Documentary

• IMAX-The Magic of Flight | Blu Ray | (29/08/2011) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Take a technological thrill ride faster, higher, and wilder than modern science or even your imagination! Relive the historical first flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903, then soar with the world-famous Blue Angels as they defy the laws of gravity with their most breathtaking maneuvers.Narrated by Tom Selleck, The Magic of Flight highlights and salutes a variety of modern aircraft, the people who fly them, and the human potential of training and performance.Ever wonder how did they do that? The Making of 'The Magic of Flight' (42 min.) puts you behind the camera and provides further insights into the world of aviation and the techniques used to get some of the most amazing airborne footage ever captured on film. Shot using high-definition cameras, The Making of 'The Magic of Flight' captures the enthusiasm and excitement of the crew who made this groundbreaking film.

• Shoah (and 4 Films After Shoah) | Blu Ray | (30/01/2015) from £32.95   |  Saving you £37.04 (112.41%)   |  RRP £69.99

  To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realise that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfil that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 40s but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years tracking people down, cajoling them into talking, asking them questions they didn't want to face. When soldiers refuse to appear on film, Lanzmann sneaks cameras in. When people are on the verge of breaking down and can't answer any more questions, Lanzmann asks anyway. He gives names to the victims--driving through a town that was predominantly Jewish before Hitler's time, a local points out which Jews owned what. Lanzmann travels the world, speaking to workers in Poland, survivors in Israel, officers in Germany. He is not a detached interviewer; his probings are deeply personal. One man farmed the land upon which Treblinka was built. "Didn't the screams bother you?" Lanzmann asks. When the farmer seems to brush the issues aside with a smile, Lanzmann's fury is noticeable. "Didn't all this bother you?" he demands angrily, only to be told, "When my neighbour cuts his thumb, I don't feel hurt." The responses, the details are difficult to hear but critical nonetheless. Shoahtells the story of the most horrifying event of the 20th century, not chronologically and not with historical detail, but in an even more important way: person by person. --Jenny Brown

• The First World War In Colour | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  World War I in Colour is a Channel 5 documentary (6 x 50-minute episodes) made with the cooperation of the Imperial War Museum, designed to make the Great War come alive for a 21st-century audience. The events of 1914-18 are authoritatively narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who presents the military and political overview, while interviews with historians add different perspectives. The human cost is conveyed by moving interviews with the now very elderly survivors, and by extracts from letters and memoirs. All aspects of the war, on land, sea and air are covered in separate programmes. In theory the series continues the heritage of ITV's The Second World War in Colour (1999) and Britain at War in Colour (2000), and with 75 per cent of the material never shown on television before there is every reason to watch. The crucial difference between this and the WWII programmes is that the Great War wasn't filmed in colour, and the footage has been computer colourised. The programme-makers argue the conflict itself was in colour--but however realistic the digital processing, it still feels inauthentic and historically a distortion. Worse still is their destroying the original compositions by cropping the top and bottom of the material to fit widescreen TVs. The result is a potentially excellent series badly presented, best watched with the colour turned off. Even then it cannot compete with the BBC's 26-part The Great War (1964), still one of the finest documentaries ever made. On the DVD: World War I in Colour is presented on two discs with three episodes on each disc. The modern interview clips look and sound immaculate, while the historical footage varies from very poor to quite good. Even so, the picture resolution is not helped by discarding a third of the original images and stretching what remains to widescreen. The budget spent on colourisation would have been better used to restore the often very scratchy black-and-white film, and to pay for an orchestra to rerecord the score, which is realised with a clichéd palette of preset electronic samples. Both DVDs reproduce the same general background facts, timeline and 20 biographies as static text screens. Disc One has a 15-minute behind-the-scenes feature in which producer Philip Nugus and director Jonathan Martin justify the colourisation. Disc Two offers Tactics & Strategy, which at 52 minutes amounts to a whole seventh programme, mixing archive footage with new computer graphics to illustrate in detail 13 specific aspects of the conflict. Presented in 4:3 ratio this is the most creative, original and rewarding part of the entire package. --Gary S Dalkin

• Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (Repackaged) | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £5.69   |  Saving you £10.30 (64.40%)   |  RRP £15.99

  David Attenborough shares his passion for fossils and fulfils one of his most enduring ambitions: a global fossil hunt. He looks at the huge role now played by computer models and animations in determining how these incredible creatures looked and behaved. Also, why after domainating the Earth for 160 million years, did the dinosaurs become extinct?

