Haroun Tazieff, a leading vulcanologist, risked injury and death to make this spectacular and justly celebrated film. Every notable recent volcanic eruption has been covered-frequently from the brink of the crater. For nine years Tazieff reconnoitered and studied the Italian volcano Stromboli, and the film he brought back was his unique reward. He says: "We saw worlds being created and destroyed at the same time... one could stand at a distance of six yards from the lava flow. At four yards one's eyebrows begin to scorch which does not smell very nice. Another step and radiant heat would produce serious burns."
Julian Pettifer reports on Antarctic exploration today. Fifty-six years after the discovery of the South Pole, the Antarctic is being opened up by a new kind of exploration, made possible by modern technology. By far the biggest and most expensive research programme is the Americans. They call it "Operation Deep Freeze".
The rainforests and the mangrove swamps of Trinidad are home to a great variety of wildlife from the giant anaconda to the charming tree porcupine. The island teems with exotically plumed birds and is one of the last refuges for the dazzling scarlet ibis.
This year marks the centenary of this 49th State of America which was bought for $7,200,000 from Russia in 1867: a land of contrasts, its capital warmed by Pacific currents and Inland temperatures plunging to 70* below zero.
So near to civilisation and yet isolated for centuries, the Jivaro Indians still shrink human heads for vengeance in the rain forests of Ecuador.
America realised in time that her wild places were disappearing under the pressure of civilisation. Parks and wildlife sanctuaries were established ensuring that spectacles such as magnificent herds of buffalo, the rare, beautiful Pronghorn Antelopes, and the awe-inspiring Grand Canyon should remain for all to see.
The story of the Bindibu.
A Russian expedition travels to various islands in search of animals developed in isolation, such as the flightless birds of New Zealand and the marsupials of Australia. The expedition also finds other animals that have managed to survive the enveloping wave of civilisation: the Komodo Dragon and the prehistoric Tuatara.
The west to east crossing of the Sahara is not only unusual but dangerous. After Djanet, for a thousand miles you must trust to your own resources-until you reach the Soborom, a little-visited volcanic area in the Tibesti mountains.
The first successful American ascent of Everest took place in 1963. Ten years previously Everest had been conquered for the first time by the British Expedition led by Col. John Hunt. The Americans, however, achieved the distinction of being the first to film from the summit itself.
Norway has a small human population, living mainly along the coast, so the vast mountain plateaux and the dense forests of the interior are left to the wildlife: the reindeer, the beaver, the fox, and the beautiful snowy owl. After the darkness of winter, every moment of the summer light must be used by the animals to rear their young to a state of independence before the first snow falls and it is winter once again.
A fifty-foot ketch travels 2,000 miles across France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, and Belgium-a voyage made possible by the vast network of canals linking the great rivers of the Continent.
Heinz Sielmann is one of the world's leading wildlife film-makers. In the colourful Galapagos Islands he obtained outstanding material on the unique penguins, albatrosses, sea-lions, and giant tortoises. His expedition landed on 'an island of dragons' among thousands of marine iguanas and also managed to film the amazing behaviour of the wood-pecker finch, one of the few animals in the world to use a tool.
The Island of Das, somewhere in the Arabian Gulf, is the home for oil-rig men and a vast industry which is bringing wealth and the hope of modernity to Abu Dhabi. This is the story of two viewpoints - of the Europeans who work there temporarily, and of the local people for whom it is a new way of life
A film about a 10,000-mile journey through the Soviet Union beginning and ending in Moscow, and showing some of the remoter and more exotic republics of this great country which has just celebrated its jubilee.
The Grizzly Bear has roamed North America for a million years. The invention of the repeating rifle brought the feared and hated bear to the point of extinction, but today's inventions are to the Grizzly's advantage. Scientific devices are enabling John and Frank Craighead to discover the secrets of the great bear so that it may be preserved.
War is a ritual thread woven into the pattern of life of the mountain people, the Dani. Although few lives are lost, great displays of measured violence dominate their existence and shape a culture that in many ways resembles that of our own distant Stone Age ancestors.
There are few places, if anywhere. in the civilised world where life has changed less in the last millennium than Athos in northern Greece. Since the middle of the tenth century Athos has been inhabited by Greek Orthodox monks. Women, children, and female animals are forbidden. Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Athos has represented a unique survival from the great Empire of Byzantium. However, the monastic community is in danger of dying out. The reasons for this, and what would be lost if this were to happen, are the subject of tonight's film.
The incredible world of the famous French underwater explorer and inventor-55 fathoms beneath the Mediterranean.
The story of a group of Oxford zoologists who recently spent a working vacation filming the Caribbean wildlife which is so often overlooked by tourists.
The story of a group of Oxford zoologists, led by Gerald Thompson, who recently spent a long working vacation filming the Caribbean wildlife which is so often overlooked by tourists.
Joseph Wood Krutch, author and naturalist, is narrator and guide on a visit to the unspoiled natural wonders of Mexico's Baja California region. Produced and directed by Gerald Green for N.B.C.
Gerald Durrell returns to the Greek island of Corfu, where he lived as a boy with his "family and other animals"; and where he first met his lifelong friend and mentor, Dr. Theodore Stephanides.
For four years an English girl, Jane Goodall, studied chimpanzees in the wild forests of tropical Africa. This remarkable film tells the story of her unique experiences with man's closest living relatives.
The first full documentary from Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom wedged in between Chinese Tibet and India. After centuries of isolation this autocratic Buddhist society is at last beginning to look beyond its frontiers. This is the story of Bhutan through the eyes of a young Bhutanese schoolboy, Tobgay.
A film about a year in the lives of Dido Bradford, Tom Stamp, and Dick Adams, whose work and leisure are so closely tied to the Devon estuary and its wildlife
Apart from fish and whales, the oceans contain billions of drifting animals, some so small that they completely escaped attention until the nineteenth century. Using remarkable close-up photography, this film by Peter Parks looks at the tiny world of plankton and reveals its surprising complexity and its strange beauty.
The Highlands of Scotland were once considered remote and inaccessible, so were left to the golden eagle and the wild cat. Now, as the wilderness shrinks, more and more tourists are flocking to enjoy the beauty of Strathspey. How is this human invasion affecting the area and its wide variety of unique wildlife?
A voyage with the vessel Star Kist on her expedition to Peru in search of the giant and valuable tuna fish.
This is a film about the work and research being carried out at the South Pole - the White Continent. Adapted from German Television, Z.D.F.
From its source 6,500 feet up in the mountains of Uganda to its mouth in the Mediterranean the waters of the Nile pass through the entire range of ancient and modern civilisation, bringing life to more than thirty million people. N.B.C. News Special
Just off the Pembrokeshire coast lie two small islands-Skomer and Skokholm. The inhabitants number many thousands, of which a few are human. The rest include seals, the unique Skomer voles, and above all great colonies of seabirds like guillemots, kittiwakes, and comical-looking puffins. These bird cities are formed when the ocean wanderers of the winter fly in to become the cliff nesters of the summer. Written and narrated by Tony Soper. Adapted from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds film.
Two years ago an American Commission was set up to report to President Johnson on the possibility of cutting a new Panama Canal by means of nuclear explosives. Five routes were considered: two in Panama, one each in Mexico, Nicaragua, and Colombia. The final decision will involve not just politics and economics but the social problems of the peoples who live in that area and have done for centuries. The Golden Isthmus tells the story of 450 years of man's efforts to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in this narrow neck of land, and of the native peoples who have had to suffer them.
Tradition, courage, and determination take the fishermen of Portugal to Arctic seas for six months in every year. This is their story.
In 1835 a young divinity student called Charles Darwin voyaged round the world, calling at the remote and weirdly beautiful island archipelago of Galapagos. What he saw sparked off a theory of evolution through natural selection which was to shake the foundations of contemporary religion and natural science. A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation film
This film, first shown on BBC-1 on April 23, 1966, can now be seen in colour. Gerald Thompson and Eric Skinner, whose award-winning film The Life of the Alder Wood-wasp was a masterpiece of close-up photography, here turn their cameras and remarkable techniques on the spider, which under their lenses and bright lights becomes a fearsome creature with fascinating habits.
In 1946 the explorer Wilfred Thesiger crossed the desert known as 'The Empty Quarter' - an incredible journey through lands where no European had travelled before.
