Anyone Know Any Good Documentaries?

Here's another one. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book on the defacto slavery that existed in the south for some 80 plus years, after the Civil War was over.

Slavery By Another Name. It's worth the time.

You can watch it right now for free:

CLICK --> http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/

<Some snippets on it:>

“And within that loophole, it became a crime in the South to be unemployed, to leave one job for another one, to sell cotton after sundown, to speak too loudly in the company of white women.”

It was a system in which men were imprisoned, often on trumped-up charges, and leased to the owners of factories, farms and mines as slave laborers to meet the South’s demand for cheap labor.

“So many people tell me they were uncertain about, or never believed, accounts passed down by forebears which seemed to suggest that families were still being held as neo-slaves in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s,” writes Blackmon on his website: slaverybyanothername.com.

LINK


At the 1:09 minute mark the narrator said that in 1921 John Williams, former plantation owner, became the 1st Southern white man since 1877 to be indicted for 1st degree murder of an African American and it would not happen again until 1966.

 

[video=youtube;6CyuBuT_7I4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyuBuT_7I4&list=WL727D61F129768DC4[/video]

Nicely done.

 

[video=youtube;U0r-x3UTwPs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0r-x3UTwPs[/video]

It's about the manipulation of education.

 

The BBC does the best documentaries in the world. Here are some BBC documentaries which I like:

Bruce Parry's Amazon (2008 )



First shown on BBC2 in autumn 2008, the Amazon series follows explorer and former Royal Marine Bruce Parry's epic journey down the world's greatest river from its source on the Nevado Mismi mountain in the Peruvian Andes to where it enters the Atlantic, travelling over 6,000 kms by foot, light aircraft and boat to meet and live with tribes, coca growers, loggers and illegal miners.

Tribe



These three series - first shown in 2005, 2006 and 2007 - are again presented by Bruce Parry. Parry visits a number of remote tribes in such locales as the Himalayas, Ethiopia, West Papua, Gabon and Mongolia, spending a month living and interacting with each society. While there, Parry adopts the methods and practices of his hosts, participating in their rituals and exploring their cultural norms. This often enables him to form personal bonds with the members of each tribe.

Parry tries to learn the basics of the tribe's language but is also accompanied by a translator.

Series 1 (2005)


Bruce with a member of the Suri tribe

Episode 1: Adi - Parry travelled to north eastern India. The episode involves the sacrifice of a bull.
Episode 2: Suri - Parry travelled to Ethiopia.
Episode 3: Kombai - Parry travelled to West Papua to visit a tribe of former cannibals.
Episode 4: Babongo - Parry travelled to Gabon in western Africa.
Episode 5: Darhad - Parry travelled to Mongolia. He witnessed a shamanic ritual.
Episode 6: Sanema - Parry travelled to Venezuela. He took part in a ritual involving hallucinogenic drugs.

Series 2 (2006)


Bruce killing an ibex as part of a traditional Nyangatom ceremony

Episode 1: Nyangatom - Parry returned to Ethiopia, to stay with the tribe who are sworn enemies of the Suri, whom Parry had met in the previous series.
Episode 2: Hamar - Parry stayed in Ethiopia.
Episode 3: Dassanech - Parry again remained in Ethiopia.

Series 3 (2007)


Bruce living with the Nenets, nomads of the frozen wastes of northern Russia

Episode 1: Matis - Parry visited Brazil.
Episode 2: Nenets - Parry travelled to Russia to visit nomads of the Siberian tundra.
Episode 3: Anuta - Parry travelled to the Solomon Islands.
Episode 4: Akie - Parry travelled to Tanzania.
Episode 5: Layap - Parry travelled to Bhutan in Asia.
Episode 6: Penan - Parry travelled to Sarawak, Borneo.

 

[video]http://www.alluc.to/documentaries/watch-happy-people-a-year-in-the-taiga-2010-online/436897.html[/video]

It's a hard life being a hunter in Siberia. Most urban males, and generally any male living in modern society are horribly dependent on modern conveniences. These guys, even though they still use some modern tools that might strike one as not cmpletely roughing it, do come close to bringing back a spirit of what it's like to be truly independent and to work for no one but oneself.

