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While some regions of the world enjoy an abundance of water, one billion people live in areas struggling with drought and drinking water contamination. By 2025, two-thirds of the world's population is expected to face a water shortage. This episode profiles water purification and conservation projects throughout the world, which aim to reduce the environmental and economic threats of a future where water is a scarce commodity.
Rain forms temporary pools and lagoons that dry out with the arrival of summer. Inside this cracked mud there is the beat of life. Fish and crustaceans wait for the first drops to revive. Amphibians and great numbers of birds join in the festivities of the rain.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Water is the universal dissolvent. It gets into everything carving abysses, canyons or karsts. The caves are the homes of strange mysterious animals like insects or blind crustaceans and albinos or the kings of darkness, the bats.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Apart from the sea, there are salty waters where the living conditions are exceptionally hard, like the salt mines, the salt marshes and other extremely saline places. Nonetheless, we find a handful of beings capable of living there.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
By its absence or its presence water marks life, the strategies for survival of animals and plants. The desert, apparently without life, is the perfect example of adaptation. The dew, excrements, seeds or thorns are some of the most efficient tricks to fight adversity.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
On its way, the sea finds the cliffs. The beating of the waves have created a landscape that serves as a refuge for a lot of birds that take advantage of the closeness of the water for fishing. At the same time, the vaults of these cliffs are the perfect place to hide from predators.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Humidity monopolises the atmosphere. Water overflows everywhere and more than half of the rain goes back to the clouds by the transpiration of the leaves. It is the forest. The green kingdom, where some plants grow on others, and the animals dress in the most attractive colours to avoid being eaten.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Estuaries have the capacity to provide food for billions of living beings. Fish, birds and crustaceans are constantly attracted to these dominions. The mix of fresh and salty water creates an attractive and ever-changing cocktail at the mouth of the river. The tides' rhythmic presence is also in great part responsible for attracting such diverse life forms.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
At sunset, in spring, the mountainsides are a silvery colour. These are small seasonal streams carrying very little water. The water fills up with alga and reaches very high temperatures. This is where a lot of animal chose to live.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Nature hides a lot of secrets and our series too. Discover how some of the most striking images were obtained, what is the technique for filming certain species or the risks and adventures that the whole team has experienced.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Wave after wave, the sea unloads part of his formidable energy. The coasts' rocks bear stoically the assaults of the sea and on them or in his chinks, as if they were trenches, an amazing community of animals survives, something that happens identically in all the coasts of the world.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
With the arrival of winter, the landscape becomes a frozen desert. Among the animals, fashion turns white and any refuge serves against the low temperatures. The apparent outside calm clashes with life under the ice, the best isolation.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
The salt forests are one of the most fascinating ecosystems. Trees with roots in the water forming galleries of branches where all kinds of creatures find refuge. And the crown of the mangrove is the birds and mammals territory.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
They are the great stores of nature. The basis of everything is the little algae, diet of lots of molluscs, insects, crustaceans and fish. These, at the same time are the eaten by birds and mammals. It is the best representation of the food chain.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
The sea occupies three quarters of the planet. Life began there. From the minutest to the largest creature live in the oceans. All are inter related in a global symbiosis and in continuous circulation.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Sand and water make a good combination. When the tide goes out a micro cosmos awakens with thousands of inhabitants. Worms, flees, crustaceans bury themselves searching for remaining humidity. Also, every year, thousands of turtles arrive on the beach.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
After travelling a lot of kilometres the river changes the landscape. The species multiply as it wanders. The now quiet waters accumulate a multitude of organic materials used by those in the outside. A continuous activity fills the atmosphere with life.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Corals are an indication of the purity of the water. The areas where coral reefs are formed are the richest on the planet. They are the perfect example of how strength is in numbers. This small beautiful animal is the result of a perfect symbiosis between alga and polyp.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Life in our planet depends on the hydrological cycle. It flows creating clouds, rains, snow, rivers or seas and in every place creates landscapes and ecosystems where the most varied and surprising beings live.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Scientists have found multiple evidences that point at a climatic change in our planet. The overheating of the atmosphere concerns directly to the hydrological cycle, which acts on all the living creatures of the Earth.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
The sea hides creatures that defy the imagination. It's a world apart, one which is different and mysterious and poses many questions for us. What lies on the sea-floor? What is it like? A community of residents, specially adapted to life in the sea's depths, has settled down there, where the sea hides many of its best kept secrets.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Man has designed mechanisms to supply himself with water when it is scarce. They are wells, which, with the passing of time have been inhabited by plants and animals. They form a strange ecosystem where birds nest and fish and mammals are bred.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
We are the planet Earth, in spite of the fact that the greater part of the surface is covered by water. A tiny ball that looks blue from space. Discover the mysteries of water, where it comes from, why it creates life.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Water concentrates an enormous quantity of life in our planet. Nevertheless, many species are in danger of disappearing for very different reasons, most of them related to human actions.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
This is the frontier between two worlds, the water's surface. The strangest creatures live stuck to this fine layer, using the surface tension. Some move on the surface, others, just below it. The smartest use this great opportunity to have a feast or two.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Despite being an essential element for life, we are making worse and worse use of water. We contaminate it and waste it in factories, wastes or irrigation, indirectly harming and killing thousands of species.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
A layer of vapour surrounds the whole planet. This fine layer of air is slowed down by the chains of mountains, impassable barriers where the water condenses and chills until it comes down in the form of rain or snow. Discover what animals live on the mountain tops and how they compete with one another for food.