Primitive medicine is the subject of tonight's film which comes from the rain forests of Malaya. Dr. Ivan Polunin, a lecturer in medicine at the University of Singapore, has for many years been studying this art as practised by aborigines in various parts of the world. Magic in the Hills is an account of his journey, to meet the Jah Hut people of Malaya, and to observe the fascinating ritual and practice of their applied medicine.
A flower unfurls, a beautiful butterfly emerges from a chrysalis, and the whiplash tongue of a chameleon is slowed down. By using stop and slow motion camera techniques, Italian film-maker Fernando Armati reveals many secrets of nature that would normally be invisible to the naked eye.
The Dadanawa Ranch in Guyana covers 3,000 square miles of wild, remote country. Across its savannahs roam 30,000 head of longhorn cattle, and in its swamps and forests live some of South America's most exciting animals-the giant armadillo, the jaguar, the harpy eagle, the jabiru stork, and the giant ant-bear. Stanley Brock, the manager of Big D, is also a naturalist and animal collector and he gets to grips with all these giants, as well as the largest and most powerful snake in the world, the anaconda.
Stanley Brock, the manager of the Dadanawa Ranch in Guyana, is equally at home in the saddle of his horse or the cockpit of his light plane. In his leisure hours he sometimes flies to enjoy the spectacle of one of the world's greatest and most remote waterfalls, the Kaieteur Falls; but most of his spare time is spent in studying the wealth of wildlife in the forest, swamps, and savannahs.
The birds of Australasia include some whose plumage is among the most beautiful in the world, some with unique methods of incubation, and others whose ways of courtship are incredibly complex. The behaviour of a few even suggests that birds have an aesthetic sense. from the South and West
The leading figure in sea exploration is on a five-year voyage which is the culmination of his life's work. On board his ship Calypso he has a team of scientists equipped with some of the most advanced oceanographic apparatus yet devised, including miniature submarines and underwater film and television cameras. In this the first of several film reports Cousteau turns his attention to the most feared of all the inhabitants of the sea...
The romantic story of two Brazilian cities. Manaus lies isolated in the middle of the Amazon rain forest; Brasilia rises from the desolate sertao - a new capital in the wilderness. Both cities grew as a result of men's dreams: one dream turned into a nightmare, the other appears to be coming true. Manaus is one of the most fascinating, most haunted places man has made for himself to live in; no road leads to this city-only one or two yellow tracks lead away from it and then peter out. Brasilia, in the space of three years, sprang up from an uninhabited desert to become a capital city-the 'city of the future'.
The Cultural Revolution and that little red book of thoughts are as near as most of us can get to China these days, for now more than ever it is a difficult country to visit. It took Rene Burri, who is Swiss, six years to get permission to film there. The result is a programme that allows us for the first time in many years to see the real face of a China that is in many ways surprisingly unchanged-and more real; to see the Chinese as people, as individual as any, and not just as a mass of yelling robots controlled by a master switch. Behind the facade, behind the banners and political slogans of the Public Image, are the faces of 700 million people, the Chinese. In city and village, knee-deep in the paddy fields of the South, galloping at full tilt across the Mongolian Steppes, they continue in spite of the changes that have taken place to lead their own very personal lives, clinging with a stubborn tenacity to a code of private loyalties and traditions that have withstood 4,000 years of dynastic changes and upheaval.
In the second film of the voyage of the oceanographic vessel Calypso, Jacques Cousteau and his team of scientists have reached the Indian Ocean. They test Cousteau's specially designed mini-submarines, which enable them to film underwater the mating behaviour of the great Green Sea Turtles.
The familiar cries of the gulls along our coastline are only a small part of the language of these birds. During the breeding season especially, they use a number of other sounds as well as postures to communicate with each other. The meaning and use of all these are examined in this remarkable study of life in a colony of Lesser Black-backed Gulls.
In the depths of a Russian forest a Red Deer calf is born. Throughout the contrasting seasons of his first year he encounters all kinds of fellow creatures, including a bathing bear, beavers, a menacing lynx, and a pack of hungry wolves.
Since time immemorial man has gone down to the sea in ships and created a legend of daring and mystery. This is the saga of his adventure on ocean waters.
Jacques Cousteau's research vessel Calypso has reached the Maldive Islands off the southern tip of India. Divers descend to depths of 300 feet to trace the history of the brilliantly coloured coral reefs. Their explorations reveal a wealth of weird and wonderful marine life, each species having its own ways of surviving in this... Coral Jungle
Half a million tons of snow travelling at up to 200 miles an hour... From the Andes to the Alps, ever since man made his home beneath the mountain, avalanches have preyed on him. But now the careless tourist is replacing the mountain dweller as the avalanche's main victim. This film looks at avalanches from their beautiful beginning in the snow crystal to their terrible effect on the dwellings of men, and on to perhaps their ultimate control by explosives and science.
Man has always been intrigued by storks, an extraordinary group of birds including the hammerhead, openbill, marabou, and the grotesque shoebill or whale-headed stork-. The most famous is the cherished white stork, the subject of many legends and fables. Heinz Sielmann's film shows 'A Summer with the Storks' in Germany before they migrate south to pass over Istanbul in one of the most spectacular sights of the bird world.
A hazardous dugout canoe journey through Venezuelan jungles towards the source of the Orinoco. The Guaica Indians live short and violent lives wife-stealing and feuding. But for centuries they have at least been protected from 'civilisation' by the remoteness of their jungle home. Six members of the Hovercraft Expedition brave dangerous rapids to seek out the secrets of some of the most primitive people on earth.
Far out in the North Atlantic lives a community that is often isolated by dense fog or furious storms-the Faroe islanders. By fishing, catching seabirds, and climbing the huge sea cliffs in search of eggs, many islanders lead a way of life that has remained unchanged for centuries.
Orang-utans, Indian rhinos, Asiatic lions, Komodo dragons... These are just a few of the rare and extraordinary animals featured in this film. They were photographed by Eugen Schuhmacher during his seven-year odyssey through the world's last wildernesses in search of vanishing animals.
* Oranges, sunshine, surfing, Hollywood-that's modern California. But it's also smog, garbage, overcrowded roads, and sprawling cities. A thousand people a day pour in to add to the twenty million already there. From the highest snowy mountains to the lowest hottest deserts man's impact has been felt... by sea elephants, snow geese, Californian condors, sea otters, and the grey whales that spend half their life on an amazing migration.
Two hundred miles south of Timbuctu lies a vast plateau of sandstone. After rising gently for 150 miles it suddenly drops sheer for over 900 feet, the result of a gigantic disturbance in the earth's crust. At the foot of this vast cliff live the Dogon-one of the most mysterious tribes in the continent of Africa. One of the complex ideas which the Dogon hold on life is that each human being is mirrored by a twin in the animal kingdom. As a result, a man is forbidden to kill the animal with whom he shares a part of his soul, but if by accident or design he does so, then he kills part of himself.
As they leave South Africa, Cousteau and the crew of the research vessel Calypso take aboard two young Cape Fur Seals. Given the names Pepito and Cristobal, the seals gradually form attachments to members of the team and even act as messengers for the divers. Then one day, off South America, Cristobal swims away...
This is the story of a 1,000-mile kayak voyage up the coast of Japan made by ten students: four British, six American. They experienced both the stifling calms of the Inland Sea and the storms of the Pacific, the frenzied excitement of the great Tinjin Festival, and the peace of tiny isolated islands whose inhabitants had never before seen a foreigner of any nationality. They visited the atomic dome at Hiroshima and watched the intense religious ritual of a modern Samurai swords-man. By the end they felt that, though their voyage had only been fleetingly written in the water, what they had learned would not be so soon forgotten.
Film, shown for the first time in colour, of the uproarious balloon race organised in 1965 by the BBC's Travel and Exploration Unit in which ten passenger-carrying balloons took to the air from a field near the Oxfordshire village of Stanton Harcourt and landed in various parts of the Cotswolds.
The sturdy individualism of Newfoundland's men of the sea takes them on a hazardous journey along the Labrador coast in search of the fish on which their livelihood depends.
Lemurs are animals unique to Madagascar. They have been isolated on this vast island off the south-east coast of Africa for twenty million years. Shy, gentle, and in some cases beautiful creatures, they have in time been hunted by the Malagasy people as food and feared as reincarnations of the dead. An Oxford University Expedition has completed a two-month field study and for the first time a great deal of lemur behaviour has been recorded on film.