 

Another good BBC documentary was "Empire", written and presented by BBC's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. In this 2012 series, Paxman charted the rise of that great thing known as the British Empire, charting the rise over five episodes of the British Empire from the trading companies of India to the rule over a quarter of the world's population and the legacy in the modern world.

Paxman also has a book, "Empire", which accompanies the BBC TV series.



Episode one: A Taste for Power



Paxman asks how a tiny island in the North Atlantic came to rule over a quarter of the world's population. He travels to India, where local soldiers and local maharajahs helped a handful of British traders to take over vast areas of land. Spectacular displays of imperial power dazzled the local peoples and developed a cult of Queen Victoria as Empress, mother and virtual God. In Egypt, Paxman explores Britain as a temporary peace-keeper who's visit turned into a seventy year occupation. He travels to the desert where Lawrence of Arabia is still remembered by elder tribesmen that brought a touch of romance to the grim struggle of the First World War and the British triumph in Palestine that led Britain to believe it could solve the world's problems that haunts the Middle East to this day.

Episode two: Making Ourselves at Home


Queen Victoria, her husband Prince Albert and their nine children in 1861, the year of Albert's death

Paxman continues his story of Britain's empire by looking at how traders, conquerors and settlers spread the British way of life around the world by creating a very British home. Beginning in India where early traders wore Indian costume and took Indian wives and their descendants still look fondly on their mixed heritage which, in Victorian Britain, was frowned upon as inter racial mixing and became taboo. In Singapore he visits a club, now open to all, where British colonials used to gather together. In Canada he finds a town of Scottish ancestry whose inhabitants, proud of the traditions, have shops selling imported Scottish goods. In Kenya he meets the descendants of the first white settlers who were bitterly resented as pressure for African independence grew; and he traces the story of an Indian family in Leicester whose migrations have been determined by the changing fortunes of the British empire.

Episode three: Playing the Game



Paxman traces the growth of a peculiarly British type of hero - adventurer, gentleman, amateur sportsman and decent chap and the British obsession with sport (almost all of the world's major sports, including the very "American" sport of baseball, are British inventions). He travels to East Africa following in the footsteps of Victorian British explorers searching for the source of the Nile; to Khartoum in Sudan to tell the story of General Gordon; to Hong Kong where the British indulged their passion for horse racing by building a spectacular race course; and to Jamaica where the greatest imperial game of all - cricket - became a battleground for racial equality when the West Indies cricket team had a white captain replaced by a black man.

Episode four: Making a Fortune


Gandhi's visit to Darwen, near Blackburn, in 1931

Paxman looks at how the empire began as a pirates' treasure hunt robbing Spanish ships and ports using privateers such as Henry Morgan and grew into an informal empire based on trade and developed into a global financial network. He travels to Jamaica where sugar plantation owners became rich on the mistreatment of African slaves, then to Calcutta where British traders became the new princes of India. Unfair trading helped start the independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi whose visit to Britain and the mill town of Darwen in 1931 is remembered by two women, who were children at the time, from Lancashire. The Opium Wars (1839 -1842 and 1856 - 1860), when China unsuccessfully tried to put an end to Britain's supplying of opium to those who wanted it in China, led to Britain's 99-year lease of part of Hong Kong (the rest of Hong Kong was given for Britain's for eternity, so Britain had no need to hand the whole of Hong Kong back to China in 1997).

Episode five: Doing Good



Paxman tells the story of how a desire for conquest became a mission to improve the rest of mankind, especially in Africa, and in Central Africa he travels in the footsteps of David Livingstone who, though a failure as a missionary, became a legend. A flood of Christian missionaries followed and founded schools, one of which today has 8000 pupils. In South Africa, Paxman tells the story of Cecil Rhodes, a maverick with a different sort of mission, who believed in the white man's right to rule the world and took vast swathes of land for Britain (and founding Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia). In Kenya, where conflict in the form of the uprising between white settlers and the murderous Mau Mau brought bloodshed, torture and eventual independence for Kenya and the break up of the empire.

 

[video=youtube;c63awtAyHdU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c63awtAyHdU[/video]

 

[video=youtube;EftQDsKU6js]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EftQDsKU6js[/video]

 

I just saw a great documentary on Netflix.
Kumare - the true story of a false prophet

http://www.kumaremovie.com/

 

[video=youtube;Bf0zfMl5KSA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bf0zfMl5KSA[/video]

 

The Kremlin's official state website has a documentary about the hidden atrocities committed by the US under Obama.

