The World About Us

Heinz Sielmann, naturalist and film-maker, travels the world photographing animals. Over the years he has worked with many leading naturalists, all dedicated to the study and understanding of animal behaviour. His film of woodpeckers is regarded as a classic and earned him a world-wide reputation.

The happy story - almost a fairy story - of four children, two girls and two boys, of mixed English, Hindu, Pathan and Tibetan parentage, played out against the exotic backdrop of the snow-peaked Himalayas: children whose broken lives would never have been mended but for the loving kindness of one man, a Scotsman, Dr John Anderson Graham, who planted a seed which grew into a Lollipop Tree.

This film from France, La Vie en Mourcment, might have been called 'the running, jumping, and anything-but-standing-still film.' The animal world has an infinite variety of methods of locomotion, from the mysterious creeping of an amoeba to the graceful leap of an impala.

Rain falling on the high, dry Chyulu Hills of Kenya filters through the lava soil until it emerges as cool, running springs at Mzima. Zebra and elephant visit the oasis to drink, but this unusual African portrait is more concerned with the animals that live at the springs. It is a strange world in which frogs climb trees, birds swim, turtle and crocodile feed side by side, and the lumbering hippopotamus takes on a new grace in the unique underwater photography of Alan Root.

Tierra del Fuego - Land of Fire - is the land hard by Cape Horn. For thousands of years no one wanted it but the Indians-until the 19th-century explorers came looking for untapped gold, and the missionaries for untouched souls. Many kinds of men - Indians, explorers, sheep farmers, gold diggers, missionaries and oil men have struggled to wring a living out of the 'loneliest, most back-of-beyond spot in the world.' But men have clung on, anchored themselves against the wind and turned the barrenness into a home. Words by Norman Nicholson spoken by Hugh Griffith

Every living thing to be found in a stream, pond, marsh or bog is specially designed for its own way of life, which in turn plays its part in a complex food web. Close-up camera techniques reveal some of the secrets of freshwater life which the human eye cannot normally see.

Scattered in a lost corner of the Indian Ocean, once the haunt of Pirates and their treasure ships, lie 93 islands, among them Aldabra the Amirantes and the Seychelles. Legend and superstition abound in this isolated and forgotten British outpost. It has even been suggested that the Garden of Eden was there. In the past year more people have visited these islands than ever before, some of them on adventurous luxury cruises. In July an international airport opens. Can the treasures of unspoiled beaches and unique wild life survive the new invasion, or must the Pearls of the Indian Ocean inevitably become just another playground?

If everyone in Britain went down to the sea at the same time, we would all have only three feet of coastline each. Operation Seashore is a light-hearted look at those few yards of ours. Anthony Smith took a boat, a group of friends and six months off to quest for the odd, the diverting and the picturesque: a gannet colony here and stories of salvage there, of invasion and of cannibalism.

Isolated in the heart of bustling Singapore four troupes of wild 'crab-eating' macaques share the freedom of the city's Botanic Gardens with hundreds of visitors. Monkeys and orchids side by side, and only the orchids are captive. Fed by passers-by, cursed by hard-worked gardeners, the animals provide, for the discerning eye, more than a glimpse of the monkey way of life.

This is the first film for ten years to be shot in Burma by a British cameraman. Specially made to coincide with the London visit of the Burmese National Dance Company, it shows many famous places in Burma from the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon to the floating islands of Lake Inle and the rebuilt walls of Mandalay.

Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test his controversial theory that the Ancient Egyptians could have reached the Americas thousands of years before Columbus. He decided to build a boat from materials that would have been available to the Pharaohs. It was constructed of papyrus reeds and scientists were quick to tell him that it would become waterlogged and sink. It looked as though they might be right, for after sailing 2,700 miles Ra was battered by a storm and abandoned by its seven-man crew. But Heyerdahl was determined to try again.

Could the Indian cultures of Mexico and Peru - with their pyramids, hieroglyphic writing, mummification and colossal stone statues - have received their inspiration from the similar cultures in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia? Having failed once in his attempt to prove that a papyrus boat built on the pattern of the Pharaohs could cross the Atlantic, Thor Heyerdahl set sail again a year later from the coast of Morocco. Heyerdahl's second voyage in his new reed boat Ra II is a true adventure story as epic, significant and exciting as his celebrated Kon-Tiki expedition.

