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Make a donationLike any ecosystem, the human microbiome requires diversity to thrive. However, widespread antibiotic treatments have killed off as many as half the important bacteria in our guts. In this animated short, Martin Blaser, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, explains why focusing on bacterial diversity is a health imperative.
Director: Flora Lichtman
You might assume that a creature incapable of feeding itself would have a one-way ticket off the food chain and into the dustbin of extinction. But some ant species with mandibles that are ill-equipped for eating have developed a clever – if not quite mutual – means of finding sustenance and perpetuating. Known as ‘kidnapper’ or ‘slave-making’ ants, these parasitic creatures raid the nests of other ant species, capture their young and carry them to their home nest. Using scents to keep the new arrivals oblivious to the fact that they’re far from home, the kidnappers deploy their captors to tend to their young, forage for their food, and even chew and feed it to them in a process known as trophallaxis. Captured in stunning high definition by the science documentary series Deep Look, this short video tracks red kidnapper ants in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California as they raid, kidnap and brainwash the young from a nearby black ant species’ nest. You can learn more about this video at KQED Science.
The award-winning pianist Kris Bowers and his grandfather Horace Bowers, Sr were born on opposite sides of the United States, and some 60 years apart. Growing up in Los Angeles, Kris aspired to be a musician and composer from a young age – and had the natural talent to match. Raised in Florida amid Jim Crow, Horace wanted, above all else, to get out of the South, hitchhiking West as a teenager, where he would later start a successful small business in California. But, as the short documentary A Concerto Is a Conversation explores, what they share – including personal struggles with race and discrimination, ambitions to rise above the circumstances of their birth, and indistinguishable spirits – transcends the years between them. Featuring intimate cinematography from the Canadian director Ben Proudfoot and a stirring score provided by Kris Bowers himself, the film tracks the musical rhythms of a conversation between loved ones, and across the generations, with grace and heart.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
The US writer, farmer and environmental activist Wendell Berry is a quintessential voice of the rural American South, with his poetry – very much in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson – often reflecting on the sublime and spiritual facets of nature. In one of his best-known poems, ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ (2012), a narrator, despairing at the state of the human world, finds relief in a journey into nature, being among ‘wild things/who do not tax their lives with forethought/of grief’. Part of an animated poetry series from the radio and podcast programme On Being, this adaptation features Berry himself narrating in a rich, rustic baritone, and lush watercolour imagery from the UK animator Katy Wang and the UK illustrator Charlotte Ager.
Directors: Katy Wang, Charlotte Ager
Writer and Narrator: Wendell Berry
Living together in sunny Santa Monica, California, in an apartment full of bright lights, colourful trinkets and candy, sisters Patte and Randa Starr are committed to having a happy childhood together – as septuagenarians. It might seem like a peculiar lifestyle choice, but once the two detail their traumatic early years, it’s easy to understand why they’ve opted for carefree lives of fun, guided by the creed: ‘Whoever wants it more, we’ll do it, and we don’t say no to each other.’ Despite the heavy topics addressed, the US filmmakers Bridey Elliott and Beth Einhorn’s portrait of the pair manages to be as charming as its subjects, matching the sisters’ irrepressible spirits with an appropriately flamboyant and eccentric visual style of its own.
Like any ecosystem, the human microbiome requires diversity to thrive. However, widespread antibiotic treatments have killed off as many as half the important bacteria in our guts. In this animated short, Martin Blaser, director of the NYU Human Microbiome Program, explains why focusing on bacterial diversity is a health imperative.
Director: Flora Lichtman