The secret of Alexandria (2024)

Deep Blue

Deep Blue is a major documentary feature film shot by the BBC Natural History Unit. An epic cinematic rollercoaster ride for all ages, Deep Blue uses amazing footage to tell us the story of our oceans and the life they support.

Alexandria: The Greatest City

Bettany Hughes goes in search of this lost civilisation, revealing the story of a city founded out of the desert by Alexander the Great in 331 BC to become the world's first global centre of culture. The documentary also looks at the role of astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, and incorporates stunning footage from the feature film 'Agora'.

Why Just One?

Saving the world's last dinosaur, the sea turtle.

PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster

Jeremy Clarkson tells the dramatic story of the Arctic convoys of the Second World War, from Russia to the freezing Arctic Ocean.

The True Story of the Mary Celeste

On December 4, 1872, the unmanned Mary Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic with its cargo fully intact. The mystery of this "ghost ship" remained unanswered for over 135 years. What happened to the Mary Celeste is widely regarded as the most famous mystery of the sea. Watch it unfold to its stunning conclusion, at last.

Ballymanus

10 May 1943. Something is spotted drifting ashore off the coast of Northwest Donegal, Ireland. Something that would change the lives of the local people forever.

The Dreamed Films

Belgian filmmaker Eric Pauwels' meditation on dream, travel and film.

Riding Giants

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

Sea of Plastic

The Mediterranean sea is stifled by the growing amount of plastic waste and microplastics, endangering marine mammals, polluting beaches and jeopardizing local economies. How to get rid of this plague? Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of worldwide-known explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, starts a journey to meet the people who are devoting their life to the Mediterranean sea’s rescue. Some flashing lights sequences or patterns may affect photosensitive viewers.

Kapitäne

This documentary film portrays five captains. It shows their everyday life on board, and how they fulfill their duties and make decisions. But it goes far beyond: Viewers get to know the captains as people with values, as human beings that also deal with topics such as family and home. The captains' stories tell a lot more than about life at sea. The narrative style is documentary in the classical sense: It is only the captains who speak, there is no voiceover. Their own words and the pictures let viewers gain a very close insight into the captains' lives. Hamburg, the German port known as "gate to the world", creates the cinematic parenthesis of this documentary. All captains portrayed have a close relation to Hamburg - they live or work there or come to Hamburg with their ships every now and then.

The Seashore

A study of the seashore in mid-coast Maine.

Tide Pools

The sun rises over the tide pools of coastal Maine.

Under the Sea 3D

Imagine a world of incredible color and beauty. Of crabs wearing jellyfish for hats. Of fish disguised as frogs, stones and shag carpets. Of a kaleidoscope of life dancing and weaving, floating and darting in an underwater wonderland. Now, go explore it! Howard Hall and his filmmaking team, who brought you Deep Sea and Into the Deep, take you into tropical waters alive with adventure: the Great Barrier Reef and other South Pacific realms. Narrated by Jim Carrey and featuring astonishing camerawork, this amazing film brings you face to fin with Nature's marvels, from the terrible grandeur (and terrible teeth) of a Great White to the comic antics of a lovestruck cuttlefish. Excitement and fun run deep Under the Sea!

What Lurks Beneath?!

An homage to the weird and wonderful world of B-movies, this short fauxdocumentary by film artist Chris Gerrard splices together classic clips with some new footage to tell the ludicrously fake story of the mysterious people (and things) lurking beneath us in the eerie River Tay. Feast your eyes on this unique archaeology of aquatic-themed film.

The Fanatic Search

After a nice and slow start with some gorgeous deep water soloing footage from Mallorca, the movie slowly increases in tempo with footage of Sharma on what is now the potential 9b ‘ Golpe De Estado’ in Siurana, Dani Andrada linking most of the moves on some the craziest routes in the Ali Baba cave in Rodellar and other inspirational footage of routes being sent in Spain (Siurana, Santa de Linya, Rodellar).

Alexander's Greatest Battle

Michael Wood travels through Syria and Iraq to uncover the story of Alexander the Great's decisive battle against the might of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. Ancient writers agreed that it was fought somewhere near the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, but the exact location has never been discovered. Using dramatic new finds in the UK - a cuneiform clay tablet in the British Museum and a papyrus dug up in Egypt - Michael sheds new light on the course of events. Then to reconstruct the campaign, he follows Alexander's route through Damascus and Aleppo to the river Euphrates in Syria and travels into Northern Iraq with the British and US military.