It's illegal to watch in the US, unfortunately.

http://eng.kremlin.ru/video

 

Central Park Five on PBS:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2363322876/


Criminally racist conspiracy by white NYC police against innocent black men.

Racist Hitlerian Rush Limpaugh had a week long field day claiming that the incident proved blacks were all out to rape white women. Then it turned out the police made up the story. No apology from racists like Limpbaugh.

Today the cops are retired and enjoying a taxpayer financed pension when they should be in jail for the rest of their criminally racist lives.

 

Series 9 of what is now a British institution - Springwatch - started last night at 8pm on BBC2 and is now on most nights for the next three weeks. I'm hooked on this series and always look forward to it returning.





This BBC series, which started in 2005, is mainly broadcast live but does have the odd recorded bit in it. The series looks at British spring wildlife, such as jackdaws, barn owls, great tits, otters, dolphins, basking sharks (the world's second-biggest fish), deer, foxes, badgers, butterflies and other insects etc etc, and is presented by wildlife experts Chris Packham, Martin Hughes-Games and Michaela Strachan (Chris is a naturalist and he and Michaela have been presenting TV programmes - not all of them wildlife ones - in the UK since the 1980s. Hughes-Games has a degree in Zoology and was a producer of Springwatch and Autumnwatch before becoming a presenter of them both in 2009).

The show has been broadcast live from several places around the UK over the years, and this year it is coming live from the Ynys-hir (Welsh for "long island") RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) nature reserve in Dyfi, Ceredigion, in western Wales.

Dotted around the reserve are several webcams either in bird boxes or pointing at nests which birds have made themselves. You can look at the live footage from these cams and see the adult birds either feeding their chicks or sitting on the eggs either at the Springwatch website or, if you live in the UK and Ireland, on the BBC Red Button. But the footage is also often shown on Springwatch itself and, if the presenters or any viewers notice anything interesting about any of the footage, it is shown on Springwatch.

Last night viewers were shown amazing footage of two otters - a brother and sister - swimming about in a river in a small rural town. Otters are usually shy of humans but these two have been wowing the townfolk by swimming about and walking around on the riverbank in broad daylight as people stand on the riverbank or on the bridge taking photos of them or filming them.

Michaela also went to a forest awash with bluebells. These beautiful little flowers make the floors of British forests turn into carpets of blue during the spring and it is thought that the UK is home to HALF of all the world's bluebells.




Here is live footage from the webcams at Ynys-hir. The footage alternates between different webcams every so often, so one minute you could be watching live footage of the great tit family and next you could be watching the family of buzzards in their nest: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0198n42/live

Every year at the autumn we also have Autumnwatch, hosted by the same three presenters, and in January this year we had the first ever series of Winterwatch, again hosted by the same three presenters. There hasn't as yet, however, been a Summerwatch.

When it comes to documentary series such as these, the BBC is unrivalled anywhere in the world.

Episode 2, tonight: The UK's best live wildlife stories with Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games. What's happening to one of the UK's most iconic birds - the kestrel? Catch up with the remarkable story of an osprey family and meet your local wildlife neighbours. Plus all the unfolding drama from the nest cameras.

Here's the Springwatch homepage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qgm3

 

This one's the history of the Western, about 1h30m.
[video=youtube;PKuw8MgvmAE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKuw8MgvmAE[/video]

 

Tonight is episode 15 of 17 of series 49 of the long-running British science and philosophy series Horizon, which has been on our screens on the BBC since 1964.



Tonight's episode, which I will be watching, is called "Swallowed by a Black Hole".



Episode preview:


This summer, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is getting ready to feast.

A gas cloud three times the size of our planet has strayed within the gravitational reach of our nearest supermassive black hole. And across the globe, telescopes are being trained on the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, some 27,000 light years from Earth, in the expectation of observing this unique cosmic spectacle.

For cosmic detectives across the Earth, it is a unique opportunity. For the first time in the history of science, they hope to observe in action the awesome spectacle of a feeding supermassive black hole.

 

Here are a few things I learnt from last night's episode of Horizon:

1) Massive galaxies - including our own Milky Way - have supermassive black holes at their centres. These are the largest known type of black holes. Some of these supermassive black holes can weigh as much as 100 billion Suns - as much as our entire Milky Way galaxy!