David Shepherd's life is a classic success story. Once rejected as a student without talent, he has since become one of England's most successful painters. Widely travelled, his jet-age routine is dominated by his passion for giants - in particular elephants and steam locomotives. The international demand for his African wildlife paintings has enabled this tycoon

Siberia first became notorious as a place of exile; now the Russians have discovered there a wealth of oil, diamonds, gold and minerals. But all these treasures are largely inaccessible. Siberia is huge - it takes up nearly a tenth of all the land on earth -much of it in the 'permafrost' belt where the earth is always frozen solid down to hundreds of feet below the surface. Douglas Botting is one of the few people to have seen Siberia from the far north - where the tribes-men herd their reindeer across a vast desert of snow - to the industries and research establishments further south. This is the new Siberia: the living's still hard but the wages are high and some people now go there willingly.

A denuded crab turned highway-man; an octopus coaxed into playing touch; jawfish which try to swallow each other whole; green turtles fighting a losing battle against the gourmet's love for turtle soup. These are some of the sea citizens of the Bahaman reefs that a portrait photographer Harry Pederson films every holiday. For the last 20 years between water-ski-ing, swimming, sailing and enjoying the colourful day- and nightlife of these tropical islands Harry and his family have been exploring the underwater world of the coral reefs.

The shaggy musk ox recently came close to sharing the fate of its prehistoric contemporaries the sabre-toothed tiger and the mammoth. It had been hunted ruthlessly and with no thought for tomorrow by the Eskimo and others struggling to survive on the bleak and barren Arctic tundra. Just in time, a spectacular operation using icebreakers and helicopters was mounted to catch some of the musk oxen and take them to a place of safety.

Chimpanzees can appear quite human through their actions and expressions, which are often similar to ours. Why, then, have they not become even more human than they are? In this fascinating film a team of scientists from the University of Amsterdam study the social structure of wild chimpanzees in Guinea and conduct some experiments with them. What, for example, will be the chimps' reaction to a stuffed leopard? The answer is provided in one of the most remarkable sequences ever shown in this series.

In the midst of a vast snowfield, the dark speck of a man, squat, fur-muffled, motionless. Lilliaxi, the Eskimo hunter, crouches beside a seal's breathing-hole. Around him lies an endless empty land, harsh but beautiful. This is the old picture of the Canadian North. But now ice-breaker and oil rig, prospector and aeroplane have shattered the old, cold dream, and igloos are things of the past.

Cousteau and the Calypso crew accept a dangerous mission. They investigate the wrecks of 30 Japanese ships destroyed by an American bombing mission in Truk Lagoon over 25 years ago. The wrecks lie more than 250 feet below the sea, and at this depth divers are in danger of nitrogen narcosis - 'rapture of the deep.'

Cowboys and Indians, gold-miners and pioneers, skyscraper cities and ghost towns, snow-capped mountains and rich valleys: this is 'the last frontier.' In May the Royal Family joined British Columbia's celebrations commemorating the country's first hundred years as the sixth province of Canada. But despite progress and modern cities, today much of the country is still as the pioneers found it. One can fly from Vancouver's whirling social life and join a packhorse trip through the mountains and valleys where wild life still roams free and where each season brings a new blaze of colour.

The Everglades in Florida is the haunt of the alligator and a wealth of water birds, fish, snakes, deer and other creatures who all depend on water. People want to live here too. Now this unique river is running dry and Tony Soper travelled 2,000 miles in Southern Florida to find out why.

'The Ganges is the river of India. It rises in an ice cave in the Himalayas, held sacred by the Hindus. It is like being born in a monastery. It dies in the Indian Ocean, after a journey of 1,540 miles. Over the years it has become not only a river but a way of life.' Film-maker Yavar Abbas returns after years in the West to the country of his birth, and follows the Ganges from its source to the sea.

