Under the Sun Season 5
BBC series exploring cultures around the world.
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Under the Sun
1989BBC series exploring cultures around the world.
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Under the Sun Season 5 Full Episode Guide
China has occupied Tibet for 40 years. While the Dalai Lama advocates the country's cause on the international stage, consulting people like John Cleese, a group of exiled radicals plead for rebellions within Tibet to free their homeland. This film follows the Dalai Lama on his global travels, and talks to refugee Lhasang Tsering who fears that the non-violent approach of the Dalai Lama may not succeed. And in Tibet today the reality of Chinese occupation is revealed.
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Abdur Rahman is at the mercy of the river Bhramaputra. He depends on it for his livelihood, but once a year it threatens to kill him. Like tens of thousands of Bangladeshi fisherfolk, he lives on a narrow silt island which rises only inches above the water line. As the river swells and his silt island starts to flood, he struggles to keep his family fed and his makeshift home intact. (a Film Sixteen/ZDF production for BBCtv)
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Travellers stuck on a long-distance bus journey in India may well find themselves being entertained by peddlers and clowns. Afsar sells home-made cures and potions, but takes paracetamol for his own headaches. Shakeel offers soothing kohl for the eyes and sings Islamic songs. Hashmat is a magician, whose tricks display his dazzling sleight of hand. But behind his gaiety he hides a shameful secret. (a Film Sixteen/ZDF production for BBCtv)
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There are only 150 Mehinacu left in the world. They live in one village in the middle of the Xingu Reserve in Central Brazil. Forty years ago they were first contacted by the 'Whiteman' in the guise of Leonardo Villas-Boas, the celebrated anthropologist who established the Indian Reserve for them and neighbouring tribes. Their culture has been protected but their psychological well-being is less clear.
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At the Holy Family Golden Gloves Amateur Boxing Club in North Belfast, Catholic and Protestant boys train side by side, hoping for success and an escape from the troubled streets. But outside the club they live in a virtual apartheid, divided from their neighbours by flags, painted pavements, and an invisible boundary of fear.
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The marriage of a teenage girl to four brothers aged from 8 to 16 is not unusual among the Nyinba people. They live in a rugged and remote corner of the Nepalese Himalayas, and this form of marriage is essential to their survival. But on a personal level, it raises many problems - the age difference, sleeping arrangements, jealousy, paternity of the children. As preparations for the lavish wedding begin, the bride faces these harrowing prospects. As one of her aunts, who has five husbands, warns her: "You've got to satisfy them all - that's what causes our wrinkles."
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Sultan Issa Maigari of Cameroon used to hold the power of life and death over his one million subjects. Now his authority is ebbing away. The government won't let him raise his own taxes, the peasants are rebelling, and the royal praise-singer (equivalent of the tabloid press) has betrayed him.
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Over the past ten years something strange has been happening on the midnight streets of many Mediterranean cities. Local prostitutes have been ousted by "travestis" - illegal Brazilian immigrants. They are neither men nor women, but both - men with implants and hormone treatments, breasts and male genitals.
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Under the brutal regime of Pol Pot, more than 90% of Cambodia's artists were killed. Ballet teacher Em Theay survived, and has returned to Phnom Penh to rebuild the ballet school and retrace her pupils.
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Now that they are old enough to get married, it is time for Florence and Azikiye to go through their Nigerian tribe's time-honoured Iria ceremony. Confined in the "fattening rooms", they will be extravagantly fed, excused all housework, and instructed on the mysterious arts of womanhood. But for one of the two, it all proves too much.
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