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While many might consider smell to be one of our less vital senses, it is nonetheless an integral part of most people’s conscious experience, entwining with our memories, giving us warnings of nearby dangers and subtly shaping our subjective world at any given moment. Anosmia – named for the condition it explores – bounces between interviews with a wide range of people who either lost or were born without the ability to smell. Using vivid, odour-evoking visuals, the US filmmaker Jacob LaMendola cleverly delivers a nuanced look at the experience of smell by probing the minds of those without it.
Director: Jacob LaMendola
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Personality
Why one man spent 15 years in ‘self-imposed’ island exile
7 minutes
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Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
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Nature and landscape
Take a serene hike through an ancient forest, inspired by a Miyazaki masterpiece
6 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor
16 minutes
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Art
Inside the unique creative space where ‘outsider’ artists find their form
14 minutes
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Gender
When aggression is viewed as brilliance, it hurts women in science, and science itself
5 minutes
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Religion
From God’s shoes to satellites in heaven – children weigh in on religion
8 minutes