Tonight's film tells the story of a family of Canadian Eskimos, the Annanacks. It traces their history from the great famine of nearly a century ago, when the family only survived by resorting to cannibalism, right up to their comparative prosperity today, leading one of the first Eskimo working co-operatives. As well as giving a picture of Eskimo life in Ungava Bay, it also looks at a modern city, Ottawa, through fresh eyes - the eyes of the Annanack family
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of this famous scientist and writer, best-known for his prodigious four-year journey across South America and for the Pacific current which bears his name. Foremost among the many Latin-American nations to celebrate this event will be Mexico, visited by Humboldt in 1803-4 and where he is revered as one of the founders of the country's independence from Spain. In this birthday tribute Robert Cundy follows Humboldt's route across Mexico from ocean to ocean, Acapulco to Vera Cruz. He descends silver mines and climbs recently erupted volcanoes to present a portrait of a country whose diverse landscape and mysterious past presented an irresistible challenge to a scientist and humanist fascinated by everyone and everything
When Cousteau and his team go whaling, their aim is to tag not to kill. This can be dangerous when your targets are the 20-ton Finback or the bigger, and reputedly savage.
Since the great European discoveries began 500 years ago, the Primitive peoples of the world have found themselves in collision with the white man. Tonight's documentary tells the romantic and then tragic tale of this collision in South America and Australia, with the camera penetrating deep into the jungles of the Amazon and Arnhemland
When the British left India in 1947 it is said that they left behind them 'some of their customs, a little of their culture, and very occasionally a few of their kind.' Left-Over Raj is the story of a few of the kind who remained behind in the city of Calcutta - half a dozen individuals who chose to stay behind feeling that they could accept their new role in an independent India, and perhaps contribute something. They are people like Captain 'Dinkie' Fownes, a race-horse trainer; John Crossley, who makes tea-chests and distributes milk to 1,000 slum children every day. Tony Lucey runs his own little factory; Desmond Doig works for the Calcutta Statesman.
This week's programme in the series of films from all over the world about our astonishing planet and the creatures that live on it features a tiny island in the sub-Antarctic, the home of the world's largest sea-birds - wandering albatrosses. They share Bird Island with vast numbers of fur, leopard, and elephant seals; with penguins and a wide variety of other birds. For 18 months three scientists worked through storm, sunshine, and blizzard, studying the wandering albatrosses and filming this unique record of the wildlife of Bird Island.
Rain falling on the high, dry Chyulu Hills of Kenya filters through the lava soil until it emerges as cool, running springs at Mzima. Zebra and elephant visit the oasis to drink, but this unusual African portrait is more concerned with the animals that live at the springs. It is a fascinating world in which frogs climb trees, birds swim, turtle and crocodile feed side by side, and the lumbering hippopotamus takes on a new grace in the unique underwater photography of Alan Root.
The most exciting river in the world: fierce Stone Age Indians, animals, and fish which came straight from a nightmare or a science fiction story, all figure in a film which traces the river Amazon from its source in the Andes to its many mouths spread over 200 miles of the Brazilian Atlantic coastline.
Each autumn millions of wild ducks, geese, and other birds migrate southwards through the United States to their winter quarters. This film follows them to the Mexico border and shows some of the work of the us Fish and Wildlife Service, which has to strike a fine balance between providing sport for the American hunters and ensuring the protection of rarer species. Among these is the entire world population of one of the rarest birds of all - the Whooping Crane.
The life history of a moth makes a fascinating story, and some of the larger and more brightly coloured ones have an additional attraction in that they produce silk for the cocoon in which they undergo their final metamorphosis. One species in particular has been used by man for the production of silk, originally in the Far East and later in the West. The story of this sericulture is as intriguing as the natural history of the moths themselves.
Fenced in behind high mountains, largely bypassed by history, the hill tribes of the Philippines have had a unique opportunity to evolve at their own pace: thus they still pursue the blood-feuds of their head-hunting ancestors, but now also have an organised police force; still carry out pagan sacrifices, though many now regard themselves as Christians. It was into this society that Professor Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf, anthropologist and explorer, took his cameras to record the beauty of their mountain rice fields and the savagery of their pagan buffalo sacrifices -sacrifices which some viewers may find almost too brutal but which are perfectly natural to the descendants of head-hunters.
David Cabot explores the country-side of Ireland and finds some unusual wildlife in a variety of places. Wagtails among Dublin's Christmas lights; wild geese on remote islands; choughs in ruined castles; rare plants and a peculiar slug in the Burren, the great limestone desert in the west. He follows the coast from Achill Island where the huge basking sharks are caught to an island with the largest colony of roseate terns in Europe.
For centuries the wandering Lapps and their reindeer lived in a forgotten world of their own -the endless snows and frozen forests of Lappland. Then came the snow-scooter and the snow-tractor, and almost in a single generation the Lapps turned from nomads to settlement dwellers. But one man determined that their old way of life should not be forgotten: his name, Per Host, explorer, photographer, honorary Lapp. For two years he lived with the last of the wandering Lapps. He filmed the bitter hardships of winter spent in tents far within the Arctic circle. He recorded the excitement of reindeer round-ups and battles. And with the Lapps he endured the long spring trek to the coast, ending in the spectacle of the whole reindeer herd, nearly 1,000 strong, swimming an arm of the sea. At the end of his wanderings he returned with a faithful picture of a now-vanished pattern of existence - life of great harshness led amid surroundings of great beauty.
To Brazilians they're beija flores - flower kissers; to Cubans zumzum - their wings hum at 80 beats a second. They can fly backwards, must feed about every ten minutes, and have brilliant iridescent colours. No wonder they fascinate People: some enthusiasts even give them shower baths, cut their toe-nails, and analyse their amazing flight by filming in ultra-slow motion.
Bombay and Calcutta, two of India's most famous cities, are 1,000 miles apart. Viewers are invited to make a journey from one to the other by rail, stopping on the way to experience a Rajah's tiger hunt, Indian village life, the burning ghats of Benares, the erotic temple sculpture of Khajavao and the cut-off Anglo-Indian community of railway workers at Asansol, an important junction near Calcutta.
Vikings settled Iceland over 1,000 years ago. When they first landed they were still pagans and saw fire giants, frost giants, dragons, and gods in the spectacular natural features such as hot springs, geysers, volcanoes, lava deserts, glaciers, and tremendous waterfalls. This colour film looks at the exciting landscape through the eyes of the Vikings - a landscape little changed to this day.
Upon the unpredictable, reef-strewn Caribbean once sailed the legendary galleons of the Spanish treasure fleets. Of the riches Plundered from the New World, more than £200 million in bullion and precious stones plunged to the bottom of the sea. Now, for the first time in the long voyage of his research vessel Calypso, Jacques Cousteau and his men assemble a sophisticated arsenal of deep-sea salvage equipment. This includes a temperamental excavator, which they call the 'monster' and which they use to sift 300 tons of coral debris in their hunt for... Sunken Treasure
A resort for migrant humans - a staging post for migrating birds. The biggest of the Balearic Islands can attract two kinds of people: those who fly in for sun and fun, and others who look for the quiet life that is still the traditional Majorca - fruitful land in a southern sea. Today there are falcons round the cliffs, vultures wheeling in the mountains, and ospreys fishing in the lakes. But with the rapid growth of urban development cramping Majorca's rich wildlife - what of tomorrow?
To sail in search of Paradise - the dream of many, the achievement of few. But recently a series of French expeditions set out, each heading for its particular idea of paradise on earth. This film is a record of what they found at the end of their travels: for one, the ice-fringed Kerguelen Islands, lost in a freezing ocean, peopled by penguins; for another, a land of fire, the Tibesti in the Sahara where hot springs of mud boil; a third discovered a more serene paradise - a high plateau in the Northern Cameroons; a fourth went to the Mysore jungle of southern India in search of the elephant. Other expeditions saw the savagery of the Papuans and the flower-boats of Tahiti.
Captain Cousteau and the men of the research vessel Calypso explore the depths of the world's highest lake, situated in the Andes. They search for ancient ruins and treasure which, according to legend, the Incas dumped there when the Spanish Conquistadors killed their Emperor.