• Creation Stories | Blu Ray | (06/11/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Krays - The Final Word | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  There's a neat irony in the title of The Krays: The Final Word, a comprehensive documentary about the iconic East End gangsters first shown on television in 2001. By interviewing Reggie Kray on his deathbed, and through extensive interviews with former criminal associates, detectives and lawyers, the producers might reasonably claim to have come up with the definitive version of the story. But we're a long way from hearing the last word on the subject. If anything, the legend of the Kray twins just keeps on growing. Thirty years since they were convicted and with both brothers now dead (Ronnie died in 1995, Reggie 12 days after this interview was filmed in 2000), they continue to fascinate an equally divided public. For all the depth of its content, the documentary hardly touches on the prison years, during which there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they continued to exert real influence, their life sentences putting no end to their financial "business". This is a rich and compelling documentary, which makes a good stab at analysing the twins' relationship and background. The first-hand observations are invaluable. The circumstances of the Kray murders clearly still ring with genuine emotional resonance for those who were either involved or responsible for the subsequent judicial process. The black and white archive footage is imbued with a strong resonance of nostalgia. And while there's a certain level of voyeurism in watching the wasted Reggie give his final interview, a lack of repentance makes it difficult to feel any real sympathy. This might be Reggie's final word, but there are enough holes in his deathbed "confession" to guarantee the long-term future of the twins' status in criminal folklore. On the DVD: With its 16:9 picture format and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack, The Krays: the Final Word offers the high quality you'd expect from a modern television documentary. The extra features are for die-hard Kray fanatics only. The biographies of the main participants are certainly useful and the interactive East End map takes you step by step through the high points of the twins' domestic and criminal activities. The Order of Service from Reggie's funeral is just a little over the top.--Piers Ford

• Gardens Of The National Trust | DVD | (09/06/2008) from £8.39   |  Saving you £10.60 (55.80%)   |  RRP £18.99

  Includes Volumes 1 to 3 Of This Fantastic Series! Volume 1: The gardens featured in this DVD are impressive examples of the history of horticulture and a vital aspect of our heritage. Featured gardens include: Killerton Barrington Court Peckover House Dunham Massey Crayside and Sheffield Park. Volume 2: The gardens featured in this DVD are impressive examples of the history of horticulture and a vital aspect of our heritage. Featured gardens include Mount Stewart Knighthayes Biddulph Grange Hardwick Hall Anglesey Abbey and Studley Royal. Volume 3: A journey through some of the finest and most inspiring of the National Trust's huge collection of gardens. Featured gardens include Stowe Landscape Garden Buckinghamshire; Blickling Hall Norfolk; Hinton Ampner Garden Hampshire; Rowallane County Down; Powis Castle Wales; Stourhead Wiltshire

• Forces of Nature | Blu Ray | (01/08/2016) from £14.81   |  Saving you £10.18 (68.74%)   |  RRP £24.99

  A bold and breathtaking series taking viewers on a tour of our planet to explain what lies beneath Earth's startling beauty and ultimately what makes our world work. In a perfect combination of accessible science and cutting-edge filming techniques, Forces of Nature explores what makes our world so vibrant and diverse. This ambitious series takes viewers on a global tour in four themed episodes, answering the simplest questions about the complex forces that shape our planet. Why is water blue? How can a shape defy gravity? Why do bees make hexagonal honeycombs? And how do these things affect our own lives? Discover what lies beneath Earth's startling beauty as we reveal the secrets of our cosmos and the natural forces that govern everything within it.

• The Miner's Campaign Tapes | DVD | (30/11/2009) from £11.00   |  Saving you £1.99 (18.09%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In 1984 a group of independent film and video makers decided to show their support for the miners' strike using the tools they had available: their cameras. On the picket lines at the marches and in the soup kitchens they recorded the testimonies of striking miners their wives and supporters in a fight against the anti-strike propaganda dominating the mainstream media. The videos that they produced are now available for the first time since the close of that devastating dispute. A testament to solidarity and activism the Tapes tackle issues which continue to occupy us today: the right to demonstrate police tactics political double-speak the role of the media. They are a crucial document of a cataclysmic episode of British history. Part 1 - Not Just Tea and Sandwiches (Subtitle is: Miners' Wives Speak Out) - 12 mins Part 2 - The Coal Board's Butchery (Subtitle is: No Pit is Safe) - 14 mins Part 3 - Solidarity (Subtitle is: Trade Unions Support the Miners) - 13 mins Part 4 - Straight Speaking (Subtitle is: The Facts Behind the Miners' Strike) - 12 mins Part 5 - The Lie Machine (Subtitle is: The Media and the Miners' Strike) - 16 mins Part 6 - Only Doing Their Job? About police tactics and behaviour - 25 mins

• Central Bazaar | DVD | (25/05/2009) from £10.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (81.89%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Two decades before the Big Brother phenomenon overtook the world's television screens filmmaker Steve Dwoskin made this film depicting the events that ensued when a group of random people were isolated within the confines one house. Dwoskin was in there too with his camera waiting for things to see what would unfold. The first week he didn't have filmrolls in his camera. After the first week everyone was beginning to get disorientated and drunk and things started to happen...

