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- He dreams of the summit of the biblical mountain. The place where, according to legend, Noah's Ark stranded. Little Erhan Ceven once wants to take over his uncle's job as a mountain guide at Ararat. Whether the 12-year-old nomadic boy is up to the task depends on whether he manages the 5165 metres to the summit this year. From his perspective, the film tells the story of a mountain adventure that has cost the lives of more than 100 people to date. Erhan belongs to the Jelali tribe. For centuries the Kurdish nomads have been wandering with their sheep on the slopes of the biblical mountain along the borders to Armenia and Iran. The Turks call them the "Guardians of Ararat". Western expedition troops hired them for decades as porters and leaders in search of Noah's Ark. Among them Jim Irving, the "Moonwalker" and Apollo 15 astronaut. The ark legend brought jobs, bread for Erhan's whole clan. Then the civil war broke out. Kurdish guerrilla fighters of the PKK used the Ararat as a retreat. The Turkish military declared it a restricted zone. The mountain has only been accessible again since 2001. Even today mountaineers need a special permit from the military and the authorities in the capital Ankara. Only occasionally do they dare to climb the biblical mountain again. The nomads in particular are suffering as a result. Now they hope that things will get better again to give little Erhan and the other children a perspective on Ararat.
- They came from the East. Remains of Tatar hordes of mercenaries of the Mongol chan, highwaymen and highwaymen, but also runaway serfs of Russian princes, unfree, peasants who escaped the servitude of the Muscovite Empire. Early on, this mob of outlaws knew a common goal: to fight the Tsar's and Nogaier-Chane's henchmen in the south of the country. Their territories were feared. Hardly a caravan of traders came unscathed through the wild borderland in the Caucasus, the steppes on the Don or through the river delta of the Dnieper. From the Turktatars they adopted the name "Kazak" and already in the 15th century they caused terror and turmoil in the country. Nevertheless, they were never a people - THE Cossacks - and never will be. That belongs in the realm of legends. This film illuminates the myth of the wild warriors of the Caucasus and the Don.
- The film leads into one of Turkey's most fascinating landscapes - the highlands of Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, 150 kilometres southeast of Ankara. He accompanies the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomaios I on a journey to Mustafapasa, a former Greek rock town, and gives an insight into the everyday life of the Cappadocian shepherd Ali Sirli, who uses an old Byzantine cave church as a sheepfold. He is one of the last Cappadocians to inhabit a fairy fireplace in Uchisar and therefore has trouble with the authorities of his village Uchisar.
- The sabre-shaped peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the last outpost of the Russian giant empire. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". Every year, tectonic forces push the Pacific Plate ten centimetres below the edge of Eurasia on a broad front. Daily earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. Grey-yellow sulphur mud, poisonous vapours and black ash - it seethes in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Where the continental plate of Africa slides under the Eurasian one, volcanism developed. Little by little, mountains of fire rose from the sea and formed islands, which today lie like a seven star off the north coast of Sicily: Lipari, Vulcano, Stromboli, Salina, Panarea, Alicudi and Filicudi. Volcanism shapes the unique landscape of this Aeolian archipelago, fire mountains determine the life of the inhabitants. Some are mute and extinct, others still active like Stromboli or Vulcano. The first settlers arrived early, attracted by the fertile soil. Greeks and Romans lived on the Aeolian islands, traded worldwide with obsidian, the valuable volcanic glass rock. Today, geoscientists, archaeologists and biologists conduct research in this region on the edge of Europe.
- Every year, hundreds of people die on the "waiting list" for a replacement organ that promises a second chance. In legal terms, transplantation medicine is still in a kind of grey area, has "supply problems" and is discredited. In addition to the ethical aspect, the main difference is the clarification of the question: "When is man dead? For centuries, cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest were reliable indicators. With the progressive development of medical technology, this point in time shifts into a vacuum of columns of numbers on the computer printout that is hardly comprehensible to the layman. The terminal station is the so-called brain death diagnostics, a procedure that is supposed to determine the complete failure of any brain current activity - today's criterion for the irreversible state of death. The film tries to trace the paths of those affected: "reborn", waiting and those who have decided on the second chance of others.
- 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.
