大象传媒

Factual

Arena - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

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Bob Dylan, the incomparable singer/songwriter of modern times, and Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest film-maker of his generation, unite for these extraordinary films exploring Dylan's formative years when he created the albums that, many agree, changed the world.

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Scorsese, a "great fan" of Dylan, directs this documentary featuring major, brand-new interviews with the famously private Dylan alongside contributions from key figures and previously unreleased material.

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These unique films are the product of a marriage between two multi-award-winning arts strands - the 大象传媒's Arena and PBS' American Masters in the US - and are accompanied by a Dylan season on 大象传媒 FOUR.

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IC

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No Sex Please We're Teenagers

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Can 12 teenagers aged between 15 and 17 live without sex for five months?

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Rachel Gardner and Dan Burke - two Christian youth workers from Harrow in London - believe they can. They have both practised celibacy and think that teenagers would be much happier if they were involved in long-term, serious relationships.

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With teenage pregnancy and STD rates in Britain the highest in Europe, this observational documentary gives Rachel and Dan a chance to test their beliefs.

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The parents agree for their teenagers to be taken from Harrow and challenge them to be abstinent for five months, swapping casual sex for old-fashioned courting rituals.

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In regular meetings with Rachel and Dan, the teenagers discuss the effect peer pressure has on them and whether they have sex; whether their abstinence affects other decisions in their lives; and whether the abstinence is worthwhile.

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The teenagers also visit their American peers in Florida, who have taken the Silver Ring Pledge, vowing to abstain from sex before marriage.

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SB

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Five Children of Beslan

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In September 2004, terrorists seized a school in the remote North Ossetian town of Beslan. Fifty-three hours later, the siege ended in gunfire and slaughter. More than 330 people had died, many of them children. Pictures of the children who survived horrified the world.

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Now 大象传媒 TWO, in association with HBO Documentaries, presents the remarkable story of those children who survived and who wish to give their account of the siege.

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They also recount the desperate weeks that followed, and their thoughts about the politics, religions and the war on terror that have shaped their lives.

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Shot on location in the children's homes and on the derelict grounds of School Number One, the film is a sensitive exploration of how the children of Beslan have survived.

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PR

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The Slavery Business

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The untold story of British slavery is brought out from under the carpet in The Slavery Business, a season revealing different aspects of Britain's role in the slave trade.

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Sugar Dynasty

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On the back of slavery, the Beckfords transformed themselves from an ordinary middle-class family into one of the richest and most flamboyant dynasties in Europe.

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This drama-documentary follows their rise through the domination of the Jamaican sugar plantations.

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It shows how, eventually, in the 18th century, two cousins - William of Fonthill and William of Somerly - inherited the family fortune and then lost it.

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Somerly headed for Jamaica to manage plantations, and became famous for writing an incredible guidebook on how to treat slaves - Remarks About The Island Of Jamaica.

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His playboy cousin wrote the first Gothic novel and became embroiled in the era's biggest sex scandal, before bankrupting himself through financial mismanagement and by building Fonthill Abbey - an enormous Gothic recreation to match his excessive personality.

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BR/LS

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Starring Robert Pugh as Lascelles and Jack Shepherd as government inspector Robert Dinwiddie, this drama exposes an era when human beings were traded like livestock.

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In 1744, Lascelles' ambitions were challenged when government inspector Dinwiddie started investigating his financial affairs.The titanic struggle between these hugely ambitious men moved from Barbados to the coffee houses and taverns of London, culminating in a court case.

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This programme was made with the full co-operation of the Lascelles family and Harewood House Trust.

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BR/LS

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Breaking The Chains

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Abolitionist William Wilberforce became a national hero for his work in bringing the plight of African slaves to the attention of a shocked British public, yet his role in supporting the continued enslavement of thousands is an untold story.

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This drama-documentary tells the story of the 800,000 slaves across the British Empire who were not freed by the Abolition Bill, and of Wilberforce's vociferous argument that they should remain enslaved.

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In a tale of greed and morality, Wilberforce eventually changed his mind about the Empire's slaves and became their champion.

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BR/LS

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Beyond Boundaries

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How does one cut through dense undergrowth in a wheelchair? How do blind people navigate a rainforest? How do you tell a deaf man there's a crocodile behind him?

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These obstacles are just some of the problems faced by 11 intrepid adventurers in Beyond Boundaries, a new series which follows a group of men and women, each of whom has a physical disability, as they take on the trek of a lifetime across the rainforests, deserts, rivers and mountains of Nicaragua.

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The arduous and incredibly challenging route takes the participants from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean on a journey that will test them to their limits.

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KA

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The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook

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Dave Myers and Si King are two Northern lads on a mission to travel the world on a quest for great food.They've been doing this kind of thing for years, leaving their families and friends behind as they hit the road.

