Everyman

From liberated secret security files, dissident Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya uncovers a systematic campaign to exterminate hundreds of thousands of Kurds in southern Iraq.

A network of people in Leeds offer simple hospitality to young people who have nowhere to live. It's a last resort when society is unable to provide anything more, but it's not only the young people who benefit. "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

In 1990, a retired music teacher from Hungerford began a two-month relationship with a man who had spent 13 years imprisoned next door to the electric chair in Florida. Mary Grayson wrote to Ray Clark after reading a newspaper article about Lifelines, an organisation which puts death-row prisoners in touch with people in the outside world. This film tells of their extraordinary friendship.

The Rt Rev David Hope became Bishop of London in September. In his first few months he has to tackle many of the key issues that threaten to split the Church of England. The Church still cannot decide whether to ordain women priests. This week, the General Synod will be discussing how homosexual clergy should behave. And the decade of evangelism has offended other religions. Faced with these issues, can the Church survive united?

In the old days they wore a blouse inside their swimsuits and a habit on top. They dressed up as brides and had their heads shaved. They weren't allowed to go to their mother's funeral. Using unique archive material shot by the nuns themselves as a recruitment film for the order, members and ex-members of one community reflect on the way things used to be and how they've changed.

Geel, in Belgium, is unique in psychiatric history. Since medieval times pilgrims have sought their cure at the shrine of St Dymphna, patron saint of madness. Over the years the townspeople opened their doors to the mentally ill as "boarders" - 600 years later this remarkable system of family foster care still exists. Today over 800 mentally ill people live freely in this community.

There are half a million squatters in Davao City in the southern Philippines. For six weeks last year, film-maker John Goodyer recorded their struggles to lead a normal life below the poverty line. Rosa has turned half her house into a piggery; Loma fears her brother has died in a typhoon; while Bing Bing and Bobby gamble away their meagre earnings.

The Jewish Gush Emunim settlers in Palestinian territory on the West Bank are the cause of deteriorating relations between Israel, the United States and the rest of the world. America is threatening to cut off loans if the settlements continue. This film penetrates the rhetoric of the Gush Emunim and explores the religious root of their claims. They argue that God commands them to occupy Biblical lands and that the world's salvation depends on it.

Protestant fundamentalists in the United States are waging war against America's moral decline. At Bob Jones University, students learn to defend, proclaim and obey the word of God. According to Bob Jones III, inter-racial dating is banned, women learn to submit to men, and any kind of pre-marital sexual contact is grounds for expulsion.

An examination of the lives and hopes of activist Muslims in Egypt, where a new Islamic identity is being forged.

Saints are made in Rome - but the question of saintliness, and how it is defined by the Vatican, has always been controversial. Today, at St Peter's, the Pope's contentious beatification of Monsignor Josemaria Escriva, the founder of the Roman Catholic organisation Opus Dei, upholds that tradition. Britain and Ireland have their own contenders for the sainthood, like Cardinal Newman and Matt Talbot, a Dublin alcoholic who took the pledge. But why do some candidates get there faster than others and how is sanctity decided?

Why are half a million young people in Britain determined to risk the dangers of the drug Ecstasy? The cult drug first made the headlines in 1988 when thousands of young people started taking it at "raves" in disused warehouses and old aerodromes. Its notoriety spread when several young people mysteriously died while using it. Yet experts know little about the drug, and even less about the young people who take it.

On the eve of the Earth Summit in Brazil, a look at the contrasting prospects for children in Britain and the developing world. The film explores what the future holds for one young girl from Bangladesh, as experts predict that her country's population will have doubled by the year 2025, a growth that resources will be unable to sustain.

In the concentration camp of Auschwitz, Dr Josef Mengele performed experiments on more than 3,000 twin children. Only 200 survived. Tonight's Everyman focuses on the lives of five of them. Peter Greenfeld still has nightmares every time he visits a hospital. He is convinced that his twin sister Miriam survived, and he has spent the past 25 years searching for her. Other survivors, like Vera Kriegal , have broken all contact with their twin because of memories too painful to bear.

People with profound learning disabilities are difficult to get to know. Often without language, speech or a recognisable sense of self, they sometimes present a heartbreaking challenge to those who care for them. Phoebe Caldwell has pioneered new ways of getting close to these people, and her skills are much in demand as they help them take their place in the community. This moving and sometimes disturbing film shows Phoebe at work, and raises uncomfortable questions about the value we put on personal growth and freedom for those whose abilities are so severely limited.

When Madeline Manning-Mims won her gold medal at the 1968 Mexican Olympics, she believed she was running in praise of the Lord. Next month, as an Olympic chaplain, she will be telling America's athletes that they have God on their side. She is part of the growing connection between Christianity and sport in the United States. Forty per cent of professional athletes claim to be believers, but there are those who question that faith and accuse them of merely praying to win.