- Andalusia, the legendary "Al-Andalus", is considered a bridge between the Occident and the Orient, the cradle of fiery flamenco and passionate fiestas. Spain's southernmost province attracts millions of visitors every year to the beautiful beaches of the Costa Tropical and the Costa de la Luz, to the rugged mountains of the Sierra Nevada and to the fairytale sultan's palaces of Cordoba and Granada. In the south of Andalusia, the legendary palace "al-qal'a al hamra", the Red Citadel, towers over the legendary royal city of Granada. In mid-June, when the Granadinos celebrate their legendary Flamenco Festival within the walls of the Alhambra, we go on a discovery into the fairytale world of the largest Moorish fortress on earth. The Alhambra is regarded as the epitome of Arab architecture and if the legendary Sultan's Library of Cordoba could tell this "eighth wonder of the world" stories, it would hardly be enough to tell about the 700-year heyday of its rulers. In the winding streets of Granada's old Moorish quarter Albaycin beats the heart of the legendary royal city on the Rio Darro. Here in the Bazaar still much Arab blood flows and nowhere else in Spain live so many Gitanos. Thanks to the influence of Arabs and Gitanos, the Albaicín, Granada's oldest district, is considered the cradle of the Andalusian soul: flamenco. In the world of the Gitanos we go on discovery in the bullring of Granada with a concert of the probably most legendary flamenco virtuoso of our time: Paco de Lucia.
- 1995–TV Episode11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.
- 1995–TV EpisodeSaffron, the precious flower and spice of love, once gave it its name. For almost 700 years, the small Central Anatolian town of Safranbolu was the hub of the trade caravans on the Silk Road. Situated almost 200 kilometres north of the present-day Turkish capital of Ankara, Safranbolu was considered early by the Ottomans to be the "back garden of the Topkapi palace" along the Bosporus. Its inhabitants, Turks, Greeks and Jews, were famous for their craftsmanship. For centuries, blacksmiths, potters and tanners dominated the everyday scene. Many worked as bakers or saddlers at the Sultan's Court in Istanbul, some even rose to high government officers and, like the legendary Izzet Mehmet Pasha, became the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. This brought prosperity and the necessary resources for magnificent city villas. Two Grand Viziers donated mosques, provided infrastructure, urban planning and, with the construction of the first clock tower in the Ottoman Empire, also for the commemoration of a new era. The blessings of modernity, wide arterial roads, large commercial buildings and industrial complexes never reached the small town. It was simply forgotten. More than half a century later, it was realized that this preserved a unique jewel of original Anatolian urban culture. Since 1994, this urban jewel has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A late fortune that gave Safranbolu a second life as an "echo of the Oriental Middle Ages" in the midst of Turkish modernity.
- 1995–TV EpisodeHidden behind year-round blizzards and a month-long polar night, Wrangel Island lies just a few nautical miles from the Arctic pack ice limit. It is the last untouched natural paradise northwest of the Bering Strait. At winter temperatures as low as - 40 °C, more than 1000 polar bears, musk oxen and reindeer live alongside walrus colonies, seal families, arctic foxes, wolves and countless smaller endemic animal and plant species on a 7,608 km² Noah's Ark from the last ice age. Fossil finds prove that on Wrangel Island the mammoth grazed in the Arctic tundra until almost 3500 years ago. More recently, Russians, Britons, Canadians and Americans took turns occupying the island. Finally, on August 8, 1926, Soviet troops established the settlement "Ushakovskoe" on the south coast of the island, where almost 100 fishermen, seals and whalers lived until the end of the Soviet Union. Today the island serves as a base for a handful of gamekeepers of the "Wrangel Biosphere Reserve". It was not until the "Iron Curtain" lifted at the eastern end of the world that a few polar explorers, biologists and zoologists accompanied by Russians were allowed to visit the almost untouched paradise in the Chukshen Sea 600 km beyond the Arctic Circle. In 2004, UNESCO declared the area around Wrangel Island a World Heritage Site. Today the island is considered the last completely untouched biotope for polar bears, here they get their young and have no natural enemies. But the times in which the polar bar was only confronted with the challenges of its ecosystem are long gone. Global warming is making life difficult for the most powerful predator in the North and seriously threatening its habitat.
