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‘The Lost Cause will boast a monument towering above all the triumphal arches and columns of ancient Rome and more enduring than the pyramids.’
Conceived by a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1914 but not fully completed until 1970, the Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain in Georgia depicts and memorialises the Confederate Civil War leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, and is the largest carving of its kind in the world. In Graven Image, the US filmmaker Sierra Pettengill uses archival footage to document the carving’s century-spanning history. The result is deeply unsettling, revealing how the enduring dream of the Confederacy, centred around a deeply racist ideology, is laundered and repackaged from generation to generation.
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History of technology
Master cartography and mythical creatures – the world according to the Catalan Atlas
8 minutes
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Mood and emotion
A century of letters captures the emotions of life in a new city, far from home
21 minutes
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The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
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Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
7 minutes
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Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
6 minutes
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Art
Is paying with hand-drawn banknotes artistry or forgery? The knotty case of J S G Boggs
10 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Portugal stole Goa’s lands and narratives. Can they ever truly be returned?
19 minutes