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Lift is a documentary with an unusually simple premise: what happens when a filmmaker sets up a camera in an average London tower block lift? The results are engrossing: as the project progresses, residents begin to confide in the filmmaker in remarkably personal and often amusing ways. With humour and candour, this film by the UK director Marc Isaacs touches on questions of trust, the way the camera can transform a situation, and the usually hidden lives of everyday people.
Director: Marc Isaacs
Producer: Belinda Giles
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Human rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes
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Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
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Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
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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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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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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes