Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon, and 12 men walked upon its surface. They remain the only human beings to have stood on another world.

In the Shadow of the Moon brings together for the first, and very possibly the last, time surviving crew members from every single Apollo mission which flew to the Moon, and allows them to tell their story in their own words.

The definitive story of going to the moon, told by those who went. Between 1969 and 1972 an elite group of men achieved an incredible dream. They were, and remain, the only human beings to set foot on a planet other than our own.

These personal testimonies are interwoven with digitally remastered footage from Nasa film archives, much of it previously unseen and all of it hauntingly evocative of a bygone era. The result is an intimate and epic film which vividly communicates the daring and the danger, the pride and the passion, of this band of special young men.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist)

There’s something very odd going on in space – something that shouldn’t be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner. Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: ‘It left us quite unsettled and jittery’ he says, ‘because this is not something we planned to find’.

The accidental discovery of what is ominously being called ‘dark flow’ not only has implications for the destinies of large numbers of galaxies – it also means that large numbers of scientists might have to find a new way of understanding the universe. Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to re-write the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong?

14 billion years ago there was nothing; then everything exploded into existence and the universe was born, but a new generation of cosmologists are questioning this theory. Cosmologists have created a replica of the universe by using equations; it’s called the standard model of cosmology and it’s the reason behind the Big Bang theory; however, this model is now doubted. Professor Alan Guth’s theory challenges the Big Bang by stating that the universe started out small, allowing the temperature to even out everywhere, before expanding on a massive scale.

Stars nearer the edge of a galaxy move just as fast as those in the centre. This made cosmologists think that galaxies needed more gravity, but the only way to get more gravity was to create it. Astrophysicist Dan Bauer is hunting for dark matter half a mile under the dark plains of Minnesota in order to trace and record it more effectively. The discovery that the universe is speeding up suggests that a new force is powering the universe. This force is known as dark energy, and cosmologists have no idea what it is.

The combination of the standard model, inflation and dark matter has given way to a new theory called dark flow. The nature of this theory could show that our universe isn’t the only one. The standard model of cosmology has withstood much criticism, therefore making the theory stronger; however it could still be totally wrong.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist)

The Brain is an astonishing voyage of discovery into our last biological frontier. Although today’s computers can make calculations in one-100th of a second and technology can transport us outside the bonds of Earth, only now are we beginning to understand the most complex machine in the universe.

Using simple analogies, real-life case studies, and state-of-the-art CGI, this special shows how the brain works, explains the frequent battle between instinct and reason, and unravels the mysteries of memory and decision-making.

It takes us inside the mind of a soldier under fire to see how decisions are made in extreme situations, examines how an autistic person like Rain Man develops remarkable skills, and takes on the age-old question of what makes one person good and another evil.

Research is rushing forward. We’ve learned more about the workings of the brain in the last five years than in the previous one hundred.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist)

The Cold War documentary series was first broadcast in 1998 and released in VHS videocassette. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the George W. Bush administration re-classified as “secret” many already declassified documents and much film – specifically documents and film that might compromise American military operations occurring in Afghanistan in November 2001.

Incidentally the month when Cold War officially went out of VHS print, with only few warehouse stock copies remaining for retail sale until the middle of 2002.

Episodes number 19, “Freeze”, and number 20, “Soldiers of God”, contain film evidence of the United States – per Cold War policy – giving the Afghan mujahideen weapons and military aid via the intermediary Pakistani ISI. The episodes feature mujahideen leaders and soldiers and Afghan citizens telling of life under Soviet occupation, and shows Muslim soldiers demonstrating how they fought and defeated the Soviet Army in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan.

Watch the full documentary now (24 episodes, each 45 minutes long)

Episode 20, “Soldiers of God”, shows Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1980, giving a speech to the mullahs and mujahideen fighters between the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan encouraging the Muslim mujahideen fighters through his Pakistani translator saying “We know of their deep belief in God and we are confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over there is yours. You will go back to it one day, because your fight will prevail and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side.”

While assuring them of unconditional American government support; and interviewed State Department officials confirming that the United States uncritically supported the Pakistani government for the sake of American interests in Afghanistan.

]]> http://documentariesonline.net/2010/05/cold-war/feed/ 0 http://documentariesonline.net/2010/05/one-third-of-the-holocaust/ http://documentariesonline.net/2010/05/one-third-of-the-holocaust/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 15:30:58 +0000 Chris The Owner http://documentariesonline.net/?p=2718

Holocaust denial consists of claims that the genocide of Jews during World War II – usually referred to as the Holocaust – did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized.

Key elements of these claims are the rejection of any of the following: that the German Nazi government had a policy of deliberately targeting Jews for extermination as a people; that more than five million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis and their allies; and that genocide was carried out at extermination camps using tools of mass murder, such as gas chambers.

Holocaust deniers generally do not accept the term “denial” as an appropriate description of their point of view, and use the term Holocaust revisionism instead. Scholars use the term “denial” to differentiate Holocaust deniers from historical revisionists, who use established historical methodologies.

The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are criticized as based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores extensive historical evidence to the contrary.

Most Holocaust denial claims imply, or openly state, that the Holocaust is a hoax arising out of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other peoples. For this reason, Holocaust denial is generally considered to be an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

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Second Skin takes an intimate, disturbing look at three sets of computer gamers whose lives have been transformed by the emerging genre of computer games called Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs).

World of Warcraft, Second Life, and Everquest allow millions of users to simultaneously interact in virtual spaces.

Second Skin introduces us to couples who have fallen in love without ever meeting, disabled players whose lives have been given new purpose, those struggling with addiction, Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers, wealthy entrepreneurs and legendary guild leaders–all living within a world that doesn’t quite exist.

Second Skin focuses on a couple who met in a virtual world, an addict whose life was ruined by MMOs, and a group of MMO gamers who spend most of their lives inside virtual worlds.

Watch the full documentary now

Dope Sick Love is a really remarkable documentary made for HBO about two pairs of heroin addicted lovers roaming the streets of NYC. There is no narration and we never see any interviews with the subjects, the camera just follows them around, like a third eye, completely detached.

The people being followed don’t even seem aware that they’re being filmed! (or, at least, they don’t seem to care). The footage is amazingly candid. This is as real as it gets. The nuts and bolts of what its like to be on the street and addicted to heroin. We watch them score dope, shoot it, make up, hustle, and even impersonate cops to rob people, and about a million other tiny details that less observant documentary filmmakers would leave out.

Some of the footage is truly horrifying. Like watching one guy frantically searching for the fix he lost. And when he does find it, the guy literally dances in the street.

The cyclical nature of drug addiction becomes very apparent while watching this. EVERYTHING is about getting the next score to these folks, yet the next score seems to be well worth the immense trouble they go through.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist)

Nuclear Nightmares talks about how “radiophobia”, the fear of radioactivity, is widespread and yet not based on scientific evidence. After the Chernobyl accident, a lot of death toll numbers appeared in the news, some close to 400.000 people dead, but the reality is the only 57 (yes, 57) deaths can be directly or indirectly linked to the accident.

It appears that low doses of radiation are not harmful, since the body already has methods of defense. Only after a certain threshold, radiation begins to harm the body. More than that, low doses of radiation seem to start the genes responsible with the protection against cancer, therefore the number of cases of cancer in regions with higher than normal background radiation is actually lower.

Of course, it was normal for people to fear radiation during the Cold War and now, as our fossil fuel reserves are close to depletion, nuclear energy is something desperately needed to compensate. How much of this documentary was actually about dispelling the exaggerated fear of radiation and how much was about promoting nuclear power is for you to decide.

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Addicted to Plastic is a documentary focusing on the worldwide production and environmental effects of plastic. The host takes a 2-year trip around the world to give us a better understanding of the life cycle of plastic.

It’s probably fair to say that we all believe buying goods (pencils, food, electronics, etc.) with less packaging is a good thing, and when we separate our trash and drop the plastic rubbish into the blue box for the morning pickup, it all gets recycled, and we can feel confident we’ve done our part for the environment.

The development of degradable plastics is a good thing, but a lot of what we use – new trash as well as old – has penetrated some very disturbing levels of the food chain and the ecosystem, and the makes the case that all is not well in our world via a simple boat trip to the North Pacific Central Gyre, aka the Eastern Garbage patch, where air pressure and rotating water currents swirl and push all kinds of floating trash to the water’s surface.

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Award winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy explores the human and political consequences of one of the most bitter scandals of the war in Iraq in this feature. In the 1960’s, a prison was built in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city west of Baghdad, and during the regime of Saddam Hussein it became a center of torture and abuse where political dissidents were subjected to agonizing punishment or death.

Following the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the prison was taken over by American military authorities, and was used as a holding facility for prisoners of war and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces.

The prison’s reputation as a site of widespread abuse rose again when journalists discovered photographs of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated in an ugly variety of ways by American soldiers, a scandal which had a major impact on international thinking about the war.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib offers an in-depth look at the story behind the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, featuring interviews with observers on both sides of the national divide. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib received its world premiere at the 2007. (Barnes & Noble)

Watch the full documentary now