- 1995–TV EpisodeOne may be astonished to stand in front of the pyramids of Egypt and wonder how mortals could usually transport stone blocks weighing tons and stack them up to form Pharaonic tombs. But to turn an entire mountain peak into a tomb borders on foolhardiness and is unique in world history. On the southern flank of the Taurus Mountains, at 2,159 metres above sea level, buried under almost 200,000 cubic metres of scree and rock, archaeologists suspect the burial chamber of the legendary ruler who once brought the myths of the ancient Persian empires into harmony with the pantheon and lifestyle of the Greeks and Romans. Since the beginning of the exploration of the Ancient Orient, the monumental tomb of the self-proclaimed God King Antiochios I. Theos on the summit of Mount Nemrut near the provincial capital Adiyaman in today's southeast Turkey has been one of the wonders of the ancient world. Since 1987 the UNESCO leads the cult place on the mountain including surrounding countryside as world cultural heritage. Today, the tomb is an icon of all those mysteries of the past that have so far been able to elude their secrets from research. Dozens of stone sculptures up to 8 metres high on the two terraces below the artificially raised mountain top are considered by many to be the answer of the Near East to the stone idols of the Easter Islands. They are the last witnesses of the "Commagenic Kingdom", an enigmatic ruling dynasty that once emerged from the world empires of Alexander the Great and the Persian King Darius I and resisted the power and territorial claims of the Roman Caesars for generations.
- 1995–TV EpisodeTo the Buryats, the native people of Central Siberia, the "Baygal nuur" or the "rich lake", is a magical place, the cradle and soul of their people. The rest of the world simply sees Lake Baikal as a most magnificent body of water. Located in the heart of Siberia, on Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia, it holds one fifth of all the liquid freshwater reserves on Earth. Baikal is the deepest and oldest lake in the world, its expanse of water covering a region larger than Belgium. To biologists, the Baikal region is the Galapagos archipelago of Russia, one of the most species-rich freshwater biotopes on our planet. When Russians speak of the "Osero Baikal", they mean the "great Siberian lake" which extends over a surface area of 31,722 km² at an altitude of 455 m between the south Siberian mountain ranges along Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia. At 25 million years old and a depth of 1642 meters, it is both the oldest and the deepest lake on Earth, and stretches for 673 km from the south-west to the north-west, measuring 82 km at its widest point.
- 1995–TV EpisodeThe vast beech forests that have protected and nourished our ancestors from the Black Sea to the Atlantic, from Sicily to southern Sweden since the last Ice Age have almost disappeared. A single tree species once dominated large parts of the European continent. Beech trees are indestructible, almost resistant to any kind of climate change. Rain, snow, ice and even intense heat can do little harm to them. An intact beech forest is a closed ecosystem, a kind of superorganism that renews itself and creates habitat for many fellow inhabitants. Since 2011 UNESCO has listed the five German old forest stands "Grumsiner Forst" in Brandenburg, the "Kellerwald-Edersee National Park" in Hesse, the "Jasmund National Park" on Rügen, the "Serrahner Buchenwald" in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the "Hainich National Park" in Thuringia together with the Carpathian primeval forests of Slovakia and the Ukraine under the cumbersome designation "Buchenurwälder in den Karpaten und alte Buchenwälder in Deutschland" (beech primeval forests in the Carpathians and old beech forests in Germany) as a common world natural heritage site. This is nothing more - but also nothing less than a shaky insurance policy for a biological World Heritage Site as a puzzle building block for an intact environment of future generations. A kind of bet on the future of a gene database that will help to maintain the basis beyond economic efficiency and legislative periods that has ensured the survival of post-glacial people for the last 10,000 years. Preserving and protecting this heritage is a decision that requires foresight, but perhaps only "common sense".
- 1995–TV EpisodeUntil the end of 2002, one of the last European borders between Sicily and Hammerfest separates the "customs territory" of Hamburg's free port from the old town. Built in 1888 as the largest warehouse complex in the world, the Speicherstadt with its neighbouring "Chile House" has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since June 2015. The fact that at least the architectural substance of this ensemble, which is unique in the world, has been preserved, is ensured by the rigid requirements of the Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and, since June 2015, the label "UNESCO World Cultural Heritage". The facades remain red, the roofs green, even at the first Speicherstadt Hotel, which opened in February 2014. One may call the scenery-strong evocation of a working world of yesterday success or, following the history of the Hanseatic merchant spirit, "fine profit".