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With their zest for adventure and their laugh-out-loud capacity for fun, the hirsute duo travel on motorbikes and anything else they can get their hands on in search of great meals - with some surprises along the way, too.

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Their voyages around the globe include journeys into the Namibian desert, sailing a catamaran to the Isle of Man and Ireland and biking through Transylvania, sampling the culinary delights of the area as they go.

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GM

The Secret Life of Arthur Ransome

Making Slough Happy

Alternative Medicine

Space Race

The Russian Godfathers

The team behind the critically acclaimed and award-winning The National Trust series reveals the inside story of the world's highest-stakes poker game, upon which the fate of the entire nation of Russia hangs in the balance.

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President Putin and seven of the world's richest men are locked in a battle to run Russia.

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On one side is the President, with the support of a people disgusted to find that seven men effectively owned their country, and on the other are the billionaires who are deploying all their power and wealth to try to wrestle back control.

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IC

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The Secret Of Drawing takes viewers on a journey of discovery in which the history of art, the lives of some of our greatest artists, the world we live in today and the way we see ourselves will be, quite literally, redrawn.

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Presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon explains how, by looking at drawings, we can come to a more complex understanding of the history of art.

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Drawing has often been dismissed in comparison to painting or sculpture but the series will show how drawing is fundamental to all art and, more than this, is also a bridge which links art, science and technology.

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KC

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Backlash

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Backlash is a series of documentaries challenging the liberal consensus and asking what the world is coming to.

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Each week, a different celebrity reporter examines subjects as diverse as how children are raised, depression, food, women in the workplace and society's attitude towards children.

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In the first programme, Arthur Smith ignites the backlash against Britain's "compensation culture" and attacks a phenomenon which costs an estimated 拢10bn a year.

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Smith argues that a nation once famed for its spirit of adventure has been rendered a bunch of risk-averse wimps and that our way of life is being eroded by a mass of petty rules.

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KR

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How Did The Romans Run Europe (And Why Can't We)?

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Johnson examines how the Romans managed to harmonise the economies of the Roman Empire, and assesses whether the Roman system or the present-day system for running Europe works best.

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Johnson also finds out how the Romans "sold" the Roman project and how they made disparate peoples (from present-day Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe) feel "Roman".

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But how can the EU make its 456 million citizens want to be "Europeans"?

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Johnson travels across Europe to meet historians, journalists, politicians and local people to look for some answers.

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MB

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Girls and Boys - Sex and British Pop

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大象传媒 TWO traces British pop music over the past four decades, examining how it has reflected the changing images and social attitudes of men and women.

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This series draws on exclusive interviews with key figures from Sandie Shaw to Fatboy Slim.

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The series looks at the "girls next door of the Sixties", the "feisty females of the Eighties" and the Girl Power of the Nineties, alongside the "boys in suits of the Sixties"; beat groups; "macho heroes of the Seventies"; punks; New Romantics' New Lads and Britpop of the Nineties.

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It also explores those figures who blurred the lines of gender, from Bowie to Boy George.

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SH

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No Waste Like Home

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For the majority of people, doing one's bit for the environment means recycling empty wine bottles or old newspapers, but that's as far as it goes.

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Eco-expert Penney Poyzer is here to raise the bar. She meets some of Britain's most environmentally unfriendly families and challenges them to become more eco-aware by getting back to basics - a course of action which Penney promises will also save them money and improve their sense of well-being.

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Penney sets the households radical new rules and rations to live by, showing families how to transform their rubbish to a fraction of its mass, cut back their energy usage, and fit their homes with equipment such as solar panels, rain water collection tanks and sheep wool insulation.

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NT

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The Big Dig

The Big Dig is a new series for the daytime which takes a look at one of the fastest-growing pastimes in Britain today - allotments.

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Presented by Simon Mayo, the programme investigates the growing divide between the old-school vegetable growers and the new "allotmenteers" who are adopting the latest methods and taking a bit more of a modern approach to this time-honoured tradition.

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Filmed in Cardiff and London, the programme explores the characters behind the allotments and looks at why, in some parts of the country, waiting lists are as long as ten years for a patch.

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The programme was previously known as Dig It.

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KH

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Chinatown

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This series explores the dynamism and changes taking place in Britain's last so-called invisible community - the Chinese.

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It follows the stories of three generations of Chinese people in the UK: those who came from Hong Kong in the Sixties and Seventies; their British-born children; and recent arrivals, among them illegal immigrants from mainland China.

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Clearly, some British Chinese have settled and enjoyed great professional success; others, however, have remained isolated, working long hours and feeling increasingly alienated from society.

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The series hears from a cross-section of the Chinese community in Britain about their relationships with their adopted country, together with their aspirations and concerns for the future.

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MB