Verrückt nach Tornados (2009)

Bill Nye: Science Guy

Bill Nye is retiring his kid show act in a bid to become more like his late professor, astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan dreamed of launching a spacecraft that could revolutionize interplanetary exploration. Bill sets out to accomplish Sagan's mission, but he is pulled away when he is challenged by evolution and climate change contrarians to defend the scientific consensus. Can Bill show the world why science matters in a culture increasingly indifferent to evidence?

CARA-B

A desktop documentary that focuses on the Golden Record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. The piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the evolution of the concept of the archive and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.

Is Genesis History?

A fascinating new look at the biblical, historical, and scientific evidence for Creation and the Flood. Learn from more than a dozen scientists and scholars as they explore the world around us in light of Genesis. Dr. Del Tackett, creator of The Truth Project, hikes through canyons, climbs up mountains, and dives below the sea in an exploration of two competing views... one compelling truth.

The Disruptors

ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed-and widely misunderstood-neurological conditions in the world today, affecting nearly 10% of kids and a rising number of adults. But what if having an ADHD brain is actually an asset? A growing number of innovators, entrepreneurs, CEO's, Olympic athletes, and award-winning artists have gone public about their diagnosis, saying that their ADHD, managed effectively, has played a vital role in their success. The Disruptors hears from many of those game-changing people speaking candidly about their ADHD, and intimately takes viewers inside a number of families as they navigate the challenges, and the surprising triumphs, of living with ADHD. The Disruptors takes an immersive look at our approach to ADHD that debunks the most harmful myths, and examines the flip side of this trait that ultimately offers a revelatory understanding of the diagnosis, and real hope for millions of kids, families and adults with ADHD.

The Man Who Stole Einstein's Brain

On April 18, 1955, the pathologist performing the autopsy on Albert Einstein covertly steals the genius's brain, hoping to uncover the secret of brilliance. His good intentions and scientific ambitions collide with harsh realities as his world crumbles.

Atomic Hope: Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement

Is nuclear energy the solution to the climate crisis? Whether it is the only carbon-neutral technology capable of tackling the crisis or a fatally convenient stopgap, time is running out.

Einstein's Universe

A documentary produced in 1979 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Albert Einstein. Narrated and hosted by Peter Ustinov and written by Nigel Calder.

Machine

If machines can be smarter than people, is humanity really anything special?

Black Hole Hunters

A team of international scientists attempt to document the first-ever image of a black hole.

The Hunt for Dark Matter

CERN and the University of California-Santa Barbara are collaborating in the search for the elusive substance that physicists and astronomers believe holds the universe together -- dark matter. Where is this search now in the realm of particle physics and what comes next?

The Divided Brain

A film which explores a radical new idea - is there an imbalance between our brain hemispheres that is affecting how we live in our modern society?

The Story of a Slough

When the Tanana River bridge was installed in Salcha, Alaska, the community worried about the levee's effects on fish wildlife. Salcha Elementary School, along with the help of Tanana Valley Watershed Association, conducted a 10-year scientific project with students to study the effects the levee had on Piledriver Slough. Tori Brannan - the filmmaker's mother - is a retired principal at Salcha Elementary and was the project's centerpiece. She shares her experiences with the project, the community, and how her daughter's involvement strengthened their relationship.

Witness: Joplin Tornado

Weaving together dozens of professional and amateur archival sources, along with dramatic interviews with the people behind the cameras, Witness: Joplin Tornado reconstructs the deadliest tornado in modern times, through the eyes of those who lived through it. A group of strangers huddle together in a convenience store cooler, shrieking in terror as the tornado tears apart everything around them. A husband-and-wife stormchasing team find themselves caught in the teeth of the storm, then pressed into service when it finally passes. A young mother sobs as she surveys her daughter’s destroyed bedroom. Yet all the while they film, using their cameras to record both the harrowing experience of the storm itself and the shock of what confronted them after — homes destroyed, neighborhoods flattened, a city devastated. Witness: Joplin Tornado tells the story of that day and its aftermath entirely through the videos and voices of the survivors.

Europe‘s Largest Desert

Near the cold Pyrenees of Iberia, surrounded by ancient and dark green forests, lies a strange land where the rain is scarce and the wind is always blowing. The soil is poor, there are no trees and the landscape resembles the moon. Is this what the future of desertification will look like? Incredible creatures with surprising behavior live in this strange landscape. The documentary explores a place with very dry skin but a wet hidden heart where even waterfowl or amphibians can live. Living in such conditions is not easy and only the toughest animals will survive.

Tornado Alley

Tornado Alley documents two unprecedented missions seeking to encounter one of Earth’s most awe-inspiring events—the birth of a tornado. Filmmaker Sean Casey’s personal quest to capture the birth of a tornado with a 70mm camera takes viewers on a breathtaking journey into the heart of the storm. A team of equally driven scientists, the VORTEX2 researchers, experience the relentless strength of nature’s elemental forces as they literally surround tornadoes and the supercell storms that form them, gathering the most comprehensive severe weather data ever collected.

