Movies: Cultural preservation

In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?...

A new reading of the historical period that began with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs (1479-1516) and the discovery of America (1492), as well as an analysis of its undeniable influence on the subsequent evolution of the history of Spain and the ...

During the Cultural Revolution in China in the late 20th century, ethnic Manchu people were persecuted and forced to give up such cultural traditions as the shaman dance (tiao tchin, meaning "spirit-jumping" or "god's dance"). However, on Changbai Mo...

The film was shot in an old, decrepit building where dozens of guest-workers' families live. The owner, a local influential politician, has avoided paying for the maintenance of the building under the legal standards by using his connections to procl...

Two iconic British buildings - the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool and the Coal Exchange in Cardiff - are threatened with demolition and Nick Broomfield is on the case....

For over 85 years, steamship Ste. Claire transported generations of Detroiters to Boblo Island, an amusement park nestled in the waters between the US and Canada. When the vessel comes under threat of ruin, a doctor, psychic and amusement park fanati...

In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-to...

The documentary explores the world of culture, nature and gastronomy through one chef's eyes across the marshlands of the Venetian Lagoon....

A glimpse at how genre film-focused home video companies have taken the charge in preserving, restoring, and releasing so many works which otherwise might have been lost to time....

Explore the lives of the lucky few who call Britain's most magnificent mansions home. Meet the custodians of Castle Ward, Croft Castle, and Castell Penrhyn as they navigate daily life amidst priceless antiques and stunning landscapes....

A documentary celebrating 20 years of the work of Kaleidoscope, an organisation devoted to the preservation of archive television....

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ARCTIC SUMMER is a poetic meditation on Tuktoyaktuk, an Indigenous community in the Arctic. The film captures Tuk during one of the last summers before climate change forced Tuk's coastal population to relocate to more habitable land....

A short distance from Marseille, at Cape Morgiou, in the depths of the Calanques massif, lies the Cosquer cave, discovered only about thirty years ago by a diver, Henri Cosquer. With its bestiary of hundreds of paintings and engravings - horses, biso...

A journey into the wedding night, where an ultra-Orthodox Jewish couple gets to know each other for the first time....

What life was like in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii moments before it was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79....

Photographer Mike Lassiter journeys across South Carolina capturing the stories of historic, often family-run businesses that line main streets from the coast to the upstate....

Mark and Dan Jury document the gradual demise of a community nestled within the Cuyahoga National Recreation Area between Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, as the National Park Service works to acquire the land of ~500 residents in order to establish a Nati...

A group of citizens lobbied to save the landmark Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator, one of the defining features of Mayerthorpe’s landscape, from being torn down in 2003 - as thousands of others had been. This film documents those efforts while explo...

This unique recreation of an 18th-century home, in London's Spitalfields, has to be seen to be believed. Dan Cruickshank smells the rotting food and warms his hands by the roaring fires and asks whether this living museum is really more accurate than...