2) Despite their name, many supermassive black holes are actually the brighest known objects in the universe. These bright supermassive black holes are known as quasars. A quasar is an accretion disc of gas and dust in the centre of a massive galaxy, that surrounds the galaxy's central supermassive black hole. The gas and dust swirls around the supermassive black hole as it is slowly being sucked in and friction causes the accretion disc to become extremely hot and to glow very brightly as a result.

3) A group of British scientists has discovered that the mass of each supermassive black hole correlates exactly with the mass of the galaxy which it lies at the centre of - each supermassive black hole's mass is half of one percent of its host galaxy. The supermassive black hole somehow causes this to happen. To give you some idea of just how incredible this is, it would be like a grape somehow forcing the Earth's mass to be such that the grape's mass would be half of one percent of the mass of the entire planet Earth.

 

Here is a lecture you might watch as an adjunct to that documentary...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY

 

I saw a pretty good doc not too long ago called "It Might Get Loud". I was about 3 generations of rock guitarists represented by Jack White of the White Stripes, The Edge from U-2, and Jimmy Page from Led Zep. To me, it was worth watching 3 times.

 

Try Super High Me. It's sort of a parody documentary of Supersize Me, but about the effects of smoking pot for a month non stop.

 

[video=youtube;ewUerLPHPEs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewUerLPHPEs[/video]

 

Do you know what you eat?

In the 70's, a timing frame for the American society where everything changed taking radical steps, and nothing was "out of normal" to be done or watch, a documentary was made about it.

An known Italian movie director flimed the several "rare" behaviors showed in Americans in those years. Actually there are two or three of these documentaries.

The name of the documentary is Javverwalk. (A most incredible scandalous and funny movie)

In this film(s), one can see, for example, a car wash where naked girls clean up the cars while the drivers can watch them from the inside of their cars, a "church" where the priest gives the followers "cocaine" to be inhaled at the time of the Eucharist, is in these years were women started to practice body building as big as men, women boxing, tatoos in genitals there are discos where people dance and there are rooms where one can see lots of women and men having sex in groups, racing cars where as soon the flag is down some cars suffered an accident, the ambulances take the injuried and dead, after a clean up the racing starts like nothing happened before, the flag goes down again and surprisly another accident happened and more ambulancies and clean up... and the racing stars again like nothing happened before...

Between the excentric behavior, there is a part where you can see fast food stores like Popeyes, KFC, etc... and it is announced that burgers have a competitor, that is fried chicken. It shows that the traditional farm is not longer needed, and that miles of underground factories hold thousands and thousands of a genetically modified chicken.

It shows how the chicken is in groups insde cages, they can't move and the commentator says that the chicken has atrophied legs. The cages form long lines where can be seen a canal in front of them with their food running like a river. The chicken eats that food and the excrement of the animal goes down the cage, which is bars of metal all around, and falls in a river of doo doo, a river formed by the doo doo of those thousands and thousands of chicken.

This river of doo doo will pass through a machine that will extract 65% of the doo doo, some additives will be added, and that mixture will be sent to the feeding canal again so the chicken will eat it.

The commentator also explains that the chicken never saw Sun light, etc, etc...

So, this is a good documentary to find out what do you eat when you go to any fast food restaurant: 65% doo doo chicken with french fries.... Lol

 

Oops!

It's in my genes, when migrating from one country to another, my grandfather changed a letter in his name which was with a "b" for a "v".

The documentary name is Jabberwalk.

 

I really want to watch that new doc The Act of Killing. The Director was on the Daily Show last night and it sounded really interesting. Here is the trailer for it

[video=youtube;tQhIRBxbchU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQhIRBxbchU[/video]

 

Yes, check out "The War" by Ken Burns its in 6 parts and available on netflix

 

If you are into sports then I seriously recommend any of the 30 for 30 series particularly 9.79*, Pony Excess, and The U, all are incredible, but these three stand out. ESPN also has an independent film called "The Fab Five" great watch.

Any of the Ken Burns documentaries are great.

And one I was really surprised and shocked by was Resurrection. It documents the pilgrimage of Snoop Dogg to Jamaica, and the becoming of Snoop Lion.


There are many more I could list.