Part 1: Emperors
Niall Ferguson shows how the vast apparatus of the Chinese state has always been called on to subjugate individual freedom to the higher goal of unity. Ferguson also examines how, on the other hand, centralised control produces tensions that threaten to destroy the country.
Part 2: Maostalgia
Niall Ferguson asks how China manages to live under a Communist system of government but with a thriving capitalist economy The succession of revolutions orchestrated by Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. And yet this hard-line communist and murderer of businessmen is revered in China today as the founder of a modern-day capitalist superpower. Why?. To answer this question Niall travels from Beijing to Mao's birthplace at Shaoshan to the new supercity of Chongqing and to the rural backwaters of Anhui to track down survivors of the madness of Chairman Mao, newly minted billionaires and the Mao worshippers who believe tomorrow belongs to them. He finds the way China is governed is eerily similar to the way it was under the First Emperor. All the power lies in the hands of nine men with expressionless faces and what looks like the same hair dye - as unelected and as powerful as Emperor Qin. Autocracy that values unity over choice; secrecy over openness - not democracy. That has always been the Chinese way. It is the price that China is prepared to pay for the spectre that has always haunted its leaders: protest, rebellion and turmoil.
Part 3: SuperPower
Niall Ferguson asks what China's growing global presence and aggressive nationalism mean to all of us. China's supercharged economic growth signals a seismic shift in political power from West to East. We are increasingly dependent on China's money to bail out our own fragile economies. But at what price? How can we protest when China challenges our most deeply held beliefs about democracy and freedom of speech by locking up its citizens? Should we criticise them or just keep quiet for fear of frightening off much needed investment? When China transforms itself from an assembler of products invented in the West to an innovator in its own right what will be left for us to do? What will it be like to work in a Chinese-dominated world?
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
* China on Four Wheels (2012)
Anita Rani and Justin Rowlatt embark on two epic car journeys across China, navigating congested cities and winding mountain roads, to explore how the country's economic growth, symbolised by its booming car industry, is affecting people's lives.
Part 1
In the first programme, Anita takes the high road through the rich, industrialised cities of the east, driving a Great Wall Haval, the best-selling 4X4 in China. Meanwhile Justin drives a 'bread van', the loaf-shaped workhorse of the countryside, through China's poor rural hinterland, and discovers that here donkeys are often more common than cars. He visits the 'ghost city' of Ordos and puts his bread van through its paces on China's second-biggest racing track. On the first leg of their journey, Anita and Justin discover a country that has developed rapidly, raising millions out of poverty. But it faces important challenges that may affect us all: a potential property bubble, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and growing inequality.
Part 2
Anita and Justin continue their epic car journeys across China, heading for their final destination, the financial mega-city of Shanghai. On her route through the industrialised east, Anita visits some of the country's most sophisticated and luxurious cities. In Qingdao she discovers a little piece of the Loire valley: a Chinese wine chateau with an accompanying vineyard. In Hangzhou she joins a couple on their wedding day, complete with a luxury car fleet. Meanwhile Justin continues his epic journey through the poor, remote Chinese countryside in his loaf-shaped bread van. He bumps rather precariously up the potholed Aizhai Highway, one of China's most dangerous roads, and visits the brand new engineering marvel of the Aizhai Bridge. He explores the life of farmers from the Miao ethnic minority deep in the Hunan countryside, and tries to get to the bottom of Mao Zedong's legacy in contemporary China.
In the first programme, Anita takes the high road through the rich, industrialised cities of the east, driving a Great Wall Haval, the best-selling 4X4 in China. Meanwhile Justin drives a 'bread van', the loaf-shaped workhorse of the countryside, through China's poor rural hinterland, and discovers that here donkeys are often more common than cars. He visits the 'ghost city' of Ordos and puts his bread van through its paces on China's second-biggest racing track. On the first leg of their journey, Anita and Justin discover a country that has developed rapidly, raising millions out of poverty. But it faces important challenges that may affect us all: a potential property bubble, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and growing inequality.
Part 2
Anita and Justin continue their epic car journeys across China, heading for their final destination, the financial mega-city of Shanghai. On her route through the industrialised east, Anita visits some of the country's most sophisticated and luxurious cities. In Qingdao she discovers a little piece of the Loire valley: a Chinese wine chateau with an accompanying vineyard. In Hangzhou she joins a couple on their wedding day, complete with a luxury car fleet. Meanwhile Justin continues his epic journey through the poor, remote Chinese countryside in his loaf-shaped bread van. He bumps rather precariously up the potholed Aizhai Highway, one of China's most dangerous roads, and visits the brand new engineering marvel of the Aizhai Bridge. He explores the life of farmers from the Miao ethnic minority deep in the Hunan countryside, and tries to get to the bottom of Mao Zedong's legacy in contemporary China.
* Cannabis: The Evil Weed (2009)
Cannabis is the world's favourite drug, but also one of the least understood. Can cannabis cause schizophrenia? Is it addictive? Can it lead you on to harder drugs? Or is it simply a herb, an undervalued medicine?
Addiction specialist Dr John Marsden discovers that modern science is finally beginning to find answers to these questions. John traces the cannabis plants' birthplace in Kazakhstan; finds the origins of our sensitivity to cannabis in the simple sea squirt; and shows just what it does to our brains.
He meets people who have been changed by this drug in drastically different ways - from those whose lives have been shattered to those who lives have been revived.
Addiction specialist Dr John Marsden discovers that modern science is finally beginning to find answers to these questions. John traces the cannabis plants' birthplace in Kazakhstan; finds the origins of our sensitivity to cannabis in the simple sea squirt; and shows just what it does to our brains.
He meets people who have been changed by this drug in drastically different ways - from those whose lives have been shattered to those who lives have been revived.
* Can We Make a Star on Earth? (2009)
Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid.
Brian returns to Horizon to find out why. Granted extraordinary access to the biggest and most ambitious fusion experiments on the planet, Brian travels to the USA to see a high security fusion bomb testing facility in action and is given a tour of the world's most powerful laser. In South Korea, he clambers inside the reaction chamber of K-Star, the world's first super-cooled, super-conducting fusion reactor where the fate of future fusion research will be decided.
Brian returns to Horizon to find out why. Granted extraordinary access to the biggest and most ambitious fusion experiments on the planet, Brian travels to the USA to see a high security fusion bomb testing facility in action and is given a tour of the world's most powerful laser. In South Korea, he clambers inside the reaction chamber of K-Star, the world's first super-cooled, super-conducting fusion reactor where the fate of future fusion research will be decided.
* The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (1970)
To cite Gimme Shelter as the greatest rock documentary ever filmed is to damn it with faint praise. This 1970 release benefits from a horrifying serendipity in the timing of the shoot, which brought filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin aboard as the Rolling Stones' tumultuous 1969 American tour neared its end. By following the band to the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco for a fatally mismanaged free concert, the Maysles and Zwerin wound up shooting what's been accurately dubbed rock's equivalent to the Zapruder film. The cameras caught the ominous undercurrents of violence palpable even before the first chords were strummed, and were still rolling when a concertgoer was stabbed to death by the Hell's Angels that served as the festival's pool cue-wielding security force.
By the time Gimme Shelter reached theater screens, Altamont was a fixed symbol for the death of the 1960s' spirit of optimism. The Maysles and Zwerin used that knowledge to shape their film: their chronicle begins in the editing room as they cut footage of the Stones' Madison Square Garden performance of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and from there moves toward Altamont with a kind of dreadful grace. The songs become prophecies and laments for broken faith ("Wild Horses"), misplaced devotion ("Love in Vain"), and social collapse ("Street Fighting Man" and, of course, "Sympathy for the Devil"). Along the way, we glimpse the folly of the machinations behind the festival, the insularity of life on the concert trail, and the superstars' own shell-shocked loss of innocence.
Gimme Shelter looks into an abyss, partly self-created, from which the Rolling Stones would retreat--but unlike its subject, the filmmakers don't blink.
By the time Gimme Shelter reached theater screens, Altamont was a fixed symbol for the death of the 1960s' spirit of optimism. The Maysles and Zwerin used that knowledge to shape their film: their chronicle begins in the editing room as they cut footage of the Stones' Madison Square Garden performance of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and from there moves toward Altamont with a kind of dreadful grace. The songs become prophecies and laments for broken faith ("Wild Horses"), misplaced devotion ("Love in Vain"), and social collapse ("Street Fighting Man" and, of course, "Sympathy for the Devil"). Along the way, we glimpse the folly of the machinations behind the festival, the insularity of life on the concert trail, and the superstars' own shell-shocked loss of innocence.
Gimme Shelter looks into an abyss, partly self-created, from which the Rolling Stones would retreat--but unlike its subject, the filmmakers don't blink.
* Giant Squid: Filming the Impossible (2013)
David Attenborough narrates this documentary about the giant squid, a creature of legend and myth which even in the 21st century, has rarely been seen in it's natural environment. But now, an international team of scientists think they have finally found their lair, one thousand metres down, off the coast of Japan. This is the culmination of decades of research. The team deploys underwater robots and state of the art submersible vessels for a world first - to find and film the impossible. An NHK and Discovery Channel production.
* Can We Live Forever? (2011)
NOVA poses the question - Can we live forever? - and host Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles one of science's major challenges in each episode. He will guide us as he explores dramatic discoveries and the frontiers of research that connect each central, provocative mystery.
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