Tornado! Hurricane! Flood!: Wonders of the Weather

This video presents a look at the forces of nature in their most devastating mode: lightning storms, tornadoes, flash floods, tidal waves, and hurricanes. The film, made for The Discovery Channel, accompanies professional storm chasers as they ride into the eye of a category five hurricane to gather data and get a close-up view. There is footage of a tornado with 300-mile-per-hour winds, as well as 100-foot tidal waves hurtling towards shore at 500 miles per hour. The viewer witnesses a flash flood and hears an interview with a lightning strike survivor.

Searching for Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph

The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.

The Unpredictable Factor

In today's climate debate, there is only one factor that cannot be calculated in climate models - humans. How can we nevertheless understand our role in the climate system and manage the crisis? Climate change is a complex global problem. Increasingly extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and more difficult living conditions - including for us humans - are already the order of the day. Global society has never faced such a complex challenge. For young people in particular, the frightening climate scenarios will be a reality in the future. For the global south, it is already today. To overcome this crisis, different perspectives are needed. "THE UNPREDICTABLE FACTOR" goes back to the origins of the German environmental movement, accompanies today's activists in the Rhineland in their fight against the coal industry and gives a voice to scientists from climate research, ethnology and psychology.

Der Sturm - Tiere bei Blitz und Donner

Plot unavailable

Mr. Tornado

Meteorologist Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita spent ten months studying The Super Outbreak of 1974, which was the most intense tornado outbreak on record. Mr. Tornado is the remarkable story of the man whose groundbreaking work in research and applied science saved thousands of lives and helped Americans prepare for and respond to dangerous weather phenomena.

A Little Love

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

The Most Unknown

An epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity’s biggest questions. How did life begin? What is time? What is consciousness? How much do we really know? By introducing researchers from diverse backgrounds for the first time, then dropping them into new, immersive field work they previously hadn’t tackled, the film pushes the boundaries of how science storytelling is approached. What emerges is a deeply human trip to the foundations of discovery and a powerful reminder that the unanswered questions are the most crucial ones to pose. Directed by Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney and advised by world-renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog, The Most Unknown is an ambitious look at a side of science never before shown on screen.

Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise

Using only archive film and a new musical score by the band Mogwai, Mark Cousins presents an impressionistic kaleidoscope of our nuclear times – protest marches, Cold War sabre-rattling, Chernobyl and Fukishima – but also the sublime beauty of the atomic world, and how x-rays and MRI scans have improved human lives. The nuclear age has been a nightmare, but dreamlike too.

Die Sonne

Plot unavailable

Survivor Science: The Dead Man Walking

Documentary of the Jarrell, Texas F5 tornado that killed 27 people and obliterated the Double Creek estates on May 27, 1997.

Molds and How They Grow

In this educational film, laboratory demonstrations show the effects of moisture and temperature on the growth of molds. Photomicrography reveals the structure of molds: hyphae, mycelium, spore balls, spores. Beginning with spores on a rice culture, time-lapse photography shows the formation of a new colony.

The Hunt for the Oldest DNA

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?

Plastic People

Are we becoming Plastic People? Our ground-breaking feature documentary investigates our addiction to plastic and the growing threat of microplastics on human health. Almost every bit of plastic ever made ends up ground down into "microplastics". These microscopic particles drift in the air, float in the water and sit in the soil. And now, leading scientists are finding them in our bodies: organs, blood, brain tissue and even the placentas of new mothers. What is the impact of these invisible invaders on our health? Ziya Tong, author and science journalist, makes it personal by visiting leading scientists and undergoing experiments in her home, on her food, and on her body.

Black Holes: Messages from the Edge of the Universe

It is the birth of neutrino astronomy. For the first time, astrophysicists can detect extra-terrestrial neutrinos in ice on the South Pole. The fundamental questions of science remain unanswered., how did the universe come to be? What keeps our world together? The newly discovered extra-galactic neutrinos may hold the keys to answering these questions.

A Symphonic Odyssey with Professor Brian Cox

Explore the secrets of the universe with Professor Brian Cox in this special event that combines ground-breaking science with the power of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Bayesian : les mystères du naufrage du superyacht en sicile

Plot unavailable

The Magical World of Moss

They have no roots, no seeds, no flowers, but mosses show immense survival capacities and can suspend their biological activity for long periods. Today, researchers are exploring the exceptional resistance of these archaic organisms. British ecologists have even resurrected a "zombie" moss that has been trapped in the permafrost for 1,500 years. Associated with decay and disliked in Europe, mosses are deified in Japan. With 25,000 species worldwide, bryophytes - their scientific name - are the seat of real ecosystems, and can develop in inhospitable landscapes, through an extravagant reproduction cycle.

Picture a Scientist

A documentary that looks at systemic sexism faced by women scientists in STEM fields.

Hawking: Can You Hear Me?

A documentary telling the remarkable human story of Stephen Hawking. For the first time, the personal archives and the testimonies of his closest family reveal both the scale of Hawking's triumphs and the real cost of his disability and success.

Dinosaurs, Myths and Monsters

Tom Holland explores how our ancestors sought to explain the remains of dinosaurs and other giant prehistoric creatures, and how bones and fossils have affected human culture.

Microcosmos

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Human Nature

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn’t digital, it’s biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR gives us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing disease, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. This documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting, and the genetic engineers who are testing its limits.