Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he never ages and has walked the earth for 14,000 years.
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
Maggie's plan to have a baby on her own with a sperm donor is derailed when she falls in love with John, an older married professor, destroying his volatile marriage to the brilliant and impossible Georgette. But three years later, married to John with one daughter, Maggie is out of love and in a quandary: what do you do when you suspect your man and his ex-wife are actually perfect for each other?
An exploration of the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on glam metal. It features concert footage and interviews of legendary heavy metal and hard rock bands and artists such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Megadeth, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P..
A team of Arctic researchers find a 40,000 year-old man frozen in ice and bring him back to life. Anthropologist Dr. Stanley Shephard wants to befriend the Iceman and learn about the man's past while Dr. Diane Brady and her surgical team want to discover the secret that will allow man to live in a frozen state.
A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.
Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away with a loot of more than hundred invaluable pieces of Mayan art, unaware of the consequences of their outrageous act.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
The film discusses the traits and originators of some of metal's many subgenres, including the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, power metal, Nu metal, glam metal, thrash metal, black metal, and death metal. Dunn uses a family-tree-type flowchart to document some of the most popular metal subgenres. The film also explores various aspects of heavy metal culture.
After squandering his grant money, despondent and recently widowed anthropologist James Krippendorf must produce hard evidence of the existence of a heretofore undiscovered New Guinea tribe. Grass skirts, makeup, and staged rituals transform his three troubled children into the Shelmikedmu, a primitive culture whose habits enthrall scholars. But when a spiteful rival threatens to blow the whistle on Krippendorf's ruse, he gets into the act as well.
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
One of the most significant cases in European archaeology is the grave of the shaman woman of Bad Dürrenberg, a key finding of the last hunter-gatherer groups. From a time when there were no written records, this site was first researched by the Nazis, who saw a physically strong male warrior from an ‘original Aryan race’ in the buried person. It was, in fact, the most powerful woman of her time. The latest research shows that she was dark-skinned, had physical deformities, and was a spiritual leader. The documentary – using high-end CGI and motion capture – compares the researchers of the Nazi era, who misrepresented and instrumentalised their findings, to today’s researchers, who meticulously compile findings and evidence, and use cross- disciplinary methods to examine and evaluate them. It also substantiates the theory of the powerful roles women played in prehistoric times. The story of this woman, buried with a baby in her arms, still fascinates us 9,000 years after her death.
In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.
Bomb Hunters is an engrossing examination of the micro-economy that has emerged in Cambodia from untrained civilians harvesting unexploded bombs as scrap metal. The film explores the long-term consequences of war and genocide in an attempt to understand the social, cultural, and historical context and experiences of rural villagers who seek out and dismantle UXO (unexploded ordnance) for profit. Part of a global economy, these individuals clear UXO from their land in order to protect their families from harm and to earn enough money to survive. Bomb Hunters is an eye-opening account investigating the on-going residual, persistent effects of war experienced by post-conflict nations around the globe, and the complex realities of achieving "peace".
In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.
Religious-based images and traditions permeate the lives of all the people who inhabit Seville. Historically, the city's mariquitas ("sissies") have also assimilated them in their childhood and, through them, have been creating their own encounter spaces and their own codes. Nowadays, new dissident identities continue to respond to them: they participate or distance themselves, they continue what exists or transform it. This film looks at these traditions from a perspective always relegated to the margins.
Standing near the reptile section in a zoo for 26 minutes we can learn a lot about the animals on both sides of the separating glass.
Short documentary commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine. From the question "Why is the African in the anthropology museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in the Louvre?", the directors expose and criticize the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.
The Kumiho family circus in town -- and with it, apparently, a mysterious murderer. The members of motherless family aren’t helping their case with their strange remarks about humans and their initial performances, cavalcades of dismemberment and torrents of blood which terrify the local kids. Pretty soon, a dour, downbeat cop is on the tail of the plucky, bumbling Kumihos. Or rather, tails -- “kumiho” is the word for the fox spirits of Korean mythology, and this clan from Nam Mountain near Seoul, temporarily disguised as people thanks to a magic spell, must eat human livers during a brief, once-in-a-millennium lunar eclipse to shed their foxy nature and assume permanent human form. When the sleazy reprobate on the run from mobsters stumbles into their eerie household, he soon finds himself a little too enthusiastically involved in their scheming after human flesh—and involved with the sexy elder-sister fox spirit as well!
A five-part series that features the latest research exploring how early humans evolved. See how the mixing of prehistoric human genes led the way for our species to survive and thrive around the globe. Archaeology, genetics and anthropology cast new light on 200,000 years of history, detailing how early humans became dominant.
There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo Sapiens came to dominate the planet.
Throughout the ages, civilisations have risen up and then disappeared. Ancient Apocalypse seeks to explain how human achievements were destroyed by the forces of nature.
Using the latest in archaeology, anthropology and genetics, this series tells the story of where the modern world began. Incorporating studies of artifacts, renowned sites of archaeological interest and interviews with leading experts, it moves around the geographic zones of the world, exploring how and why civilization first sparked into life.
A journey into our evolutionary past, piecing together the bodies of our prehistoric family.
Long-running travel programme
Geologist Dr Iain Stewart presents a series showing how the rocks beneath our feet have shaped the human history of the Mediterranean.
Embark in a journey through some of the most beautiful cities in the world in this documentary series. Each episode features a new city and explores the many things that make it the legendary place it is today.
Documentary series about famous anthropologists.
