Movies: Cultural preservation

Through the unrelenting winter in the north of Japan, a small group of workers must brave unusual working conditions to bring to life a 2,000-year-old tradition known as sake. A cinematic documentary, The Birth of Sake is a visually immersive experie...

Rising sea levels and sinking land threaten to destroy Venice. Leading scientists and engineers battling the forces of nature to try to save this historic city for future generations. Discover the innovative projects and feats of engineering currentl...

At a critical moment in the history of the written word, as humanity’s archives migrate to the cloud, one filmmaker goes on a journey around the globe to better understand how she can preserve her own Romanian and Armenian heritage, as well as our co...

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 ...

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?...

Documentary following a real-world Indiana Jones: Brent Easter. A federal agent for Homeland Security Investigations, Easter tracks the black market sale of antiquities, tracing sacred artifacts stolen from a village in India to a store on Madison Av...

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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...

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...

Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. Witness the Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the ...

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....

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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...

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...

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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....

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...

Measured in Echoes comments on the decaying infrastructure found in the United States and our obsession to preserve what once was instead of funding new modern structures. Additionally, it is an examination of growing older, resisting time and the re...

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....