Addicted to Solitude

Throughout history, regimes have used terror attacks as a means of control over their populations, and for the last 100 years, Western governments have employed the same measures.

The Man Who Fell From The Sky is a Channel 4 documentary. It tells the fascinating story of two men who stowed away on a flight from South Africa to the UK in 2012. But what was their story, and what happened to the two men? The documentary is billed as a ‘stranger than fiction’ story, that features two men who made the ‘most extreme journey’ ever taken by humans. South Africans Themba Cabeka and Carlito Vale made the trip clinging onto the undercarriage of the plane. Together, they made the 11-hour, 5,639-miles trip braving -60C temperatures. The incredible journey made news around the world.

A café in the north of Brussels. Days are punctuated by the songs that the customers sing at all hours, to amuse themselves, to remember or to pass the time. Those songs transform the place little by little, making the film a strange musical.

At the height of the cold war a struggle broke out between Governments from all over the world as to which position to take about the system of apartheid in South Africa. Leading the fight was Olof Palmes' Swedish Government, which covertly funneled over US$ 1 billion to the resistance movement. This money was given without the knowledge of either the Parliament or the Swedish populace. At the center of the net in South Africa was a Swedish diplomat called Birgitta Karlström Dorph. Meanwhile at the UN the Swedes with their Scandinavian counterparts attempted to win the argument for economic sanctions. This led to bitter arguments which saw Palme leading the fight against the Reagan and Thatcher administrations.

A French documentary or, one might say more accurately, a mockumentary, by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick.

While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labeling him a saint, her, a sinner.

In a remote stretch of Patagonia, Argentina, there is a family - the Dickasons - who speak a language from a country 7,000km to the east. They are part of a 114-year-old Afrikaans Boer community - South Africans of Dutch descent who sailed across the ocean to South America after the destruction of a war with the British. Today, less than 50 still speak the language and they struggle to keep their culture alive. Patriarch "Ty" Dickason, 82, is a cowboy who has never flown in a plane - and yet he yearns to one day visit the country of his blood before he and his compatriots pass away. This multiple SAFTA award-winning documentary is a portrait of the last days of the community - a parallel world where Afrikaans was never linked to Apartheid - and one family's journey to reconnect with South Africa.

Sexy supermodels Tyra Banks, Valeria Mazza, Kathy Ireland, Stacey Williams, Ingrid Seynhaeve, Rebecca Romijn, Angie Everhart, Manon von Gerkan and newcomer Georgianna Robertson hit South Africa for the 1996 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

How do white South Africans deal with their fears of crime and violence? Like crocodiles, some survive without evolving, living with their fears. Others make fear their friend and evolve in ways you'd never imagine.

This is a country of gold, diamonds, and great natural wonders. An ancient land undergoing a dramatic political change. A place where wild animals and modern high-rise cities exist side-by-side, where great deserts contrast with lush farmlands. Visit Johannesburg a city built on gold, and Durban where spices of the East mingle with the influence of the Zulu people. View Cape Town from the summit of Table Mountain and fly over the dramatic Drakensburg Mountains. Take a photo safari at the Londolozi Game Reserve where elephants and lions roam freely in the African wilderness. Out of the conflicts of the past is emerging a new country, a land of amazing natural beauty; one of the world's best-kept secrets.

Nova and National Geographic present exclusive access to an astounding discovery of ancient fossil human ancestors.