DVD (With English & Chinese Subtitles) / 2009 / 30 minutes
Directed by Kevin McMahon
An epic cinematic poem that reveals the extraordinary beauty and complex toxicity of the Great Lakes, the largest remaining supply of fresh water (20%) on Earth.
The film tells the epic story of the Great Lakes by following the cascade of its water from northern Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean, through the lives of some of the 35 million people who rely on the lake for survival.
Providing earth with 20% of its surface fresh water and its third largest industrial economy, the Great Lakes are a unique and precious resource under assault by toxins, sewage, invasive species, evaporating water and profound apathy. They are also one of the planet's great preserves of extraordinary wilderness beauty and a bounty of unique species.
WATERLIFE blends these realities with a dreamlike fluidity as it pours through the lives of some amazing characters. We meet an Anishinabe medicine woman who walked 16,000 miles around the lakes to sympathize with them; the last of the great Michigan fishing families; a man whose lakefront home now borders a field thanks to sewer overflows; the people of a village where mysterious toxins ensure that most new babies are girls; and the residents of Love Canal, a notorious Niagara Falls neighborhood abandoned in the 1970s and now dubiously refurbished.
Along the way, WATERLIFE show viewers the Great Lakes as they might appear to a seagull, a fish or a water molecule...and from a myriad of other amazing perspectives. Filmed over a full year with a battery of specialty cameras and techniques, WATERLIFE provides an unprecedented view of an incredible ecosystem rarely seen by the city dwellers who form most of its population. From the ornate fountains of Chicago to the sewers of Windsor, viewers are carried through marsh and pipe, across pounding waves and through thunder clouds on a journey which, as the film says, has no "ending or beginning, that shapes every body it passes through and unites them all across space and time."
WATERLIFE's director, Kevin McMahon, is one of Canada's most innovative documentary filmmakers. Gord Downie, leader of The Tragically Hip and a Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, narrates the film. Topping off this epic cinematic poem is a fabulous soundtrack featuring Sam Roberts, The Allman Brothers, Dropkick Murphys, Sufjan Stevens, Sigur R?, Robbie Robertson, Daniel Lanois, Phillip Glass, Brian Eno and a new song by The Tragically Hip. Plus check out the award-winning interactive website.
Awards
~ Special Jury Prize, Canadian Feature, HotDocs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival
~ Best Documentary Cinematography, Canadian Society of Cinematographers
Management of the world's fresh water supply will determine global political stability and economic development. Many countries will experience internal conflicts over rights to water. There is enough water for everyone in the world, however, the question is who should pay for it, how much it should cost, and who should receive it. For the first time in history, the majority of the world's population lives in cities, and supplying these cities with sufficient water will be a difficult task that has the potential to cause many social conflicts. This struggle for control of water has led to riots in many areas of the world including South Africa and Spain where water-rich regions hold power over water deficient regions. Disputes over water are also disputes between countries. This is taking place between the ten countries that share the Nile River Basin in Africa. In Asia, the fight over control of its large rivers is a struggle of life and death and will have enormous consequences for billions of people.
Climate change will greatly affect the world's water supply and societies in the future. We live in an age of climatic uncertainty and the future of the world's water supply will dominate political life and have enormous consequences for economies and cultures. Travel to Mali where lakes form and dry up each year and see how they confront the ever changing climactic conditions. Droughts or floods can be fatal to millions of people around in the world in poor countries. Uncertainty with water conditions will also pose new challenges to the world's most advanced societies. These challenges will affect international relations, migration patterns, and democratic systems all over the world. World renowned glaciologists speak about the drastic changes that are occurring in Asia and Europe due to glacier melting. Learn about the global consequences if Greenland's icecaps melt.
The uncertainty of climate change and the increasing need for water is bringing a renaissance of large new water transfer methods. Throughout history, transferring water has been vital to building civilizations. Travel to the Sahara desert and learn how Egypt's leaders envision creating huge towns and large areas of cultivated land by pumping in water from an artificial Nile lake to irrigate the desert. Examine Russia's plan to build canals for water transport to several countries in central Asia, which lack water. Travel to South America and see a complex hydrological system that guarantees Brazil and Argentina a sure source of water for the future. Scientists are studying ways to locate underground water deposits and transport this water to populated areas that lack water. Travel to Iceland and learn how they are using buses that are fueled by water.
Most people know that water is unevenly distributed over the Earth's surface in oceans, rivers and lakes, but few realize how very uneven the distribution actually is. The World's oceans - 139 square miles of it - contain 317 million cubic miles of Saltwater. The atmosphere is another kink of ocean and moves water vapor around the world until it falls as precipitation. This program examines the Hydrologic Cycle and shows the major water movement in the United States. It also examines how ground water stores and releases water and looks at lakes, major river systems in the World and the World's estimated water supply.
Earth's surface is constantly reshaped by running water. Delta, alluvium, estuary, rill, arroyo, bayou, and oxbow lake are just some of the terms defined.
Learning Objectives:
1) To provide an understanding of the dynamics of stream systems and the role of running water in shaping the landscape.
2) To identify the various types of streams and their characteristics.
3) To explain the processes involved in the various actions of running water on the landscape.
The domestic daily water use of three families in different geographical locations in the world are shown. Different areas in the world together with the standard of life determine to a great extent how much water is available per household. Water is used from daily necessity to liquid extravagance, from simple chores to full-tilt recreation. Namibia is the only country in the world that purifies sewage water in a way that makes it potable, and then distributes it to consumers. Water is used in a spiritual role in different religious cultures, purification, baptism and cremation.
Explores the lives of farmers across the globe to see how water is managed and/or mismanaged. While irrigation seems to be the key to successful agriculture, it does however have severe drawbacks, such as over exploitation of existing fresh water reservoirs. There are industries that need huge amounts of water in their production process: paper, steel and beer. A Japanese steel company is leading the industry in its water conservation and environmental policies. A modern beer industry in Bangkok, Thailand uses water conservation and wastewater reduction techniques.
The issue of balance between Mother Nature and all living things; and what happens to that balance when man begins to intervene in nature's environments that depend on fresh water. How do species survive in the Nabib Desert in South Africa and at Glen Canyon in the USA. where the once wild Colorado River is obstructed by a large dam? There is a look at the canalization of the Rhine and the shrinking of fresh water wetlands in Holland, and the Ecuadorian rainforest where nature is damaged by oil production.
Concerns about the health of both scarce and water-abundant environments are growing. Reallocating fresh water to the environment has started, highlighting the evermore ominous and highly charged issue of pollution. Contaminated water has direct and important consequences for public health. In 1854, a cholera epidemic in Western Europe initiated a new awareness. Perhaps the most deadly and widespread, yet most preventable, waterborne disease is diarrhea.
The nature and politics of water transportation affect a growing number of people and enterprises around the world who depend on the reliable delivery of water. In Africa, the ritual of water transportation is at the very core of life for the pastoral people who roam the Rift Valley - the Massai. The aqueducts of ancient Rome proved to be one of the world's most notable water transportation systems. The controversial issue of water pricing in diverse communities throughout the world is discussed. The film also highlights the price asked by traditional water bearers in a bustling enclave in the midst of India, then crosses over to Great Britain where wide scale privatizing of water takes place after years of floundering governmental control. At last, the film also travels to Santiago, the capital of Chile where an increase in the water price will be used to decontaminate the waters of the local rivers.
This episode is a close look at why three immense river systems like the Nile in Egypt, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya in Central Asia were dammed. This episode explores the role that water plays in world crises; yesterday, today, and most certainly in the future, when m ore people might be driven to war over water. However, water is also imaginable as a stake for peace negotiations. The negotiations over the water rights are still tense. In the Middle East, disputes over water are as old as the stones of Biblical times.
With improved water management, water conservation campaigns and revolutionary techniques of water use, we can reduce the poential consequences of its scarcity. Technical innovations that create a stable production of fresh water out of seawater, brackish water and even wastewater are needed. New technologies are being developed that may one day help us preserve water both in space and on earth. Just as the Japanese farm many varieties of seaweed for its high mineral content and nutritional value, farmers along the coast of Europe and North America may one day farm native sea vegetables on a larger scale. In the Netherlands, sea lavender, also known as lamsoor, is a green leafy vegetable that is becoming common in more and more markets.
Running water changes the surface of the earth by cutting away rock in one place, carrying this load and then depositing it in another place. This program explores the relationship of running water to the land. Concepts investigated include suspension, solution, load, rapids, potholes, meanders, braided streams, deltas, alluvial fans, waterfalls and flood plains. The program also explores characteristics found in youthful, mature and old streams.
This program discusses how water is trapped between grains of rock underground. discover wells, water flow, hydrology, artesian wells and the water table.
CHINA: The 3 Gorges Dam - will be the largest in the world. It will involve the forced relocation of over 1 million people, and the destruction of hundreds of cultural artefacts and heritage sites. ISRAEL: water conflict - the situation between Israel and Jordan, conservation strategies employed in an arid land. AUSTRALIA - a unique wastewater treatment project poses one solution. Can we feed the world's growing population without irrigation?
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Water & The Water Cycle' explains the occurrence of water as ice, liquid and vapour, its climatic role, its properties and its cycle: to ground and back to sea. This program also includes a look at the issue of water on other planets and it's importance to life.
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Note : The above titles may have some territorial restrictions. Please feel free to send us an enquiry.