The gods brought me near to this island where was Calypso... the awesome goddess took me in and loved me passionately, vowing that she would make me immortal and ageless... For centuries the legend of Ulysses' sojourn on the island of Gozo has remained vivid in the minds of the islanders. So, too, has that of St Paul , who preached to the islanders after his shipwreck in AD 60 and gave them the faith which, with their neighbour Malta, they defended so ardently during the Great Siege. Today Gozo seems peaceful and undisturbed, and- it is difficult to imagine the upheavals of her past. And yet the present pattern of the islanders' life is very much a survival from that past. Their continual struggle against the elements to secure a livelihood, the warmth and loyalty of their family life, their intense piety, their pride and interdependence - all reflect beliefs and attitudes which elsewhere in Europe are disappearing.
A group of windswept islands in the South Atlantic, 400 miles from Cape Horn, the Falklands are one of the remotest of all British outposts. Stumbled across by early navigators, who were grateful for the shelter they provided, the islands are now the home of a few thousand determined people whose economy rests mainly on wool. Their sheep share the uninviting terrain with seals and many kinds of seabirds, including thousands of penguins.
The 35-ton Californian Greys were nicknamed 'Desert Whales' when a 19th-century whaling captain stumbled on their breeding grounds in the desert lagoons of Baja California. After years of slaughter the whales were eventually protected, and now Captain Jacques Cousteau follows some of the remaining 8,000 as they cover the last part of their 5,000-mile migration from their Arctic feeding grounds. In the desert lagoons Cousteau and his team watch the underwater mating of these giants, the care of the mothers for their young, and make a desperate attempt to save the life of a stranded baby whale.
Grand Canyon by Kayak and Raft 'We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. We are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth. What rocks beset the channel, what falls there are, we know not.' The words are those of John Wesley Powell who, in 1869, became the first man to navigate the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. A hundred years later a dozen of the world's top canoeists, backed by three rescue rafts, retraced Powell's voyage into uncertainty. And though for them the dangers were no longer completely unknown, they were still real enough: 250 miles of river studded with over 200 rapids, some with great breaking waves up to 20 feet high, others with vast whirlpools that could suck down both man and kayak: this at the bottom of a canyon up to eight miles wide, over a mile deep - and from which escape was virtually impossible.
When the Calypso anchors over the spawning grounds of the Pacific Coast squid, Jacques Cousteau and his divers have a unique opportunity to make a study of the strange breeding behaviour. For three days thousands of squid concentrate in a frenzy of mating which provides some of the most remarkable film of the voyage.
A portrait of the Test by Ronald and Rosemary Eastman Each year, from April to September, dry-fly fishermen practise their art of deceiving trout on this famous Hampshire chalk stream. The moods of the river and its wildlife throughout a year are also shown, even going underwater for some remarkable glimpses of the lives of the trout themselves.
Ever since the time of Alexander the Great men have made attempts to probe the depths of the sea, but only in the last 30 years have engineers been able to build machines than can dive into our 'inner space.' This film examines the history of undersea exploration, in which Cousteau plays an important part.
This huge creature was once hunted to the point of extinction. Now colonies survive under protection, including one at Guadalupe Island, 100 miles from Baja, California.
Ten tons of hovercraft arrive in the West African republic of Senegal, and the first stage of the expedition, the journey from St Louis to Bamako, begins. Africa, between the towns and villages, is like outer space... and we, in our heaving, hissing, belching machine, are like comic astronauts exploring the great void, unaware of the fact that no man has ever touched upon the land and water which we merrily detonate in dust and spray, as if our purpose is to wake up a sleeping age and then disappear. Written by John Pilger
The hovercraft expedition has so far travelled 800 miles from the west coast of Africa to Bamako, capital of Mali. Tonight's programme, the second of three covering the progress of the hovercraft, follows the course of the expedition along the immense reaches of the Niger -the great river that divides the southern-most fringe of the Sahara Desert from the dark jungles of Africa. Written by John Pilger
The Hovercraft arrives at Fort Lamy, capital of remote Tchad, to be met by the President. In the meantime a side expedition through the old African kingdom of Dahomey discovers a King and his female warriors - 'the Amazons of Abomey.' From Fort Lamy the Hovercraft heads north along the Chari river to Lake Tchad, an inland sea as large as Wales and one of the least penetrated regions on earth. Written and narrated by John Stockbridge
Marcel Ichac's award-winning film about the conquest of Annapurna by a French team in 1950. At the time, Annapurna was the highest peak ever scaled. The film is introduced by Captain Henry Day, one of the two army officers sponsored by the Army Mountaineering Association, who, 20 years later, took the same route and reached the summit on 20 May this year. Captain Day is the first to acknowledge the debt mountaineers owe to the Frenchmen Maurice Herzog and the late Louis Lachenal who suffered such severe hardships in their battle with the world's tenth highest mountain.
Once a year in the highlands of New Guinea 20,000 warriors gather together in one place for the Sing-Sing, a huge government-organised display of tribal dancing, singing, and general high-jinks - kind of glorified agricultural show with natives in the ring instead of fat stock. The warriors, probably the most primitive and certainly the most colourful on earth, spend two riotous days showing off their splendid feathers, wigs, and nose-bones to planeloads of tourists. The whole fantastic jamboree provides an instant microcosm of the colonial process - the breaking down of a traditional culture and the substitution
Samoa, a tropical paradise in the South Pacific, is now faced with an agonising challenge. The challenge is what some people call Progress, in this case American-style, complete with camera-toting tourists, educational television in every classroom, and an expanding economy that may be in conflict with Samoan traditional values.
A Park in Peru where jaguars roam, free from the threat of skin collectors, and Indians are protected from civilisation if not from their neighbouring head-hunters. Faced with a massive population explosion, Peru has plans for development and colonisation that will alter the face of the country, but conservationists have persuaded the government to set aside at least one patch of the wilderness.
A re-enactment of the epic journey undertaken in 1804 by two men, Lewis and Clark, whose names were ever after to be bracketed together. Leading a 45-man expedition from St Louis, Missouri, they set out to explore and open up the North-West Territories of America - at that time the home of buffalo and Indians. After a year and a half, 29 of the original team together with their Newfoundland dog reached the mouth of the Columbia River and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. It took them another year to get back to 'civilisation' - and the American North West was never the same again, for the long process of settlement was soon to begin.
High up in the Pennines of north-west Yorkshire a river leaps down a notable hole called Gaping Gill and disappears into the limestone hill. A couple of miles away at Ingleborough Cave a river appears out of the earth: today, it is known that these two rivers are one and the same. For over a year, teams of fanatical potholers have attempted to make what is perhaps the last great geographical discovery in Britain: by what secret passages and chambers does the Fell Beck find its tortuous way from Gaping Gill to Ingleborough Cave? Perhaps even more extraordinary, an ex-BBC man Syd Perou, with a hand camera and a few lights packed in ammunition boxes, has for 15 months filmed the search in appalling conditions. To have been a caver down some passages with only an inch of air space between water and rock is a considerable achievement. To have filmed it is an astonishing feat.
In the remote highlands of Nepal live the Sherpas, famous for their work on mountaineering expeditions. Their homes are in tiny villages perched on the slopes of the world's highest mountains, and the Sherpa's life is hard, often short but rarely dull. Tourists can now walk to the foot of Mount Everest, but few will see, as in this film, a Sherpa community working and celebrating, or be able to attend a great Buddhist festival which originated centuries ago in the monasteries of Tibet.
Turkey is a natural land bridge linking the East with the West. Each year, across Western Turkey, come millions of birds on migration between Asia, Africa, and Europe. They cross high mountains and arid plains to reach Turkey's great lakes and reed-beds, vital to the migrants' survival. Other animals have adopted man-made habitats, living amongst the crumbling palaces and temples of southern Turkey that stand as reminders of the great empires that once dominated this part of the world.
A film portrait of an African 'upside-down tree' and its wildlife. The ancient baobab, growing in dry bush country, provides shade, food, and shelter for everything from elephants to bushbabies, honey-guides to fruit bats. It is the hornbills, however, that use the tree in the most remarkable way: the female cements herself inside the nest-hole to rear her young. This unique film reveals some of the innermost secrets of one of the most fascinating life-cycles in the bird world.
As a creator of pearls and with the reputation of being an aphrodisiac, the oyster is no ordinary shellfish. It is not surprising that there are widespread and intensive efforts in many parts of the world to farm oysters on a large scale. Appropriately enough, this has been most successfully and picturesquely achieved in France, particularly in the Morbihan district of Brittany.
Bhutan is the world's last Shangri La, an Arcadian society squeezed in between Tibet and India. For centuries she has remained isolated, in a world of prayer-wheels and prayer-flags; mountains, valleys, and faith. Today Bhutan is still a society as static and fantastic as 1,000 years ago; but the rumblings of the 20th century are now audible from beyond her Himalayan walls.
