
Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Kenya and Uganda to uncover the stories behind Britain's favourite drink, meeting the people who pick, pack and transport tea.

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Kenya and Uganda to uncover the stories behind Britain's favourite drink, meeting the people who pick, pack and transport tea.
2014-01-12
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6.5Following a tense encounter with a mysterious stranger with otherworldly powers, a man finds himself banished to a parallel, tyrannical Earth, where he fights to get back to the woman he loves.
7.3Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
6.7A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
6.9A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
7.5With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.
7.4The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
7.2A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.
8.0Long-lost footage from Elvis Presley's legendary Las Vegas residency in the 1970s woven together with rare 16mm footage from Elvis on Tour, and 8mm from the Graceland archive, plus recordings of Elvis telling "his side of the story" rediscovered during Baz Luhrmann's research for his 2022 film, Elvis.
7.9A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.
7.3Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
6.8A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.
7.6A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
8.0Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
6.9Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
7.7Drawn from a never before seen cache of personal footage spanning decades, this is an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist and musician who continues to shatter conventions.
7.8A look behind the lens of Christopher Nolan's space epic.
6.7Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.
5.9After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.
7.0Photographer Estevan Oriol and artist Mister Cartoon turned their Chicano roots into gritty art, impacting street culture, hip hop and beyond.
6.0On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated area by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness – only to find himself in a waking nightmare.
10.060 years ago, almost nothing was known of elephants in the wild. But then one young Scottish biologist changed that forever. In 1965 Iain Douglas-Hamilton arrived in Tanzania to live alongside African elephants. Later joined by his wife Oria and daughters Saba and Dudu, elephants became central to their lives with matriarch Boadicea and gentle young mother Virgo cherished like human relatives. But this garden Eden was short-lived as an ivory poaching epidemic swept across Africa forcing Iain to switch from pioneering scientist to maverick conservationist. He became a lone crusader against the international Ivory trade which was finally banned in 1989. Now back in the field and revealing even more about the fascinating world of elephants, Iain’s work continues alongside a new generation of Kenyan conservationists. This inspiring documentary combines stunning wildlife imagery with the story of a remarkable life showing how sometimes you have to stand alone to protect what you love.
7.2Three children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda compete in their country's national music and dance festival.
0.0This documentary explores the history of Canada’s first major migration of non-European and non-white refugees who arrived in 1972 when Ugandan President Idi Amin expelled all South Asians from the country. Their story of struggle and hope became part of Canada’s conversations about refugees and cultural pluralism, and informed the Canadian response to future refugee movements.
0.0Director Scheffer registered a performance of the Tea Opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun (who won an Oscar in 2001 with his score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Scheffer interlaces the images with interviews with Dun, stage director Pierre Audi and librettist Xu Ying, about the opera and the role tea and oriental philosophy play in this work. Using monochrome, sometimes abstract images (in yellow, blue, red and green), close-ups of plants and flowers and images of the Chinese nature and people (sometimes accelerated or decelerated, sometimes in black-and-white), he mirrors the stylised opera performance and Dun's reflective music.
4.3Photographer Ami Vitale follows a global effort to save the northern white rhinoceros from extinction. With only two surviving females, a team of scientists races to create the world’s first surrogate rhino pregnancy. The fate of the species now rests in the hands of the teams who are devoted to saving it in this hopeful, urgent film
8.0Various actors, presenters, directors and other staff who have worked at the iconic BBC Television Centre at Shepherd's Bush in London reminisce about their time there.
7.5Sudan, Southern Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains in Africa. Scenes from the forgotten war that the fighters of the Nuba people have held since 2011 against the government of President Omar al-Bashir and the Sudanese army, which crudely show the hard daily life of Hannan, a brave woman fighting for the survival of her family; Jordania, a promising student; Mosquito, a reckless journalist; and Al-Bagir, a rebel leader.
0.0When his family tries to kill him, Sidney, who is intersex, flees to Nairobi where he meets a group of transgender friends. Together, they fight discrimination and discover life, love and self-worth.
7.7A documentary detailing an indiscriminate terrorist attack that left 71 dead in Kenya.
5.3The story of Pastor Lucy and her husband Duncan Ndegwa, who began feeding and sheltering children from the streets of Nairobi, Kenya in 1996.
6.5Tea drinkers will benefit from 6 tips for making tea, as well as other handy hints.
0.0A short film documenting the time the filmmaker spent in Kenya.
0.0For the first time in history, a white man has been invited to become a Massai Warrior. The Massai of East Africa are one of the last tribes on earth to live as they did hundreds of years ago. Benjamin will live among the tribe, sleeping, hunting, and surviving in the bush. He will get to know their culture, their customs of dancing and playing, and learn how to conquer the dangers of the wilderness. Will he be able to become a true Massai warrior? To become a Massai is a great journey into the unknown.
This early travelogue film, made in a Kenyan train station, captures an impromptu musical performance. Some passengers eagerly join in while others sleep—blissfully unaware of the performance taking place around them.
8.7Documented in television documentaries for over 40 years by the BBC and other broadcasters around the world, the Marsh Pride is the most filmed pride of lions on Earth. In this film, the Marsh Pride battle for survival in Kenya's famous Maasai Mara Reserve, which has become a magnet for tourists, many of them keen to see the pride for themselves. A tale of shifting loyalties, bloody takeovers and sheer resilience, the lions’ story is told by those who filmed them, tried to protect them and lived alongside them, as well as some who ultimately wanted them dead.
0.0In the 19th century, China held the monopoly on tea, which was dear and fashionable in the West, and the British Empire exchanged poppies, produced in its Indian colonies and transformed into opium, for Chinese tea. Inundated by the drugs, China was forced to open up its market, and the British consolidated their commercial dominance. In 1839, the Middle Empire introduced prohibition. The Opium War was declared… Great Britain emerged as the winner, but the warning was heeded: it could no longer depend on Chinese tea. The only alternative possible was to produce its own tea. The East India Company therefore entrusted one man with finding the secrets of the precious beverage. His mission was to develop the first plantations in Britain’s Indian colonies. This latter-day James Bond was called Robert Fortune – a botanist. After overcoming innumerable ordeals in the heart of imperial China, he brought back the plants and techniques that gave rise to Darjeeling tea.
7.0Filmmaker Barbet Schroeder shows the Ugandan dictator meeting his Cabinet, reviewing his troops, explaining his ideology.
0.0The epic story of how people around the world lived through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, from lockdowns to funerals to protests. Filming across the globe and using extensive personal video and local footage, FRONTLINE documented how people and countries responded to COVID-19 across cultures, races, faiths and privilege.
7.9Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.