Absent Presence
2005 · Documentary
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The unsolved rape, mutilation and murder of young G.I. Darlene Krashoc has haunted Joe Kenda in the years since he turned in his gun and badge. Until a crack team of cold case cops uses Kenda’s groundwork to set a trap for a monster hiding in plain sight.
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Columbus DNA: His True Origin
2024 · ★ 6.3
One of the most important and exciting historical research of all time, the study of the DNA of the navigator Christopher Columbus, finally answers two fundamental questions: where do his bones rest? What is his true origin?
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The Real Beauty and the Beast
2013
It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform one man into a national sensation and iconic fairy-tale character. His name: Petrus Gonsalvus, more commonly known today as the hairy hero of Beauty and the Beast.
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Tales from the Royal Wardrobe
2014 · ★ 7
Today, few people's clothes attract as much attention as the royal family, but this is not a modern-day paparazzi-inspired obsession. Historian Dr. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, reveals that it has always been this way. Exploring the royal wardrobes of our kings and queens over the last four hundred years, Lucy shows this isn't just a public fascination, but an important and powerful message from the monarchs. From Elizabeth I to the present Queen Elizabeth II, Lucy explains how the royal wardrobe's significance goes far beyond the cut and color of the clothing. Royal fashion is, and has always been, regarded as a very personal statement to reflect their power over the reign. Most kings and queens have carefully choreographed every aspect of their wardrobe; for those who have not, there have sometimes been calamitous consequences. As much today as in the past, royal fashion is as much about politics as it is about elegant attire.
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The Hunt for the Oldest DNA
2024 · ★ 8
Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?
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Cotton Road
2014
What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China? Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of workers lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products. Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.
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The Twenty Dollar Miracle
1967
The American woman is the best dressed woman in the world. This is due to Yankee ingeniuty, which makes a fashionable, well-made dress to sell for twenty dollars or less.
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Powers of Ten
1977 · ★ 7.7
A scientific film essay, narrated by Phil Morrison. A set of pictures of two picnickers in a park, with the area of each frame one-tenth the size of the one before. Starting from a view of the entire known universe, the camera gradually zooms in until we are viewing the subatomic particles on a man's hand.
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What Darwin Never Knew
2009 · ★ 9
Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?
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Le Paris des mannequins
1963 · ★ 6
A photoshoot on the roofs and in the streets of Paris, under the astonished eyes of the inhabitants.
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Fresh Dressed
2015 · ★ 6.4
The history of Hip-Hop / Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between. Supported by rich archival materials and in-depth interviews with individuals crucial to the evolution of a way of life--and the outsiders who studied and admired them – Fresh Dressed goes to the core of where style was born on the black and brown side of town.
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