• Ghostwatch | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £7.25   |  Saving you £5.74 (79.17%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The BBC broadcast 'GHOSTWATCH' on the 31st of October 1992. It seemed to be a live broadcast which was a cross between Crimewatch and the movie Poltergeist. The programme terrified Britain and caused outrage in the press. It's legacy lives on, cited as an inspiration for 'The Blair Witch Project' and Derren Brown's ''The Sance'. GHOSTWATCH is regarded as a classic of the genre and remains as relevant, as terrifying and as inspirational today. Sarah Greene and Craig Charles report from a reputedly haunted North London council house for the outside broadcast, whilst Michael Parkinson and Mike Smith stay in the warmth and 'safety' of a BBC studio. The Early family are allegedly being harrassed by the ghost 'Pipes'- so named as his banging and crashing were initially attributed to bad plumbing. After a deliberately slow start the crescendo sees children speaking in tongues, Sarah Greene sent to her doom, and Michael Parkinson possessed by an evil spirit. Although pure fiction, the masterly combination of great scripting, intuitive direction and perfect casting made the supernatural pastiche appear frighteningly real. Despite being part of BBC Drama's Screen One series, the presence of Michael Parkinson convinced thousands of people it was real. The drama caused an uproar and was banned from repeat transmission for over a decade.

• Robbie Coltrane's B Road Britain | DVD | (24/09/2007) from £20.94   |  Saving you £2.04 (11.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Robbie Coltrane travels from from the most northerly tip of Scotland to the extreme south of England looking at the places people and traditions that makes Britain what it is today.

• Coal House At War | DVD | (07/12/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Coal House At War This fascinating living history series returns to Stack Square transporting three families back to 1944 and the Second World War. Having given up their comfortable lives they are faced with the many hardships that war presented. The families experience all aspects of life as it was in 1944. The men work long punishing days down the coalmine followed by tending the Stack Square shared allotment as people were encouraged to 'Dig for Victory' to overcome food shortages. They also have to endure the arduous Home Guard training each getting a taste of army life and discipline. The women have to juggle their relentless household chores with compulsory work at the munitions factory undertaking a variety of different tasks for the war effort. The children meanwhile have their own worries with daily doses of cod liver oil and the ever present threat that their pet rabbits may be served up for dinner. Joined by the Bevin Boys young lads sent by the Government to work the mines the families struggle to cope with strict regimes rationing air raids and blackout fines but rediscover the strong community spirit that war evoked.

• The Penguin King (DVD) | DVD | (19/11/2012) from £3.48   |  Saving you £12.51 (359.48%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Filmed in spectacular 3D, join one King Penguin on his incredible adventure from awkward adolescence to fatherhood!

• Visions Of Light | DVD | (27/03/2006) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Experience the dazzling story of cinematography as seen through the lenses of the world's greatest filmmakers and captured in classic scenes from over 125 immortal movies. Discover Gordon Willis's secrets of lighting Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Greg Toland's contributions to Citizen Kane. Hear William Fraker on filming Rosemary's Baby; Vittorio Storaro on his use of colour and light in Apocalypse Now; and much much more. From black and white to Te

• Gaudi's Barcelona | DVD | (13/09/2010) from £22.93   |  Saving you £-5.94 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Antoni Gaudi was an eccentric dandy and a devout Catholic. The campaign to persuade the Vatican to make him a saint still goes on. But his legacy of extraordinary colourful and simply weird buildings has made him perhaps the world's best known architect. All this despite the fact that his work was limited to one country - Spain - and almost to one city Barcelona. Every year millions of tourists flock to see the mysterious neo-Gothic outline of the Casa Battlo the rollercoaster roof of the Pedrera or the still unfinished Sagrada Familia. The strange contours of the Gaudi monuments bring joy to young and old alike. This DVD tells the life story of Gaudi from his unremarkable origins through a doomed infatuation with a divorcee to the tragic street accident which ended his life. Along the way we visit the much-loved masterpieces and hear how they came about as well as peeking at some of the lesser-known but still wonderful buildings not on the usual tourist trail. The infectious enthusiasm of narrator Robert Elms is married with some stunning photography - brilliant pictures celebrating the brilliant artwork of this peculiar genius.

• Spies of Warsaw | DVD | (21/01/2013) from £5.98   |  Saving you £14.01 (234.28%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in the opening days of World War II, war hero and military attach Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier is drawn into a world of espionage and danger -- and sex and romance -- in a story spanning Europe.

• Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen | DVD | (27/02/2023) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Rick Stein's French Odyssey | DVD | (01/10/2007) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Inspired by his gastronomic journey through the idyllic waterways of Southern France Rick Stein's French Odyssey explores French culinary tradition - perfect for aspiring cooks everywhere. Rick's culinary tour on an ancient barge takes him along the Canal du Midi from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. His final destination is a little restaurant near Marseilles where several years ago he had the best seafood lunch imaginable. Along the way he samples regional foods from country stew in Castelsarrasin to the Montaine Noire hams of Castelnaudary. Further south he stops over in the Languedoc wine region and samples local delicacies before heading towards Marseilles via the Canal du Rhone.

• Ballet Boys | DVD | (10/11/2014) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.95%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Lukas, Syvert and Torgeir love to dance, but have they got what it takes to be the best? This warm-hearted, inspiring film introduces us to three very different young friends who are all passionate about ballet. As the boys near the end of high school, they must decide whether they have the commitment and skill to make a career in dance. In a field dominated by girls, the boys have forged a strong friendship, brilliantly captured here, which will be challenged by the choices they make at this vital stage in their lives.