In the warm waters of the Coral Sea, a long and bitter battle is waged -the endless struggle for survival. Sometimes it's beautiful, like the shoals of silver pilchards: sometimes pathetic, like the defenceless baby turtles. Into this pattern of inter-dependence has come man, equipped with aqua-lung and explosive harpoon, and an endless thirst for knowledge. So he snares the poisonous sea-snake to discover the secret of its venom: dynamites the shark that could kill him. This film is the work of the outstanding Australian underwater photographer and director, Ben Cropp: it captures beauty in the frond of coral, action in the excitement of a shark hunt: and deals with a subject of ever-increasing importance - man's place in, and destruction of his environment.
A hazardous journey along the upper reaches of the Orinoco to one of the most inaccessible tribes on earth. The Maquiritare are a people renowned throughout the jungle for their extraordinary skills, many of which, like the making of blow-pipes and poisoned arrows, are recorded in this film for the very first time. It also tells of the delicately balanced relationship between these proud, reserved and suspicious people and Herman Schlenker who filmed this unique record of their lives. It shows too how dangerous it becomes when so precarious a relationship turns sour.
In the dragon-shaped group of islands which is Japan, it is said that one is never out-of-sight of a mountain. These are the Japanese Alps, which run down through the main island of Honshu like a backbone. In this volcanic landscape hot springs, bubbling and boiling mud, and roaring vent-holes are all part of a sinister seismography. Snow blankets the peaks in winter, but in spring all kinds of wildlife come out of hibernation or up from the lowlands as the snows melt: Asiatic black bears, foxes, hares, flying squirrels, and a variety of birds.
Constable landscapes and the Suffolk Punch - but there is more to Suffolk than that. Stretches of unspoilt coastline, fen, breck and pasture provide homes for rare wildlife. Groups of people are working to preserve these areas because they believe that such places, together with the old country crafts, make up the very essence of Suffolk
When buffaloes fight it's the grass that suffers: a proverb from Laos where right-wing and Communist forces have been fighting on and off for nearly 20 years - a conflict as old as that in Vietnam. But a long-drawn-out civil war has not dampened the Lao spirit.
An ocean of sand 3,000 miles long and 1,000 miles wide where man and beast struggle to survive - that is Sahara. Across this empty land the salt caravans of the Tuaregs follow their age-old routes. From the salt mines of Bilma to the markets of Agades, more than 300 camels pace out 500 unmarked miles and then return - an incredible journey without end. An NBC-News Special
Three intrepid aeronauts take off in a balloon from the grounds of Blenheim Palace. As they float over the English countryside in their antique craft they tell the dramatic, odd. and sometimes hilarious story of ballooning - and of the men who have drifted In these gay silken bubbles at the mercy of the winds in the magic of free flight.
The New Forest today stands at a crossroads. For 900 years it has remained relatively unspoilt, providing a refuge for shyer animals such as badgers, deer, and foxes. But the combined pressures of thousands of visitors keen to 'get back to nature' and the harvesting of the trees are threatening the Forest's very existence.
Surmounting what appear to be insuperable obstacles, Red Salmon compulsively travel from the open sea up to the streams in the wilderness area of Kodiak Island, Alaska. Only the fittest survive to spawn, then rapidly degenerate and die.
Heinz Sielmann, naturalist and film-maker, travels the world photographing animals. Over the years he has worked with many leading naturalists, all dedicated to the study and understanding of animal behaviour. His film of woodpeckers is regarded as a classic and earned him a world-wide reputation.
The happy story - almost a fairy story - of four children, two girls and two boys, of mixed English, Hindu, Pathan and Tibetan parentage, played out against the exotic backdrop of the snow-peaked Himalayas: children whose broken lives would never have been mended but for the loving kindness of one man, a Scotsman, Dr John Anderson Graham, who planted a seed which grew into a Lollipop Tree.
This film from France, La Vie en Mourcment, might have been called 'the running, jumping, and anything-but-standing-still film.' The animal world has an infinite variety of methods of locomotion, from the mysterious creeping of an amoeba to the graceful leap of an impala.
Rain falling on the high, dry Chyulu Hills of Kenya filters through the lava soil until it emerges as cool, running springs at Mzima. Zebra and elephant visit the oasis to drink, but this unusual African portrait is more concerned with the animals that live at the springs. It is a strange world in which frogs climb trees, birds swim, turtle and crocodile feed side by side, and the lumbering hippopotamus takes on a new grace in the unique underwater photography of Alan Root.
Tierra del Fuego - Land of Fire - is the land hard by Cape Horn. For thousands of years no one wanted it but the Indians-until the 19th-century explorers came looking for untapped gold, and the missionaries for untouched souls. Many kinds of men - Indians, explorers, sheep farmers, gold diggers, missionaries and oil men have struggled to wring a living out of the 'loneliest, most back-of-beyond spot in the world.' But men have clung on, anchored themselves against the wind and turned the barrenness into a home. Words by Norman Nicholson spoken by Hugh Griffith
Every living thing to be found in a stream, pond, marsh or bog is specially designed for its own way of life, which in turn plays its part in a complex food web. Close-up camera techniques reveal some of the secrets of freshwater life which the human eye cannot normally see.
Scattered in a lost corner of the Indian Ocean, once the haunt of Pirates and their treasure ships, lie 93 islands, among them Aldabra the Amirantes and the Seychelles. Legend and superstition abound in this isolated and forgotten British outpost. It has even been suggested that the Garden of Eden was there. In the past year more people have visited these islands than ever before, some of them on adventurous luxury cruises. In July an international airport opens. Can the treasures of unspoiled beaches and unique wild life survive the new invasion, or must the Pearls of the Indian Ocean inevitably become just another playground?
If everyone in Britain went down to the sea at the same time, we would all have only three feet of coastline each. Operation Seashore is a light-hearted look at those few yards of ours. Anthony Smith took a boat, a group of friends and six months off to quest for the odd, the diverting and the picturesque: a gannet colony here and stories of salvage there, of invasion and of cannibalism.
Isolated in the heart of bustling Singapore four troupes of wild 'crab-eating' macaques share the freedom of the city's Botanic Gardens with hundreds of visitors. Monkeys and orchids side by side, and only the orchids are captive. Fed by passers-by, cursed by hard-worked gardeners, the animals provide, for the discerning eye, more than a glimpse of the monkey way of life.
This is the first film for ten years to be shot in Burma by a British cameraman. Specially made to coincide with the London visit of the Burmese National Dance Company, it shows many famous places in Burma from the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon to the floating islands of Lake Inle and the rebuilt walls of Mandalay.
Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test his controversial theory that the Ancient Egyptians could have reached the Americas thousands of years before Columbus. He decided to build a boat from materials that would have been available to the Pharaohs. It was constructed of papyrus reeds and scientists were quick to tell him that it would become waterlogged and sink. It looked as though they might be right, for after sailing 2,700 miles Ra was battered by a storm and abandoned by its seven-man crew. But Heyerdahl was determined to try again.
Could the Indian cultures of Mexico and Peru - with their pyramids, hieroglyphic writing, mummification and colossal stone statues - have received their inspiration from the similar cultures in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia? Having failed once in his attempt to prove that a papyrus boat built on the pattern of the Pharaohs could cross the Atlantic, Thor Heyerdahl set sail again a year later from the coast of Morocco. Heyerdahl's second voyage in his new reed boat Ra II is a true adventure story as epic, significant and exciting as his celebrated Kon-Tiki expedition.
David Shepherd's life is a classic success story. Once rejected as a student without talent, he has since become one of England's most successful painters. Widely travelled, his jet-age routine is dominated by his passion for giants - in particular elephants and steam locomotives. The international demand for his African wildlife paintings has enabled this tycoon
Siberia first became notorious as a place of exile; now the Russians have discovered there a wealth of oil, diamonds, gold and minerals. But all these treasures are largely inaccessible. Siberia is huge - it takes up nearly a tenth of all the land on earth -much of it in the 'permafrost' belt where the earth is always frozen solid down to hundreds of feet below the surface. Douglas Botting is one of the few people to have seen Siberia from the far north - where the tribes-men herd their reindeer across a vast desert of snow - to the industries and research establishments further south. This is the new Siberia: the living's still hard but the wages are high and some people now go there willingly.