On the crumbling lava rocks of the Galapagos Islands, where the temperature reaches 120° F before noon, rows of scaly 'dragons' sun themselves. The crew of the Calypso follows these marine iguanas on their feeding journeys under the sea, and Captain Cousteau visits a German friend who has trained iguanas to feed from his hand.

When George Borrow lived with the Gypsies over 100 years ago, Petulengro told him: "Life is very sweet brother; who would wish to die?" To find out if life was still sweet among English Gypsies, a group of young men whose connections allowed them to penetrate Gypsy family life in a way never before achieved, lived with and filmed two Gypsy families over a period of months in Kent and Essex during 1970 and 1971. The enquirers found a striking similarity between the present condition of Gypsies and that of nomadic peoples all over the world who have come into direct collision with modern societies. Are the only two solutions integration or destruction?

In the Antarctic spring 30,000 Adelie penguins return to Cape Crozier for the breeding season. This is the dramatic story of these birds and the hazards that they face from storms, blizzards, skuas, predatory leopard seals, and even hooligan penguins.

The Middle Kingdom has passed away. It was the name used by the Chinese Emperors to describe their ancient land, a country situated between Heaven and Earth. Just as the Middle Kingdom is no more, so in mainland China the exotic customs, rites and age-old pageantry have gone. They still live, however, in the group of islands we know as Hong Kong.

"I continue non-stop because I am happy at sea and perhaps because I want to save my soul". This cryptic explanation left many questions unanswered when ace French sailor Bernard Moitessier dropped out of the first round-the-world, non-stop yacht race in 1969. Having already circumnavigated the globe, Moitessier felt compelled to ignore £5,000 prize-money and sail towards a destination which was, to say the least - uncertain. The reasons behind his strange 'compulsion' (echoed also, perhaps, in the mysterious disappearance of Donald Crowhurst during the same race) can easily be interpreted as 'sea-fever.' But this account of Moitessier's voyage - filmed by the mariner himself - reveals that there is much more to the psychology of long-distance sailing than we might at first imagine.

A hundred sea miles north of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean there are two idyllic atolls called Nuguria. Hermann Schlenker, a German explorer and film maker, spent a summer with the islanders. His film shows these gentle, primitive people in their last year before they learn to read and discover the world beyond their islands.

Kifaru is the Swahili name for the Black Rhinoceros which is reputed to be one of Africa's most dangerous animals. For six years Canadian biologist John Goddard studied wild rhinos at close quarters, camping with his wife and two small daughters. This film is an account of Goddard's work as well as a record of a most unusual family routine.

Who would expect to find deep beneath their feet an ice-making machine, a telephone exchange, a waterfall, two frozen turbots, and a Prime Minister's bedroom? This is the dark nether-world in which the Under London Expedition takes a light-hearted look at the strange, complex labyrinth of tunnels and sewers, railways and shelters, vaults, crypts and caves, which are as remote to the world above as the farthest reaches of Patagonia - and as full of surprises.

Last year Brazil's dreamers and builders launched a four-year programme to conquer the vast mysterious Amazon basin. Mechanised armies of bulldozers are slashing red-earth tracks through virgin rain-forest in an attempt to occupy the hinterland, but deep in the forest the Indians are fighting back with bows and arrows. Construction of Brazil's Great North Road, from Manaos to Georgetown, has been brought to a standstill by one of the most hostile tribes ever encountered. A BBC expedition by mini-hover-craft traces the route of the proposed jungle highway, from the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean, and uncovers the strange story of a massacre in the forest.

With places called Death Valley, Arsenic Spring and Coffin Canyon, it's surprising that men and animals survive there. But there are Basque shepherds, mustangers, prospectors, and even a ballet school. And some who are there just for its solitude and beauty.

The first film ever to have been made in a Harem. Harem means sanctuary, protection. It means a sacred place... a forbidden place. It grew out of the desert tribal raids and to stop women being stolen. "In them maidens best and fairest Then which of your Lord's bounties will ye twain deny? Whom no man nor djinn has deflowered before them."

Once fur traders nearly caused their extinction; more recently there have been new threats to sea otters. Nevertheless these appealing creatures have staged a remarkable comeback. Cousteau's divers have filmed their behaviour above and below the surface.