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Filmed in Ireland, on some of the world’s most violent coastlines, Dark Side of the Lens profiles a surf photographer who takes to the waves looking for ‘little glimpses of magic’ to record for posterity. The job may sound glamourous, but it’s a dangerous one. To be a surf photographer, you have to fend off near-drownings amidst cliff-battering waves in frigid waters. The film uses these risky aspects of surf photography as a metaphor for the trade-offs that a life of creativity requires.
Director: Mickey Smith
Producers: Helen Hayden, Revie Verran
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Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
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Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
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Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
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Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes
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Wellbeing
Children of the Rwandan genocide face a unique stigma 30 years later
20 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes