Documentary

Thursday, 30 October 2008
8.30pm

Using Robert Menzies’ World War II diaries and remarkable 16mm film, this dramatised documentary lifts the lid on a bitter behind-the-scenes battle between Winston Churchill and the Australian Prime Minister as the fate of Australia hung in the balance.
It follows Menzies to London during the dark months of 1941 as he takes on the British Prime Minister over the strategic direction of the war, telling the story of Menzies’ political epiphany from his own point of view. The film introduces the controversial theory that Menzies became so alarmed by flaws in Churchill’s leadership that he considered taking over himself. With Australia under threat of a Japanese attack, Menzies struggled to convince the autocratic British leader to send reinforcements to Singapore. The unequal struggle eventually cost Menzies his prime ministership, but out of it he developed a new vision for Australia and built a constituency of middle-class voters who swept him back to power to become Australia’s longest serving prime minister. Cast: Matthew King (Robert Menzies), Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell (Winston Churchill), Dennis Coard (Fred Shedden, Head of the Australian Defence department), Margot Knight (Pattie Menzies, Robert Menzies’ wife), Chris Waters (Lord Beaverbrook, British Minister for Air Supply), Ian McTear (Archibald Sinclair, British Minister for Air), Richard Askin (Colin Bednall, Australian journalist). Interviewees: Professor Joan Beaumont (Deakin University), Professor Judith Brett (La Trobe University), Professor David Day (University of Aberdeen) and Heather Henderson (Robert Menzies’ daughter).

Thursday, 23 October 2008
6.05pm

Africa’s big cats don’t like water…but what is a cat to do when dinner is on the other side of a swamp?

Swamp Cats is a breathtaking documentary which takes a closer look at these swamp cats who spend half the year living in the swamps of Botswana’s Okavango. As the annual flood inundates the delta, the cats are forced to cope with expanses of water that fragment their homes into a series of small islands and their hunting ground into dangerous, watery mires. For lions, there are two choices – sink or swim. Wading through chest high waters, swimming in the deep channels to hunt buffalo and antelope, these lions have successfully adapted to their surroundings. But it is a different story for the lion cubs. They must acclimatise and learn to swim quickly – for the swamps are a perilous place to grow up. For a family of cheetahs, hunting in the swamp is very much a learning process. Only through trial and watery error have they learnt to bring down lechwe antelope and reedbuck in the shallow marshlands. One of their biggest problems is the crocodiles which are always keen to rob the cheetahs of their hard won prey. Versatile and solitary, the leopard is perhaps the wiliest swamp cat. Clever enough to trap land species like the warthog and the bushbuck against the swamp, leopards have also learnt the crossing places of the baboons, where they often lie in wait, ready to pounce. With stunning aerial and underwater footage, this film explores the successful adaptation of three of nature’s greatest cats, a feat not repeated anywhere else in Africa.

Tuesday, 21 October 2008
8.30pm

Seed Hunter is a one-hour documentary, as part of the ABC’s Future Makers series, about the hunt for seeds that may help save the world from its greatest ever crisis – a global food shortage brought about by human-induced climate change.
As Australia and much of the world wrestles with hotter weather and a dwindling water supply, mass starvation on a global scale is on the cards if we can’t find ways to improve crop resilience. Scientists are exploring many solutions to adapt our food supply, including going back to Mother Nature herself to locate the genes that can withstand our changing climate; genes that, thanks to a high-yielding monoculture, have almost disappeared. Australian scientist Dr Ken Street, aka the ‘Seed Hunter’, spends his life searching for the tiny seeds that could play a role in helping food producers around the world. This film follows Dr Ken, the ‘Indiana Jones’ of agriculture, on a journey from the drought-ravaged farms of Australia, to the heart of the Middle East, to the mountains of Tajikistan as he hunts for elusive wild chickpea that can survive temperatures of 40 degrees above and below zero. Sounds simple enough until you realise that land clearing, urbanisation and modern farming systems have all but wiped out these ancient food sources. The rare wild chickpea’s tough, resilient genes could help transform the modern chickpea variety, enabling it to be grown by more people. At journey’s end, Ken travels deep into the Arctic to deliver his precious bounty of seed to the impenetrable ‘doomsday vault’, built as a back-up for the world’s seed supply of every food type known to humankind.

Tuesday, 14 October 2008
8.30pm

As part of the Future Makers series, ABC1 presents this revolutionary documentary touted as the follow-up film to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Already making waves in environmental circles, The Burning Season is a story of contribution and hope; one that offers a solution to the frightening issue of global warming.

Every year, there is a burning season in Indonesia. Rainforests are cut down and burnt every hour to clear land for crops such as palm oil, making Indonesia the third largest producer of carbon emissions in the world. Indonesian palm oil farmer Achmadi confronts the impact of his deliberately lit fires on climate change: what is he to do when this is the only income he knows? In nearby Borneo, Danish-born Lone Droscher-Nielsen rescues and cares for the hundreds of orangutans devastated by these very fires. Lone’s goal is to find forest areas that are safe from logging and burning and return the rehabilitated orangutans to the wild. Meanwhile, just as another burning season is about to commence, a young Australian environmental entrepreneur, Dorjee Sun, pursues a solution: a plan to sell the carbon credits represented by large forest areas to big polluters in the West. Does his concept offer new hope to the remaining forests of the world and the earth’s climate? Met with a mixture of surprise, intrigue, confusion and scepticism in a period of four months, Dorjee’s proposal is rejected 203 times. Dorjee however, won’t give up on his quest. He re-works his proposal and pitches it in London, the carbon capital of the world. He finally finds a receptive partner in one of the world’s largest banks, Merrill Lynch. It is one week before the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali and the deal hinges on whether all the countries of the world can agree on the wording of a new climate change protocol, and whether protection of forests will be included in future carbon markets. Is Dorjee a pioneer or a profiteer? What value does his concept offer to the remaining forests of the world and to the challenges of climate change?

