomas / Jared Lipworth
Director: Mark Mannucci
Company: A co-production of Thirteen/WNET New York and the California Institute of Technology
Scientific Field: Environment / Medical / Technologies
Year: 2007
Country: USA
While undergoing chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer, Mary Davis challenged her chemical engineer husband to find a less destructive way to tackle the disease. Ten year’s later, Mark Davis’ new nanotech treatment is showing remarkable promise, and curious documents its very first human trial. But will it work? And if it does, will it revolutionize cancer treatment as we know it? Also, we follow scientists in their quest to create an artificial leaf that can make clean fuel from sunlight and water.
Czech Mechanical Nativity Scenes
Original Title: České Mechanické Betlémy
Duration: 37‘
Producer: Petr Kaňka / Czech Center Roma
Director: Petr Kaňka
Company: Petr Kaňka
Scientific Field: History
Year: 2008
Country: Czech Republic
This film will mediate for the public a moving experience through the viewing of four outstanding works of Czech crèche creators. Coming from various parts of Bohemia, they belong to the age-old tradition of Christmas celebrations, expressing the folk imagination toward spirituality in the world, a down-to-earth religiousness surpassing the bounds of Christian canon.
The Mechanical Nativity Scene by Jáchym Metelka, created between 1883 and 1913, reflects the artist’s feeling of tenderness and inner peace. Metelka clearly expresses, in perfect harmony with Christian doctrine, the course of worldly affairs dominated by the arrogant power of King Herod which the Son of God, born into a crib lined with hay, came to oppose.
The Mechanical Nativity Scene by Probošt was set up on this landowner’s farm in Třebechovice pod Orebem. Probošt devoted himself to the creation of his Nativity scene starting from the 1860’s and he was awarded a gold medal at the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts in 1906.
The Nativity Scene by Krýza from Jindřichův Hradec has received the most renown of the crèches presented in this film – it has been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records since 1988 as the greatest folk mechanical Nativity scene in the world.
The Nativity Scene by Tittl and Svoboda in Sušice is the proof that the crèche-making tradition in Bohemia is still alive to this very day...
Dark Side of Light, The
Original Title: Die Dunkle Seite des Lichts
Duration: 52’
Producer: Christian Popp
Director: Tanja Freyhoff / Thomas Uhlmann
Company: Interscience Film GmbH
Scientific Field: Environment
Year: 2008
Country: Germany
Light Pollution has become a curse throughout the developed world. It confuses animals, cuts humans off from the majesty of the heavens, and disturbs our biological clocks. It can damage our health and potentially even shorten our lives.
THE DARK SIDE OF LIGHT visits astronomers, ornithologists, biologists, and sleep scientists - at night - all over the world, and discovers just what electric light in the wrong places is doing to the animal and the human world - and what we can do about it.
Darwin on the Evolution Trail
Original Title: Darwin sur les Traces de l’Evolution
Duration: 09‘38’’
Producer: CNDP
Director: Yannick Mahé
Company: CNDP
Scientific Field: History / Evolution
Year: 2009
Country: France
Curious by nature, the young Charles Darwin embarks on a voyage around the world as naturalist aboard the Beagle. At the time he was not to know that it was to be the beginning of a sensational scientific breakthrough. For five years he collects, observes and annotates everything he discovers in the other worlds. Back in England, he continues to work tirelessly on his extensive collections and finally, 20 years later, he publishes the fruit of his work: "On the Origin of Species” - the volume which enables us to explain the emergence and the extinction of species by natural selection.
Darwin’s Lost Paradise
Original Title: Le Grand Voyage de Darwin
Duration: 2x52‘
Producer: Werner Vennewald / Penny Chapman / Emmanuel Laurent
Director: Hannes Schuler / Katharina von Flotow
Company: Monaco Film / Chapman Pictures / Films á Trois
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology / Nature / History
Year: 2008-2009
Country: Germany / France / Australia
Charles Darwin is one of mankind’s greatest thinkers. His extensive scientific research, which culminated in the publication of the theory of evolution in 1859, shook man's age old belief in being the chosen ones, the fruit of "divine creation" and proved that man had developed through a long evolutionary process.
Mankind was no longer the exceptional creation of God, but the result of a process of adaptation which had been taking place over millions of years. Many of the observations which brought Darwin to this new and shocking conclusion were made during his long voyage onboard the Beagle, a British ship which took him around the world in a voyage which lasted from 1831 to 1836.
Deciphering Science: New Views of Our Sun
Original Title: Deciphering Science: New Views of Our Sun
Duration: 43‘
Producer: Jun Ochiai
Director: Hisateru Takahashi
Company: NHK
Scientific Field: Space
Year: 2008
Country: Germany / France / Australia
Deciphering Science” introduces state-of-the-art technology and advances in science that may change our future, and it highlights eye-catching social events through the eyes of science and technology. This edition unlocks some of the mysteries of the sun, using never-before-released images from Japan’s Hinode satellite to shed light on sunspots and the sun’s corona from a new angle.
Deeper Shades of Green
Original Title: Deeper Shades of Green
Duration: 26’46’’
Producer: Elizabeth Westrate / Beth Levison
Director: Tad Fettig
Company: kontentreal
Scientific Field:
Year: 2006
Country: USA
The first season concludes with a look to the future. Deeper Shades of Green focuses on three remarkable thinkers and designers of our time: Ken Yeang, Werner Sobek and William McDonough. Nothing short of geniuses, these architects are challenging society and environmental design philosophically, psychologically, technically, aesthetically, politically, and culturally. Each is changing the face of not only architecture, but of environmentalism.
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