Secrets of the Great Barrier Reef

Down Under, just a few nights after the November full moon - when water temperature and tides are just right - one of nature's most extraordinary events explodes into life. Thousands of coral join in an elaborate mating ritual, a synchronized dance of naturally occurring phenomena that help increase the coral's odds of survival. Journey through more than 1,200 miles of Australia's treasured Great Barrier Reef to discover the secrets of the unique marine life that inhabit this dazzling spectacle, considered to be the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Our Earth - Our Oceans

Plot unavailable

The Sea in Their Blood

A film made for the Central Office of Information concerning Britain's coastline, with music by Michael Nyman.

The Seafarers

Members of the American Federation of Labor, the Atlantic & Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union commissioned budding filmmaker and magazine photographer Stanley Kubrick to direct this half-hour documentary. The director's first film in color, it is more of an industrial film than a documentary, it served as a promotional tool to recruit sailors to the union.

Oceans

An ecological drama/documentary, filmed throughout the globe. Part thriller, part meditation on the vanishing wonders of the sub-aquatic world.

Walk the Tideline

The movie follows today’s beachcombers in Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Japan. The same endless piles of trash left by humans cover all the shores. Our shared ocean is loaded with time travelers made of plastic, the fruit of our throwaway culture and our indifference. They are the seeds of destruction, as they end up in the entrails of creatures living in the sea. Most of the beachcombers share the same worries about the environment. Beside the plastic trash, many travelers drift between continents, such as various plants’ seeds. Like all species, they look for new living environments where they could survive on a warming planet.

Reila

Plot unavailable

Sumus Maris

A woman embarks on a journey through three pivotal stages, meditating on the cyclical nature of life, where the uncontrollable power of the sea reflects the essential purity of the world.

Devalar (C)

In Galician, Devalar means “the passing of time over things”. This short movie is a portrait of a seaside Galician village, on the edge of the Atlantic ocean, drawn by the memories of the director.

The Blue Cage

Twelve stories of courage, commitment, passion and love. The Blue Cage explains what happens when sailors and ship workers leave their homes and families for several months or even years, thousands of miles away.

The Pearl Fishers

Documentary about Japanese pearl fishers.

Koi

There's no definitive separation as long as there is memory'. Since the Tsunami hit the northern part of Japan's coast in 2011, more than 20 thousand people lost their lives, and many others are still missing. As time went by the families of the victims abandoned all hope and stopped looking for their loved ones. However, this is the story of two men that are still fully committed to their respective searching activities. Even though their backgrounds are extremely different, both share a strong force of will and firmly wish to keep alive the memories of the ones that went missing. Perseverance is what pushed an ex-convict to look for redemption by helping the victims' families to find the remains of their loved ones, and perseverance is what brought a bus driver to start to dive in order to search for his wife.

Sea Gypsies: The Far Side of the World

The vessel is Infinity, a 120-foot hand-built sailboat, crewed by a band of miscreants. The journey, an 8,000 mile Pacific crossing from New Zealand to Patagonia, with a stop in Antarctica. Unlike all the other boats heading to the Southern Ocean, Infinity is no ice-reinforced super-yacht crewed by professional sailors; rather, Infinity lives in the moment and sails on a whim. What can be found in abundance on board is blood, sweat, enthusiasm, risk tolerance, disdain for authority, and an ample supply of alcohol – all in all a mad voyage of reckless adventure just for the sheer joy of it. Along the way the crew will battle a hurricane of ice in the Ross Sea, assist the radical environmental group Sea Shepherd in their fight with illegal whalers, and tear every sail they have. At the heart of their journey is a quest for awe and a sense of wonder with the raw power of the natural world.

Dive: Leben im Schiffswrack

Let yourself be enchanted by this exciting diving adventure! Down into the deep blue, down into a beautiful and alien world. Meet unique creatures such as the spotted eagle ray, the Hawaiian Prussian fish, moray eels and, of course, the popular clown fish. Swim through coral reefs with an extraordinary fauna in the beautiful Egyptian Red Sea.

The Mermaid

A trip that the author makes to a distant beach trying to find the place where his grandfather made a painting years ago.