The Physical Sciences: Heat and Energy Transfer

Hawking: Can You Hear Me?(en)

A documentary telling the remarkable human story of Stephen Hawking. For the first time, the personal archives and the testimonies of his closest family reveal both the scale of Hawking's triumphs and the real cost of his disability and success.

House of Grucci(en)

An illuminating look inside the lives of the Grucci family, whose Long Island-based fireworks business has been lighting up night skies around the world with spectacular displays since the 1800s.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds(en)

This remarkable journey across our planet and universe explores how meteorites, shooting stars, and deep impacts have awoken our wonder about other realms—and make us rethink our destinies.

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream(en)

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...

Fuel(en)

Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy: these issues define our generation. The film exposes shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry, and the government, while exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind, electricity, and non-food-based biofuels.

WEED(en)

This 1971 color anti-drug use and abuse film was produced by Concept Films and directed by Brian Kellman for Encyclopedia Britannica. “Weed: The Story of Marijuana” combines time-lapse, montage, illustrations, animation (by Paul Fierlinger and emigre Pavel Vošický) and dramatized, documentary-style interviews to survey the evolving role of cannabis in U.S. society, with emphasis on the legal risks faced by young people. A unique score of experimental synthesizer music is provided by Tony Luisi on an EMS VCS 3 “Putney”

Our Mr. Sun(en)

One entry in a series of films produced to make science accessible to the masses—especially children—this film describes the sun in scientific but entertaining terms.

Perseverance, une année sur Mars(fr)

King Coal(en)

The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community sits on the brink of massive change.

Molds and How They Grow(en)

In this educational film, laboratory demonstrations show the effects of moisture and temperature on the growth of molds. Photomicrography reveals the structure of molds: hyphae, mycelium, spore balls, spores. Beginning with spores on a rice culture, time-lapse photography shows the formation of a new colony.

A Little Love(en)

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

Empreinte(fr)

In the heart of the Ariege Pyrenees, Patrick Chêne, a farmer and osteopath, cares for humans and animals with his hands and diphonic song. The vibrations of his singing radiates through the body and acts like an acoustic probe, showing a sensitive world full of invisible energies that make and form life, building our link with Earth and our environment.

Burned: Are Trees the New Coal?(en)

The little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel - the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green washing of the burgeoning biomass electric power industry.

Power to Change(de)

Is it possible for the entire world to switch to decentralized and renewable energy sources by 2030? In this inspiring documentary, we meet with German politicians, scientists, farmers, social workers, activists and visionaries who say yes, and who all push forward for a global change in climate by changing the local power supply sources to renewable energy. Director Carl-A. Fechner is not ready to give up on our planet just yet, and POWER TO CHANGE is a welcome antidote to the pessimism that defines our era's visions of the future.

Horizon: Which Universe Are We In?(en)

Human Nature(en)

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn’t digital, it’s biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR gives us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing disease, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. This documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the genetic engineers who are testing its limits.

White Earth(en)

An oil boom has drawn thousands to America’s Northern Plains in search of work. Against the backdrop of a cruel North Dakota winter, the stories of three children and an immigrant mother intertwine among themes of innocence, home, and the American Dream.

The Magical World of Moss(fr)

They have no roots, no seeds, no flowers, but mosses show immense survival capacities and can suspend their biological activity for long periods. Today, researchers are exploring the exceptional resistance of these archaic organisms. British ecologists have even resurrected a "zombie" moss that has been trapped in the permafrost for 1,500 years. Associated with decay and disliked in Europe, mosses are deified in Japan. With 25,000 species worldwide, bryophytes - their scientific name - are the seat of real ecosystems, and can develop in inhospitable landscapes, through an extravagant reproduction cycle.

Denial(en)

Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. David Hallquist, a Vermont utility executive, has made it his mission to take on one of the largest contributors of this global crisis-our electric grid. But when his son Derek tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be ignored. - Written by Aaron Woolf

Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime(en)

Before the internet. Before social media. Before breaking news. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.