Dr. Karmele Sanchez
2014-09-26
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An examination of the extinction threat faced by frogs, which have hopped on Earth for some 250 million years and are a crucial cog in the ecosystem. Scientists believe they've pinpointed a cause for the loss of many of the amphibians: the chytrid fungus, which flourishes in high altitudes. Unfortunately, they don't know how to combat it. Included: an isolated forest in Panama that has yet to be touched by the fungus, thus enabling frogs to live and thrive as they have for eons.
Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.
From Belgium, Jialai Wang maintains contact via smartphone and camera with her mother and grandmother in China. When her grandmother’s health deteriorates, Jialai returns to Shanghai, but when she arrives, her grandmother has already died, and she is left alone with her mother. A devout Buddhist, her mother seems to pay more attention to her daily prayers, Maoist past and dog Dongdong than she does to her daughter. She herself had been abandoned as a child by her own mother, when she divorced Jialai’s grandfather and moved to the city.
Biologist Patrick Aryee explores the fascinating secrets behind what makes small animals successful, from a little lemur to a tiny armadillo.
This documentary highlights the endangered existence of the Scottish wildcats, and the conservation efforts required to prevent their extinction.
Chola and Fútbol are a couple of street dogs that live in the Los Reyes skatepark. A microcosm is organized around them, composed of things, animals and young adolescents in conflict with an adult world that they reject but are required to enter.
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
We call them o-rang-u-tans, which literally means "forest persons" in the Malay and Indonesian languages. They are the only great apes native to Asia. Of all the apes, they are the closest to man in genetic makeup. And they face extinction. Two years in the making, the film is an intimate portrayal of the world of orangutans, the threats to their survival and the people committed to help them thrive. The film focuses on a recent discovery that orangutans do not rely on animal instinct for survival, but instead have a culture that they have preserved from generation to generation.
Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.
A nuanced portrait of a new generation, Dear Thirteen is a cinematic time capsule of coming of age in today’s world. Through the eyes of nine thirteen-year-olds, we see how pressing social, geographical and political challenges are shaping, and being shaped by, young people: rising anti-Semitism in Europe, guns in America, gender identity and racial divisions across Australia and Asia. With no adult commentary outside the filmmaker, Dear Thirteen offers an intimate view into the universal uncertainty inherent in growing up.
SEARCHDOG is the story of Matthew Zarrella, a Rhode Island State Police Sergeant who rehabilitates “unadoptable” pound dogs and transforms them into Search & Rescue/Recovery Dogs. We come to know Matthew and his dogs and witness extraordinary moments over four and a half years of real-time searches as he trains troopers and their new canine partners to find missing persons.
Wildlife activists and investigators put their lives on the line to battle the illegal African ivory trade, in this suspenseful on-the-ground documentary.
Africa the Serengeti takes you on an extraordinary journey to view a spectacle few humans have ever witnessed: The Great Migration. Journey with more than two million wildebeests, zebras and antelopes as in their annual 500 mile trek across the Serengeti plains.
Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.
Many twentieth century European artists, such as Paul Gauguin or Pablo Picasso, were influenced by art brought to Europe from African and Asian colonies. How to frame these Modernist works today when the idea of the primitive in art is problematic?
In this 40-minutes-documentary the ecologist and filmmaker David Cebulla is on a quest to find one of Germany's shyest and most endangered species: the European wildcat. During a scientific pre-study, by chance, he made the first record of a wildcat in an area near his hometown Jena. Thereupon he dedicates a whole year to get the genetic evidence and a really splendid film recording of a free-living wildcat. For this reason he sets up trail cameras and lure sticks. To find out more about these animals he meets up with two interview partners in course of the film. The Thuringian wildcat expert Silvester Tamás answers questions regarding estimates on the stock of free-ranging wildcats and the protection of the species. Matthias Krüger is head-taxidermist at the Jena Phyletic Museum and explains what we can learn from wildcats found already dead.
In the face of his own threatening illness, the greatest protector of jaguars is battling time and adversity to save these endangered cats. Venture deep into the wilds of Brazil, Belize, and Panama with biologist Alan Rabinowitz as he pursues these elusive predators—and fights to protect even more jaguar habitat than he already has. Narrated by actress Glenn Close.
Trek into the hidden battlefields of northern Botswana where lions and spotted hyenas clash in overlapping territories. With never-before-seen footage, much of it filmed at night, you'll uncover an intense and vicious blood feud that has been waged for millennia. Follow the Southern Clan, led by a powerful hyena matriarch whose firstborn female cub kills her sister at birth to assure her succession as leader of the clan. Lurk in the shadows as a lioness from the Central Pride gives birth to three cubs and then encounters a deadly Egyptian cobra. You'll be stunned by breathtaking chase scenes as the hyena matriarch is brutally killed by a male lion, throwing the clan into chaos. Discover nature's savage conflicts in this ancient rivalry.
National Geographic embarks on a 250-mile adventure through unspoiled territory along the coast of British Columbia called the Great Bear Rain Forest. It is here that bear-hunting wolves take to the sea, grizzlies clash in titanic battles, and wild salmon are the pulsing lifeblood of an entire ecosystem. As this precious habitat faces an uncertain future, threatened by chainsaws and fish farms, a team of dedicated scientists is racing to prove that it must be protected. Forming a wilderness detective squad, these experts are searching for the rare white spirit bear and collecting clues that will decipher the secret life of the forest's elusive inhabitants.
Few creatures are as mysterious and captivating as the whale, and few connect with us so emotionally and spiritually. After hunting whales for generations, we have brought their widespread slaughter to an end, but these graceful giants still face threats on a number of fronts, and the battle to save them goes on. This film takes an intimate look at four types of whales: pilots, humpbacks, bowheads and orcas, through the eyes of the humans who are closest to them. From the struggle to save a pod of pilot whales in the Florida Keys to the groundbreaking work of a scientist risking life and limb in the Arctic to the controversy over military sonar, you'll go to the front lines of whale conservation.