Balance of Life

Venerable storytellers recount for the camera and their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture.

Le Lignon: a long building with two towers, below it the Rhone River and its forest, habitat to many birds. Two microcosms that influence and inspire each other. From their windows, the inhabitants watch the woods. What do they see? The film shows the human need for closeness to the animals that surround us, and the ambivalent relationship between humans and nature.

American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai’i shows the survival of the hula as a renaissance continues to grow beyond the islands. With the cost of living in Hawai'i estimated at 27 percent higher than the continental United States, large numbers of Hawaiians have left the islands to pursue professional and educational opportunities. Today, with more Native Hawaiians living on the mainland than in the state of Hawai'i, the hula has traveled with them. From the suburbs of Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest Hawaiian communities have settled in California, and the hula continues to connect communities to their heritage on distant shores.

View up close some of the smaller inhabitants of the Red Sea off the coast of Sudan - a world filled with strange, fascinating, and often comic creatures.

In the company of zoologist Patrick Aryee, a discovery of the 37 species of felines that inhabit the planet, some little known, others threatened.

As the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba is host to spectacular wildlife found nowhere else on the planet: from the jumping crocodiles of the Zapata swamp to the world's tiniest hummingbird, from thousands of migrating crabs to giant, bat-eating boas that lie in wait for easy prey. Decades of a socialist, conservation-minded government, American embargoes and minimal development have left the island virtually unchanged for 50 years. As international relations ease, what will become of this wildlife sanctuary?

A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

In a time of hardship, Hobart resident Peter Walsh turns to the secretive platypus for solace, only to discover it is the platypus that need his help to survive in a habitat under threat.

The common European adder, the only venomous snake native to Estonia, has often been feared and hated among the people. "Tavaline rästik" attempts to see behind the fears and introduce this unique reptile.

They say that in the wild, nothing dies of old age. Yet one female baboon defies the rule. Queen of Baboons is a deeply intimate portrayal of life in a baboon troop through the eyes of its matriarch Mmasadi. From the moment of her birth, Mmasadi is destined for greatness. Born into the troops highest-ranking family, she will become queen one day.