Explorations of the I faith and beliefs of people in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances Livingforjason. Wendy Hayhoe is convinced of the purpose of her son Jason's life, although, at 41/2 years old, he is dying. A perfectly normal, healthy baby until he was 8 months, Jason then began to suffer a series of fits. He was eventually diagnosed as having Alpers disease, a degenerative condition affecting the brain. Supported by the staff at a children's hospice in Cambridge, Wendy and her husband Martin are preparing to face the inevitable. But this is not a film about dying. It is about the extraordinary strength, courage and unconditional love two parents give as they come to terms with their son's impending death.

The Hutterites, one of America's fastest-growing Christian sects, have rigidly maintained their traditions, dress and language for over 400 years. Originally immigrants from Central Europe, they now live in 300 communities in the US and Canada, with families that marry and reproduce among themselves - closed groups of people who are religious cousins to the Amish. But recently they have been rocked by a wave of desertions. Tonight's film follows the crisis at the Flat Willow colony in Montana, where two-thirds of the Hutterite community have become born-again Christians. Families are divided and the future is bleak as a religious dispute looks set to destroy the Hutterite way of life forever.

There are 40,000 Jews in Germany but with a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism, a low birth rate and high emigration to Israel and America, many predict a future Germany without Jews. Everyman traces the impressions of Jews, young and old, living in post-Holocaust Germany today.

When eight Oxfam volunteers went on a tour of Oxfam-supported projects in north-west India to find out how the money they raised in the UK was being spent, they found themselves questioning their western view of charity. As Oxfam celebrates its 50th anniversary, Everyman examines what direction charity should take. Must India imitate the west to succeed? Or should the west respect a country's own solutions? Producers Peter Armstrongand Anuradha Vittachi

On 16 September 1982 a force of Christian Lebanese militiamen entered two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and killed approximately 2,000 Palestinians, while their allies, the Israelis, surrounded the camps. Did the Israelis see the slaughter, and if so, did any of them try to prevent it?

Two Somali women, long resident in Liverpool, return to their homeland in the war-torn north of Somalia. Amina is searching for the mother she last saw 20 years ago; Khadege is returning to the place where she spent her early teenage years. They find a land changed beyond recognition.

Two church ministers hold sway in Boipatong, South Africa. One preaches love, the other war. In the last year, violence has torn apart their once quiet community and South Africa has see-sawed between peace and civil war. Is it time for the last battle with the forces of apartheid or is it simply time to forgive?

At the Celtic New Year, which survives as Hallowe'en, and was adopted by the Church as All Souls', Everyman explores the common British inheritance and the ways in which the deep tribal roots of these islands are still discernible today.

This week the General Synod of the Church of England debates whether women should be ordained to the priesthood. Everyman explores the vital role women played in the early Christian church.

Every five minutes, someone in Britain tries to commit suicide but survives. When Beth was 18, she took an overdose and slit her wrists. Her mother managed to get Beth to hospital in time to save her life. This programme explores the complex reactions of the family, and how they finally came to understand each other.

Karl is only 7 years old but he's been involved in stealing cars, solvent abuse and vandalism, despite efforts to keep him and the other children on his tough Newcastle upon Tyne estate out of trouble. Everyman follows him and his mother as he starts at a special school to find out whether he is the product of his environment or whether his problems are more deep-seated.

An exploration of the relationship between father and son through the stories of three men whose fathers were not there for them - either physically or emotionally. They talk with affection and understanding about the influence their father, present or absent, has had in their lives. It is not a film about blame but acceptance - suggesting that perhaps we ask the impossible of our parents in wanting them to give us everything we need.

The haunting music of Evensong has the power to move believers and non-believers alike. Dame Betty Ridley is 84, and she has been going to Evensong since she was a child. This elegiac film weaves Stanford's Magnificat and Howells's Nunc Dimittis with reminiscences and reflections on her faith.

An intimate portrait of some of the 900 miners and their families of the South Yorkshire village of Grimethorpe. On 13 October this year - "Black Tuesday" - it was announced that the colliery would have 90 days in which its fate would be decided. Three weeks later coal production stopped. Shot above and below ground during the run-up to probable closure, this film shows that, for many, loss of work will mean a loss of self-esteem in a community that's losing its reason for existence.

In one corner of Gloucestershire a number of people are preparing for Christmas. An artist is at work on a Christmas card, a group of people gather in silence in a converted cow shed, a Meals on Wheels Christmas dinner is delivered, and a community of young adults with special needs rehearse a nativity play. Each is struggling to find relevance and meaning in the midwinter festival.