- Cold and scurvy were often the only companions. Shootings and impenetrable wilderness did the rest. More than 30,000 knights of fortune fought their way through the wilderness of British Columbia in the middle of the 19th century. Many failed long before their destination - the fairy tale goldfields of the Cariboo Mountains in northern Canada. Even today, fortune seekers are still searching for the "Bonanza", the fabulously rich gold vein, in the mountains of British Columbia. Around the legendary gold digger towns of Barkerville, Cache Creek and Lillooet, some of the dropouts have settled down and are digging for nuggets with rusty shovel excavators in the overburden. Most, however, lose their entire fortune, return to their homelands destitute or remain in the wilderness as modern trappers. The film visits some of the gold seekers and tells the story of their hope for fast wealth in the far north of Canada.
- The dragon is the oldest sign of Chinese imperial dynasties. The conquerors Yandi and Huang made the dragon their sign of power. Since then, the Chinese have been regarded as sons of the dragon, China as the land of the dragon. So what could be more natural than to start the Chinese New Year with a "festival in honour of the dragon"? The Hong Kong Chinese began the New Year celebrations already under the British flag with the legendary "dragon boat race". We mingle with the audience in Aberdeen, the old port of the metropolis of millions, search in Buddhist and Taoist temples for the coveted fortune horoscopes for the New Year and let us predict the future in the quarter of the fortune tellers. The film is an insight into a bizarre Far Eastern way of celebrating the New Year.
- Disused Royal Air Force fighter jets thunder across the evening sky outside Capetown towards Table Mountains. They are Lightnings, Hunter and Buccaneer planes, names that only airforce pilots and a few flight madmen have said so far. But this community is getting bigger and bigger. For five years Mike Beachy Head, a former test pilot of the South African Air Force, has dedicated himself to this expensive and dangerous hobby and founded "Thundercity", a quite noisy company. Mike and his crew buy decommissioned fighter jets, completely refit them and offer solvent air tourists supersonic flights in the sky above the South African cape. "There are people looking for the last kick," says Mike, "people from Hollywood or rich Russians. Sometimes it's just normal people who scratch the last cent together just to have a good outbreak of sweat. Many get out and think bungee jumping is kid stuff." The film tries to get to the bottom of this - admittedly charming - madness.
- "It was an old man fishing alone in a small boat in the Gulf Stream, and he had now gone out eighty-four days in a row without catching a fish - " The Cuban fishing nest Cojima once served Ernest Hemingway as the scene of his fable about the old man and the fish of his life. The old man still exists today, Capitan Gregorio Fuentes, now 103 years old and stone old. He still remembers the "wild times with Senior Hemingway, as if it had been yesterday". Much on the Caribbean island reminds of the great narrator: his room in the old town hotel "Ambos Mundos" on Havana's Calle Obispo, today a museum; the "Bodeguita Del Medio", where Hemingway is still supposed to hold the "Daiquiri" record today (a hot brew of rum, lime juice, sugar and ice), his finca "San Francisco de Paula" south of Havana and and and and - Meanwhile the Cuban tourism authorities have opened the island in front of the Gulf of Mexico for travellers and praise their picturesque national parks, but above all the legendary capital like warm rolls: "Havana - let the word melt like the aroma of a good cigar on your tongue, treat yourself to the pleasure of the dream - " The film is a ramble through these "dreams", through the picturesque idyll of the "Hemingway'schen" fishing villages and ends with four older gentlemen earning their "pocket money" on the street: Musicians who have never heard the name Wim Wenders before and can only wonder about the hype about Cuban rhythms in the West: "We've had this all day and we've had it since we can think.