A denuded crab turned highway-man; an octopus coaxed into playing touch; jawfish which try to swallow each other whole; green turtles fighting a losing battle against the gourmet's love for turtle soup. These are some of the sea citizens of the Bahaman reefs that a portrait photographer Harry Pederson films every holiday. For the last 20 years between water-ski-ing, swimming, sailing and enjoying the colourful day- and nightlife of these tropical islands Harry and his family have been exploring the underwater world of the coral reefs.
The shaggy musk ox recently came close to sharing the fate of its prehistoric contemporaries the sabre-toothed tiger and the mammoth. It had been hunted ruthlessly and with no thought for tomorrow by the Eskimo and others struggling to survive on the bleak and barren Arctic tundra. Just in time, a spectacular operation using icebreakers and helicopters was mounted to catch some of the musk oxen and take them to a place of safety.
Chimpanzees can appear quite human through their actions and expressions, which are often similar to ours. Why, then, have they not become even more human than they are? In this fascinating film a team of scientists from the University of Amsterdam study the social structure of wild chimpanzees in Guinea and conduct some experiments with them. What, for example, will be the chimps' reaction to a stuffed leopard? The answer is provided in one of the most remarkable sequences ever shown in this series.
In the midst of a vast snowfield, the dark speck of a man, squat, fur-muffled, motionless. Lilliaxi, the Eskimo hunter, crouches beside a seal's breathing-hole. Around him lies an endless empty land, harsh but beautiful. This is the old picture of the Canadian North. But now ice-breaker and oil rig, prospector and aeroplane have shattered the old, cold dream, and igloos are things of the past.
Cousteau and the Calypso crew accept a dangerous mission. They investigate the wrecks of 30 Japanese ships destroyed by an American bombing mission in Truk Lagoon over 25 years ago. The wrecks lie more than 250 feet below the sea, and at this depth divers are in danger of nitrogen narcosis - 'rapture of the deep.'
Cowboys and Indians, gold-miners and pioneers, skyscraper cities and ghost towns, snow-capped mountains and rich valleys: this is 'the last frontier.' In May the Royal Family joined British Columbia's celebrations commemorating the country's first hundred years as the sixth province of Canada. But despite progress and modern cities, today much of the country is still as the pioneers found it. One can fly from Vancouver's whirling social life and join a packhorse trip through the mountains and valleys where wild life still roams free and where each season brings a new blaze of colour.
The Everglades in Florida is the haunt of the alligator and a wealth of water birds, fish, snakes, deer and other creatures who all depend on water. People want to live here too. Now this unique river is running dry and Tony Soper travelled 2,000 miles in Southern Florida to find out why.
'The Ganges is the river of India. It rises in an ice cave in the Himalayas, held sacred by the Hindus. It is like being born in a monastery. It dies in the Indian Ocean, after a journey of 1,540 miles. Over the years it has become not only a river but a way of life.' Film-maker Yavar Abbas returns after years in the West to the country of his birth, and follows the Ganges from its source to the sea.
On the crumbling lava rocks of the Galapagos Islands, where the temperature reaches 120° F before noon, rows of scaly 'dragons' sun themselves. The crew of the Calypso follows these marine iguanas on their feeding journeys under the sea, and Captain Cousteau visits a German friend who has trained iguanas to feed from his hand.
When George Borrow lived with the Gypsies over 100 years ago, Petulengro told him: "Life is very sweet brother; who would wish to die?" To find out if life was still sweet among English Gypsies, a group of young men whose connections allowed them to penetrate Gypsy family life in a way never before achieved, lived with and filmed two Gypsy families over a period of months in Kent and Essex during 1970 and 1971. The enquirers found a striking similarity between the present condition of Gypsies and that of nomadic peoples all over the world who have come into direct collision with modern societies. Are the only two solutions integration or destruction?
In the Antarctic spring 30,000 Adelie penguins return to Cape Crozier for the breeding season. This is the dramatic story of these birds and the hazards that they face from storms, blizzards, skuas, predatory leopard seals, and even hooligan penguins.
The Middle Kingdom has passed away. It was the name used by the Chinese Emperors to describe their ancient land, a country situated between Heaven and Earth. Just as the Middle Kingdom is no more, so in mainland China the exotic customs, rites and age-old pageantry have gone. They still live, however, in the group of islands we know as Hong Kong.
"I continue non-stop because I am happy at sea and perhaps because I want to save my soul". This cryptic explanation left many questions unanswered when ace French sailor Bernard Moitessier dropped out of the first round-the-world, non-stop yacht race in 1969. Having already circumnavigated the globe, Moitessier felt compelled to ignore £5,000 prize-money and sail towards a destination which was, to say the least - uncertain. The reasons behind his strange 'compulsion' (echoed also, perhaps, in the mysterious disappearance of Donald Crowhurst during the same race) can easily be interpreted as 'sea-fever.' But this account of Moitessier's voyage - filmed by the mariner himself - reveals that there is much more to the psychology of long-distance sailing than we might at first imagine.
A hundred sea miles north of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean there are two idyllic atolls called Nuguria. Hermann Schlenker, a German explorer and film maker, spent a summer with the islanders. His film shows these gentle, primitive people in their last year before they learn to read and discover the world beyond their islands.
Kifaru is the Swahili name for the Black Rhinoceros which is reputed to be one of Africa's most dangerous animals. For six years Canadian biologist John Goddard studied wild rhinos at close quarters, camping with his wife and two small daughters. This film is an account of Goddard's work as well as a record of a most unusual family routine.
Who would expect to find deep beneath their feet an ice-making machine, a telephone exchange, a waterfall, two frozen turbots, and a Prime Minister's bedroom? This is the dark nether-world in which the Under London Expedition takes a light-hearted look at the strange, complex labyrinth of tunnels and sewers, railways and shelters, vaults, crypts and caves, which are as remote to the world above as the farthest reaches of Patagonia - and as full of surprises.
Last year Brazil's dreamers and builders launched a four-year programme to conquer the vast mysterious Amazon basin. Mechanised armies of bulldozers are slashing red-earth tracks through virgin rain-forest in an attempt to occupy the hinterland, but deep in the forest the Indians are fighting back with bows and arrows. Construction of Brazil's Great North Road, from Manaos to Georgetown, has been brought to a standstill by one of the most hostile tribes ever encountered. A BBC expedition by mini-hover-craft traces the route of the proposed jungle highway, from the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean, and uncovers the strange story of a massacre in the forest.
With places called Death Valley, Arsenic Spring and Coffin Canyon, it's surprising that men and animals survive there. But there are Basque shepherds, mustangers, prospectors, and even a ballet school. And some who are there just for its solitude and beauty.
The first film ever to have been made in a Harem. Harem means sanctuary, protection. It means a sacred place... a forbidden place. It grew out of the desert tribal raids and to stop women being stolen. "In them maidens best and fairest Then which of your Lord's bounties will ye twain deny? Whom no man nor djinn has deflowered before them."
Once fur traders nearly caused their extinction; more recently there have been new threats to sea otters. Nevertheless these appealing creatures have staged a remarkable comeback. Cousteau's divers have filmed their behaviour above and below the surface.
Thirty years ago Christoph von Furer Haimendorf visited the Nagas - a wild tribe of head-hunters who live in the hills between India and Burma. He returned last year and filmed the Nagas at the turning point between their violent past and the developments yet to happen.
Albert Oeming runs the largest zoo in Canada. In his vast game farm in Alberta even rhinoceros, giraffe and lion appear to have adapted well to the snows of the Canadian winter. The film follows Oeming on one of his journeys to the Arctic as he collects animals in danger of extinction in order to breed them in his unusual zoo.
The World About Us sails 'The Jolly-Rodgered Sea' "Once, through these waters, schooners no larger than ours carried a couple of hundred poor slaves down below in the hold. Today, our rich cargo pays for the privilege of working with us." Val Howells skippers the Yankee Clipper, largest of the Caribbean's remaining staysail schooners, through the volcanic multiracial islands of the Windward chain. She sails now where dug-out canoes go faster than yachts and where the skills which built the wooden navies are practised by their last generation of shipwrights; and, even in the hurricane season, she carries through this lustiest of men's worlds a majority of women passengers.