Thursday, 16 October 2008
6.05pm

The watery savannah of Southern Africa’s coastline is prowled not by lions, leopards and hyenas, but by even more impressive predators: sharks – from makos and great whites, to tiger sharks and the giant whale sharks. But why are there so many sharks along this stretch of water? And is there any chance of surviving for the other residents with so many fearsome killers around? The local seal pups have a tough life. Pursued on land by hungry jackals and hyenas, they must face great white sharks on their maiden swim to their feeding grounds. Yet it is not a group of random events, but rather a set of complex cirucmstances that place these helpless youngsters on a collision course with these one-tonne monsters each year. If the great whites are the lions of the sea, then the tiger sharks are its hyenas.Versatile and opportunistic, these striped hunters feed on nearly anything, from nesting sea turtles to baby gannets. But how do they know to congregate at the turtle colony each year? Blue fin tuna must watch out for the mako shark. Possibly the fastest fish in the sea, these underwater ‘cheetahs’ can reach speeds in excess of 70kmh, and leap over 8m in the air in pursuit of prey. But how and why do they hunt together with blue sharks? Travelling 3000 miles from South Africa’s west coast to east coast, this film explores the spectacular scenery and the myriad wildlife that live with the sharks, and help to make them what they are.

“After watching this film, the waters of Australia will seem as safe as a goldfish bowl in comparison to the west coast of Africa”. Independent.

Thursday, 09 October 2008
6.05pm

A startling look at the two most destructive animals in South Africa and how their habits are a story of life, death and cooperation.

The elephant, the Emperor Moth and the Mopane tree form the backbone of life on the African plains. This delicate ecological triangle determines the livelihood of all the other creatures in its system. The Mopane tree is under attack from rampaging elephants, but even more damaging is the Mopane worm, the caterpillar of the beautiful Emperor Moth. They gather in hoards and strip the trees of their leaves in minutes. But the worms are food for a host of animals – even humans – and the trees are home to a number of unpleasant creatures. What holds the delicate balance in check?

Tuesday, 07 October 2008
8.30pm

Risking Our Kids marks the beginning of ABC’s new Future Makers series of documentaries.

Increasing childhood rates of diabetes, respiratory disease, behavioural disorders, obesity – and one in four children with mental health problems – lead former Australian of the Year, Fiona Stanley to warn that the next generation of Australians could have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. But this is 2008. Australia is awash with cash. Shouldn’t our children be the healthiest kids in history? Child health expert, Professor Fiona Stanley believes they are not. Following Fiona Stanley and her team of scientists from their cutting edge laboratories to remote Aboriginal communities and into increasingly wealthy but unhealthy homes around Australia this film builds the case for what is being called the “the modernity paradox”. Can it be that our contemporary western lifestyle is delivering a toxic physical and social environment in which children are growing up sick? After a lifetime of ground-breaking scientific study into the condition of the nation’s children, Fiona Stanley passionately and eloquently explores the alarming, measurable health effects of the way we now bring up children. These are not problems without solutions, but, she says, effective action needs political and community will right now.

Sunday, 05 October 2008
7.30pm

Amazing amateur colour footage of Tibet from four rare film collections brings to life the forbidden land the Dalai Lama grew up in before the Communist invasion.

The British Film Institute granted this film’s producers exclusive access to revealing footage taken by intelligence officers of the Raj, a Chinese official and a Communist cameraman. Their forensic examination zooms in and around the frames to reveal some amazing aspects of the Dalai Lama’s childhood. This stunning documentary also includes eyewitness accounts from old Tibetans, British and Chinese officers and the Dalai Lama himself, interwoven with film of the Tibetan exiles in north India today.

Thursday, 25 September 2008
6.05pm

Lions, supreme rulers of the African savannah, should have little to fear.

But while the world has been worrying about the decline of the elephant and the tiger, the plight of the lion has gone unnoticed. This is a species in peril.

Researchers recently made the shocking discovery there were only half the lions in Africa previously believed – as few as 16,000. There are a number of threats to their existence but are they ultimately their own worst enemy? How can they be saved?

Thursday, 25 September 2008
8.30pm

He’s become the living Google.

The Real Rain Man screens for the first time on ABC1 – Thursday, September 25 at 8:30pm.

Whatever happened to the real Rain Man, the quiet genius Kim Peek, whose extraordinary life story inspired the character played by Dustin Hoffman?

Since the Oscar-winning movie Rain Man became a worldwide hit, the ‘world’s greatest savant’ Kim Peek has wowed and thrilled over half a million people, demonstrating his phenomenal brain power in a unique roadshow that travels around the USA.

Brain-damaged at birth, everything Kim read he retained, and he learnt to do calculations at breathtaking speeds. When Hollywood scriptwriter Barry Morrow met him, he knew that his story had to be told – and the rest is history.

This film is a moving account of a unique human relationship between Kim and his dedicated father; and meets four bedazzled teams of scientists who try to unravel Kim’s remarkable brain power.