- They pray in the glow of fire, live according to the laws of Avesta, an ancient scripture and worship a god named Mazda. Their prophet died more than 2500 years ago and even today they claim that our entire world view is based on his teachings. Their religious founder, the ancient Persian scholar and priest Zoroaster, better known in the West as Zarathustra, will return as soon as mankind is ready for it. Most of the nearly 100,000 followers of this doctrine live in the third largest city of today's Iran, in Kerman near Tehran. For the first time since the "Islamic Revolution" of 1979, police and guardians of morals tolerated the celebrations of the Zoroastrian fires in Kerman and the Armenians in Tehran in 2000 and permitted recordings of the bizarre celebrations.
- Rodney Fox is one of Australia's most famous shark researchers, probably also because he survived a frontal attack of a "Great White" - at that time a sensation for the world press - and only a few years later shot the underwater shots for Steven Spielberg's hit movie "The Great White Shark". Rodney and his son William live in Glenelg, a small fishing nest on the Victoria coast in southern Australia. The waters along the rocky coast, along with the Barrier Reef in the north, are considered a paradise for fur seals and thus the hunting ground of the "Great White". For many the voracious sea robber is still a killer, a man-eating beast. William Fox has been offering so-called "Shark Watching Dives" for several years, dives for adventurous trendsetters who approach the predatory primitive animal in steel cages. GO EAST accompanies the shark researcher on one of his tours along the Australian Victoria coast. The game with fear begins .
- The largest picture book in the world has been opened up in the highlands of the Peruvian Andes: gigantic figures and lines carved into the rainless pampas by the indigenous coastal people of the Nazcas more than 1000 years ago. Ever since Erich von Däneken, the Munchausen of the space age, declared the Nazca lines an airport for extraterrestrials, Nazca has been almost as well known as the Empire State Building. The gigantic "geoglyphs", earth drawings, on more than 1000 square kilometers of dust-dry desert crust have survived thanks to the rainless climate until today. Caught in a web of lines and surfaces, a whole bestiary sits here: monkeys, spiders, dog-like four-legged creatures, reptiles and giant fish; the smallest is just 26 metres long, some giants even measure several hundred metres. There are still no clear indications what exactly the monstrous creatures may have meant for the Nazca culture. But one thing is clear: the whole area was a gigantic necropolis, a necropolis of the prehistoric Nacza - priests from the catchment area of the Rio Grande. More recent speculations suggest that the images served the priests as a gigantic astronomical calendar for predicting the solstice, sowing and harvesting times. "GO EAST" approaches the mystery of the giants of the Peruvian pampas and provides insights into the highly developed "cosmos" of a culture that dominated large parts of the South American world long before the Inca princes.
- For almost half a century Hong Kong has been considered THE stronghold of the "EASTERN", films which captivate by the fact that a more or less talented kung fu expert struggles as an actor in action films. Over the years, the Hong Kong Chinese have developed an incredible range of bizarre aid techniques to free the actors from the laws of gravity. Success proves them right. The so-called "cookbook" of the younger directors uses these techniques, combines it with the plot of the script and the meal is ready. Jumps spanning 20 meters across the screen, preferably choreographed in pirhouettes and salti, have long been nothing unusual for the filmmakers of the Far Eastern metropolis. Today, modern computer-aided editing and animation techniques help to present the supernatural in an earthly way. "GO EAST" provides insights into the "making-off" of Hong Kong film, into the work on the nightly film sets along the Victoria Quay and - today more important than ever - into the digital trick studios of the Chinese film industry.
- Mentawai - a magic word and the best kept secret of a conspired community of surf surfers until a few years ago. This refers to a palm paradise on the coasts of the four Mentawai islands off West Sumatra. Until a few years ago, Hawaii or the West Australian coast were considered the "Mecca" of surfing, but today the four small Sumatra islands are considered the "high C" of surfing. On Siberut, the largest of the four Mentawai islands, lives the people of the Sakkudai, rule forest inhabitants. They are animists, believers in nature, whose shamans still ascribe their own soul to every piece of nature - whether plant or animal. Monkeys even have the reputation to accompany the souls of their ancestors to the afterlife. Since the island was "discovered" a few years ago by some surf freaks, this last enclave of a paradise on earth is about to strand in the glossy brochures of international tourism multinationals. GO EAST accompanies some surfers on a breathtaking journey through the island world off West Sumatra and illuminates their "balancing act" between gentle adventure tourism and the knowledge that this could be the beginning of the end of one of the last paradises.