Deep in the south-west corner of Spain lies one of the most fascinating regions in Europe, the Flamenco - or flamingo - Triangle. It is a land shared by colourful People and colourful wildlife, their lives strongly intertwined. But now life is beginning to change. What will happen to this land of bulls and horses, flamingos and eagles, flamenco and fiesta? What will become of the great sand dunes like the Sahara, the vast marshes full of wildfowl, the famous Coto Dofiana, and the remarkable pilgrimage to the Lady of the Dew?
Jacques Cousteau attempts to unravel the mystery of the 'blue holes' of the Caribbean, strange cavities in the sea floor believed to be bottomless and the home of deep sea monsters. The film follows Oeming on one of his journeys to the Arctic as he collects animals in danger of extinction in order to breed them in his unusual zoo.
Pelly Bay, in the Canadian Arctic: the temperature -20°C. But this doesn'worry the fur-clad hunter crouching beside the seal's breathing hole who has waited there for 15 hours, right through the polar night, and will remain there till either a seal surfaces - or he freezes slowly to death. This was the old way with the Netsilik Eskimos-the People of the Seal. Now, they, and their harsh, simple life have been swept away into settlements. But not before a Canadian camera team had shot nearly 100 hours of film, the best of which makes up these programmes reflecting the actions and the outlook of a vanished race.
The last bone peg is hammered home with a stone; the last sinew stitch drawn tight in the caribou skin. The kayak is complete, and a stone-age craft is launched. The Place is Pelly Bay in the Canadian Arctic: the year, 1960. Even as late as this, the People of the Seal were still following their ancient way of life. Now they, together with their harsh, simple life and their incredible resourcefulness, have been swept away into civilised settlements. But not before a Canadian camera team had shot nearly 100 hours of film. The result is a film which reflects not just the actions but also the outlook of a vanished race. So a programme that starts out as a succession of fascinating pictures slowly turns into something more -the understanding of another way of life.
The drastic decline in the number of wild tigers at large in the Indian sub-continent reflects the general disappearance of a great deal of wildlife there. Philip Wayre has travelled widely in India and Bhutan to film some of the remaining creatures of the vanishing forests and to observe some of the valiant efforts being made to conserve them in the face of a desperate struggle for living space.
27,000 pearls, 19,000 diamonds, 8,000 rubies and 12,000 assorted precious gems. A BBC expedition found them unguarded in Bolivia - encrusted upon a gold and silver statue of the Virgin. The team set out from the highest capital in the world - La Paz. They followed the path of the Spanish Conquistadors. In Potosi they found a silver hill which had supplied a third of the silver of the New World. Here the expedition members heard rumours of treasure even further to the south. As they drove they climbed higher, to 16,000 feet and the ruined city of Lipez. A solitary isolated peasant family lived among the ruins. It seemed they had made a wasted journey. But here was the biggest surprise of all.
Graceful white horses, dangerous black bulls, the vivid colours of Provencal costumes and exotic birds: all are part of the romance of this wild region. But the pressures of the 20th century are on, and this year a major decision is being made as to whether the Camargue can still remain a Mecca for the bird-watcher and an invaluable place for research.
Exactly 60 years ago tonight Captain Scott took his last painful steps across Antarctica. It was the end of an epic journey which has stirred hearts ever since. Scott and four others had planted the Union Jack on the South Pole. But they were to pay for it with their lives. What did go wrong? Some new questions are asked and some fresh answers uncovered in this filmed investigation into the fate of Scott's last expedition.
This film tells the true story of Mrs Helen Robinson's fight with the King of the Marlins. Mrs Robinson is 71; her ambition was to catch a giant black marlin weighing over 1,000 pounds. She travelled from her home in Miami, Florida, to Cairns in North Queensland to begin the struggle off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Apart from Mrs Robinson and her fishing friends Ted Smits and Vie Dunaway, the cast includes the giant marlin, the exotic and deadly butterfly cod, and Hugo the killer whale.
The career of Col. Sir Hugh Boustead reads like an adventure from the Boys' Own Paper He joined the Navy at 13, deserted to fight on the Western Front, went on to fight with the White Russians, became an Army boxing champion, had a go at Everest - and commanded the Camel Corps. He left the Army to become eventually a Political Agent in the richest sheikdom in the world.
In the heart of Dartmoor there are places where the silence seems to have been accumulating and deepening for centuries; yet in reality, the peacefulness is made up of many small sounds that blend together. Lawrence Shove is a professional recordist who is making a sound-picture of the Moor.
A tropical Eden through three pairs of eyes at different times. Hans Hass - a modern view of a holiday dream isle. James Morrison - one of the mutineers on the Bounty. Paul Gauguin - from the diary and paintings of the artist.
The story of a naturalist-explorer making a six months' journey from the lowest point in Ethiopia, the bottom of the Danakil Depression 300 ft below sea level, to the top of the highest mountain 15,000 ft above sea level. Ethiopia offers a variety of scenery, plants and birds and other animals without parallel in Africa. This film contains the best from a series of six films first transmitted on BBC1.
This, the second of two contrasting programmes about Ethiopia, looks at the history, customs and religions of a people with 70 different languages, ruled by a monarch who traces his ancestry back to Solomon and Sheba.
Each year thousands of people visit Snowdonia - a National Park covering 845 square miles of magnificent, varied scenery. Those who live and work in this grey green landscape know 'the rhythm of the seasons, wind and rain;' they know too the elusive wild life and rare beautiful flowers which often escape the eyes of the casual tourist.
Christopher Columbus spotted three mermaids off the coast of Haiti in 1493. 'They were not as beautiful as they had been painted' he wrote. They were, in fact, manatees - perhaps the least well-known of the world's mammals. Cousteau and his team of divers follow these distant relatives of the elephant on their migration through the swamps and glades of Florida. Then they undertake the dramatic and difficult task of returning a captive manatee to the wild.
To be free and alone above the earth; to be like a bird using the winds to take you ever upwards and on; that is the ambition of man to which only gliding can come near. But when one. man sets out to beat another, to strain his every nerve to fly his sunship higher and further than the next man, then this gloriously exhilarating pastime becomes a fiercely competitive game. The Sunship Game follows the fortunes of three of the leading glider pilots in America as they compete against each other in the National Sailplane Championship of the USA. It shows how the whole man, his state of mind, even his personal life becomes focused on his ability to use the winds more skilfully than his competitor; and how, when the competition is in world class, a man's every thought condenses itself into the will to win.
There were Samurai, a kind of knight errant armed with long sword and bow, wandering about Japan as recently as 150 years ago. People who have seen the film The Seven Samurai will have a pretty good idea of what a Samurai was. What they may not know is that the spirit and practice of the Samurai have not passed away from modern Japan; hidden in secluded parts of the country, secret schools still exist to preserve the techniques and beliefs of these fierce and fearsome warriors.
Tao Bong is Manuel Elizade, a wealthy young Philippine businessman who got his nickname from the poor primitive peoples whom he has helped. What happens to primitive men and women when so-called civilisation encroaches upon their territory is well known: they are badgered, exploited, hunted like animals - at best enslaved and frequently exterminated. But not if Manuel Elizade can prevent it, even though it frequently means at the risk of his life.
Since the first white men entered Canada the stories of the wolf's ferocity have multiplied. Man's fear and ignorance have led him to hunt the animal mercilessly.
A change of colour and a cloud of ink confuse the enemies of the octopus. Almost as confusing are the stories alleging that the octopus is a man-killer and destroyer of ships. Ranging from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, Jacques Cousteau and his team of divers solve some of the mysteries surrounding these legendary eight-armed monsters of the deep.
A complete and unique record on film of the greatest event in the Moslem world. The annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca is one of the world's most celebrated religious observances. But Mecca is barred to non-Muslims, who have very little idea of what the event is really like. There are, too, many Muslims who cannot perform the pilgrimage and who know about it only from hearsay. This film, made with the permission of the Saudi Arabian Government, is the first complete record of this ancient and still vital expression of religious faith.
Peru has a long history of earthquakes; when the Incas and their Sun God were defeated by the Spanish the people of Cuzco turned for protection to an effigy of Christ given to them by their conqueror, Charles V. The film follows the annual procession of this 'Lord of the Tremors' through the streets of Cuzco and illustrates the story with an eye-witness account of the earthquake of 1970 when whole towns were obliterated.
Through the observations of gorillas, chimpanzees and monkeys, we can see the parallels with our own behaviour.
