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The short film The River evocatively adapts the US spoken-word poet Anis Mojgani’s performance of ‘To Where the Trees Grow Tall’ from his book In the Pockets of Small Gods (2018). Mojgani invokes a surreal scene of confusion, mystery and casual conversations between newly deceased strangers in a piece that envisions its listeners in their coffins, ‘clanging down the river, with all the other coffins in the water of the next world’. The US filmmaker Kristian Melom pairs this performance with split-screen images of the poet navigating a cityscape and a journey down a serenely flowing river. Through Mojgani’s words and Melom’s images, death – like life – is rendered as at once mundane and deeply enigmatic.
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Biology
Journey deep into the Philippine forest in search of the world’s largest, rarest eagle
95 minutes
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Art
What does an AI make of what it sees in a contemporary art museum?
15 minutes
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Personality
Wesley wants to solve the rooftop mystery – but does he have what it takes?
14 minutes
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History of ideas
Tantra is, and was, a subversive philosophy of feminine power
19 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
From roaring fire and molten glass an artist creates a healing ritual
13 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Producing food while restoring the planet – a glimpse of farming in the future
7 minutes
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Archaeology
Ancient Greek sculptures were colourful. Why does the white marble ideal persist?
6 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
Yo-Yo Ma performs a work for cello in the woods, accompanied by a birdsong chorus
4 minutes
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Art
‘Long Live Degenerate Art’ – how a Surrealist group in Cairo defied repression in 1938
4 minutes