Harvest of Empire

Documentary about the life of Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova.

An immersive look at the free-range children who take charge of their lives at the highly influential experimental school. An insight into the unorthodox Suffolk boarding school where lessons are optional, swearing is common, and it's the pupils who decide the rules. Summerhill, the first and last bastion of totally permissive, anti-authoritarian, free education, has been going strong for over seven decades. This program from 1992 shows how Summerhill children, left entirely to their own devices, behave; it looks at whether they spurn or take advantage of the academic education offered; whether a tribunal can be effective when the vote of a five-year-old carries as much weight as that of the headmistress.

Accomplished adventurer and author Jon Bowermaster discovers a new Vietnam - from the sea - and guides an intimate tour of this intriguing country. More than a travelogue, Descending the Dragon is a personal look into the heart of this sea-loving nation, its hopeful spirit and unique culture. Driven by his intense curiosity about post-1975 Vietnam and eager to replace the old war images burned in his mind with new ones of today, Bowermaster overcame daunting bureaucratic obstacles and pushed ahead with his expedition. Joining the expedition is Ngan Nguyen, whose family escaped Saigon by helicopter when she was three, on the last day of the war. She grew up in New Orleans speaking Vietnamese and has traveled back to her homeland many times. What she learned about her home country will change her forever.

The inside story of China's race to eradicate all extreme poverty by the end of the year 2020. With unprecedented access, filmmakers embed in China's poverty alleviation campaign-revealing tens of millions of poor families with customized plans, and the millions of officials recruited and held accountable for the success of the program.

Armed with low tech gear and high minded notions that penguin populations hold the key to human survival, Ron Naveen lays bare his 30 year love affair with the world's most pristine scientific laboratory: Antarctica. Famed as a place that wants you dead, this film follows a rag tag team of field biologists to some of the harshest corners of the planet, where they track the impact of climate change and ocean health by counting penguin populations. From the tip of Argentina to the ominous Deception Island, 'The Penguin Counters' is a treacherous, heart warming journey by a 21st century Dr. Doliitle who dreams of conserving this stunning but fragile region for future generations.

In the Footsteps of Taytacha follows a group of Quechua-speaking musicians and dancers as they leave their remote villages high in the Andes Mountains of Peru and join thousands of other highlanders on the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred peaks of Qoyllur-Rití. Quollur-Rití, the largest and most important religious ritual in the southern Andes, occurs only five days out of the year and involves walking both day and night in terrain over 4400 meters in altitude.

Villagers from remote hamlets high in the Andes join together with people from the roadside village of Ocongate for the Peruvian Independence Day celebration. Festivities require that a wild condor be captured and pitted against a bull during a bullfight in the town plaza. Through this event power relations are revealed between the villagers of Ocongate and the highlanders, and of both of them to the Peruvian state.