Across the vast plains of Tanzania moves the greatest concentration of wild animals in East Africa. This area was once dominated by a fierce tribe of nomadic warriors – the Masai. Today, they live in peace and this is the story of one Masai, Sam Ole Saitoti, who guides visitors through the spectacular wildlife of the Serengeti National Park. Once a year Sam returns to his tribal home to share in old customs and to witness a vital ceremony - the making of a Masai warrior.
Pierre Gaisseau (remembered for "The Sky Above, the Mud Below" which won him an Academy Award) parachuted with his camera into a previously unexplored region of New Guinea jungle. The aim of Gaisseau's drop was to study what would happen when primitive tribesmen were subjected to instant 'civilisation.' Taking with them many artefacts of Western culture, Gaisseau and his 18-year-old son Nicholas started filming the action from the moment they left the plane.
To most people the words 'British pony' conjure up a picture of a shaggy, tubby beast with a mind of its own, as drawn by cartoonist Thelwell. But in Britain we have nine breeds of mountain and moorland pony, each with its own characteristics and history. From Dartmoor to Shetland, from polo to pit, the versatile British pony shows its paces.
At the beginning of the century Fabre was known to thousands of readers for his vivid descriptions of insect behaviour. Among his greatest contributions to science were his studies of the hunting wasps, which paralyse prey for their larvae to feed on in their underground cells. Fabre was an enthusiastic populariser, to whom modern methods of communication such as radio and television would have had an instant appeal. This programme takes the form of an imaginary television visit to his home in Provence, in which Fabre talks about his life and work and recreates many of the field experiments which so fascinated his readers years ago.
There are 50 million people in China who are not ethnically Chinese at all. China is, in fact, a multi-national state composed of 50 different nationalities. Felix Greene, in a personal view, shows us something of this other China - the Mongolians in the cold north, the Uighers in the vast plains of Sinkiang and a number of smaller minorities living in a remote area near the Laos-Burma borders. In the programme we see how these minority peoples live - their homes, their costumes, their music and colourful festivities - all so different from what comes to our minds when we think of 'China.'
The Observer Singlehanded Yacht Race across the Atlantic qualifies as one of the longest, loneliest and toughest sailing contests in the world. This year's race attracted 59 entries from 11 countries. Murray Sayle, journalist-adventurer, commanded Lady of Fleet, a 41-foot ketch-rigged catamaran and brilliantly filmed his solo attempt to conquer the Atlantic.
For years there have been white expeditions to darkest Africa. Now there comes a black expedition to darkest Britain. In the footsteps of Stanley, in the tradition of The World About Us, and in a take-off of both, a black man's expedition now journeys along the Liverpool-Leeds canal to find the centre of Britain. On the way the intrepid explorers do what travellers and television safaris always have: they examine the quaint customs of the natives, delve into their folklore and record for posterity an exotic but fast-vanishing culture.
Born about 65 years ago, Wamp Wan became one of the most powerful of New Guinea's Stone Age chiefs. Then with apparent ease he was able to adapt Stone Age cunning to 20th century sophistication. Wamp co-operated with the film unit in this reconstruction of his life-story.
Havoc is boss of the Genghis Pack. She browbeats and bites Angel, and even kills her pups. It is all part of the social structure of a group of wild hunting dogs that Jane Goodall and her husband, cameraman Baron Hugo Van Lawick, have been studying and filming for over two years. Jane is best known for her study of chimpanzees in the wild that led to a best-selling book, and a very memorable BBC film. This is their second major study, and an even more memorable film.
BBC documentary portraying Denmark's Queen Margrethe II.
The 150th anniversary of global rail transportation is marked by a visit to India to survey one of the world's most impressive railway networks. For rail enthusiasts India's railway system, which has continued to utilize steam locomotives, represents one of the most spectacular systems the world has to offer. The World About Us team join forces with Michael Satow, who in 1970 took up the post of honorary adviser to the Rail Transport Museum in New Delhi, Asia's first railway museum. As they set out to explore the Indian subcontinent in search of railway memorabilia, ranging from minute objects to full scale steam locomotives, the spectacular beauty of India's railway system is revealed in all its glory.
Follows the progress of Jane Goodall and Hugo Van Lawick as they return to the shores of Lake Tanganyika to study the social structure of the so-called 'beach troop' of baboons living there.
Documentary on the behaviour of a pride of lions in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
An overland adventure on a tour-bus in the heady days of the Hippy Trail from London to Nepal during the mid 1970s.
A study of the huge outcroppings of bedrock, the Kopjes, which protrude like rocky islands amidst an ocean of grass in the heart of Africa's vast Serengeti Plain. Looks at how they provide shelter, shade and a source of water for an incredible array of plant and animal life and how quickly seasonal changes dramatically alter the kopje.
Shows how members of the fungi family feed, grow and multiply, fulfilling their role as agents of the decay necessary to life.
Documentary on the sex-lives of plants and the roles which insects play in the furthering of plant species all over the world.
Documentary which looks at the heathland of Wessex and its wildlife.
Documentary on the natives of one of the world's most inhospitable areas, the North Eastern Amazon basin.
An analysis of a wealth exchange cycle in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Shows part of the Sa cycle of the Wola people of Halalinja, Southern Highlands Province. Cassowaries and pigs, which are highly prized, are raised by the women. At a ceremony lasting two days, the birds and pigs are slaughtered by the men and the meat is distributed to relatives and friends. The ceremony if just one in an elaborate cycle of gift exchanges.
Documentary about the deforestation of the Himalayas by man and the ecological consequences of it.
Documentary which looks at the Soma wild-horses chase in Japan and one Englishman's unique involvement in it. He is Michael Jay, a 35 year-old Englishman from Twickenham.
Documentary looking at the fanatical football following in Brazil with emphasis on the Bel Horizon team Atletico Mineiro, and their star forward Reinaldo, with interviews with him, and with the fans of the team.
Documentary which looks at the work of the flying doctor in Australia, concentrating on the work of Dr. Robert Liddell from Perth.
The vital role played by bees as pollinators in the vast American industry of alfalfa production.
First of a two part documentary which tells the mysterious story of Tibet, a country unseen by Europeans until early this century, of its destruction by invading Chinese in 1950, and the flight into India of the Dalai Lama with 100,000 Tibetans.
Second part of a two part documentary film which look at the daily life in Tibet throughout the twentieth century, with film shot by western travelers in the early part of the century, and an examination of the change in the country after in Chinese invasion in 1950. Compiled principally from Chinese and Tibetan sources, this production reviews the history of Tibet from the Chinese invasion in the 1950's to the present. It includes rare footage of the Dalai Lama's visit to Peking in 1954, the Chinese newsreel coverage of the invasion, Tibetan and Chinese footage of the 1959 uprising and a record of the Dalai Lama's flight to India. Also included are extracts from the footage by the first delegation of the Tibetan Government in exile during a three month tour of Tibet in the fall of 1979.
The research which naturalist James Gray does into the lives of the inhabitants of an ordinary garden compost heap.
Two part special which looks at the six finalists in the competition set up for amateur documentary film-making teams.
Documentary about the trade in wildlife and the products gleaned from the world' s animals, and the effects that the trade is having on the growing list of endangered species.
Documentary which looks at the effects of the 15 years of occupation of Sinai by Israel and the influence that it will have now that the land has been returned to Egypt.
Documentary which follows the journey of artist Feliks Topolski and his son Daniel to South America in the form of a random sketchbook which mirrors the drawings made by Topolski.
Documentary which looks at the life cycle and the natural enemies (mainly human) of the wild-boar, now extinct in England, but still inhabiting the forests of France.
Documentary which follows up the young criminals who featured in the "LAST CHANGE WAGON TRAIN" (Season 13, Episode 20) and discovers from them why the scheme seems to work.
Portrays the life and customs of the Dai people in the South Yunnan Province of the People's Republic of China.
Documentary which compares the fictional version of the life of a Bombay twig seller, as portrayed in a hindi adaptation of the story of Pygmalion with the reallity of modern twig sellers.
Documentary in which marine biologist Alastair Birtles gives his guide to the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast.
Documentary which looks at the population of wild camels in the Australian outback, which have been established by strays from camels imported to build railways.
Play by Elaine Morgan, which tells the story of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his voyage to the Far East in 1854 where he made discoveries complementary to those of Darwin. Dramatization about the journey made by Alfred Russel Wallace, a young naturalist, to Singapore and the Spice Islands. The journey lasted for eight years from 1854 and Wallace's scientific discoveries paralleled those of Charles Darwin.
Documentary on the life and habitat of Otter's in the Shetland Isles.