Video Documentaries

In this First Civilizations - Religion episode 2 discover the secret to the stability and cohesion of Ancient Egypt—religion. When people share a core set of beliefs, they are more likely to identify as one. That was true for the first civilizations and it's just as true today. A look at the first human civilizations, which emerged in the Near East, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, the Andes, and Mesoamerica. All subsequent civilizations have been derived from these original six foundational civilizations. First Civilizations Having lived as mobile foragers for 99 percent of our time on Earth, why did humans set out on the road to civilization? How did they create villages, towns, cities, and states, and establish the blueprint for the modern world? First Civilizations identifies four cornerstones of civilization - war, religion, cities and trade - and explores each in the context of a different location, from Mexico, Guatemala, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, India, and Pakistan, to Oman, Mor...

John McCarthy examines the art of faith - the art of religions, journeying across the globe in search of great temples, churches and sacred sites. The three hour-long films, presented and narrated by the broadcaster John McCarthy, visit many of the greatest and most significant religious buildings of the world. Each hour-long episode is a high-definition visual experience. Divine in form, sacred buildings are amongst the most beautiful and enduring achievements of mankind. Art of Faith travels the world to visit the great buildings, exploring how the passions and complexities of religious beliefs have been expressed in architecture. Looking back over the last 3000 years the series provides an insight into how we have celebrated faith through art. With contributions from architects, scholars and worshippers the series explains the buildings' genesis, laying down the brush strokes of the sites' design, whilst looking at the shared elements and contrasts between the religions and ...

Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art. Yet there are fundamental problems, which all religions share, in making god or gods visible in the human world. How, and at what cost, do you make the unseen, seen? Beneath all works of religious art there always lies conflict and risk. And the result is often iconoclasm – the destruction of works of art – which Mary believes can lead on to new forms of creativity. Mary Beard visits sacred sites across the world to examine the contested boundaries between religion and art. She goes to the temple of Angkor Wat and to the Tintoretto Crucifixion in Venice, to Buddhist caves of Ajanta and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, as she seeks to break down the conventions that make some religions of the image, while others are seen as hostile to artistic representation. She shows how all faiths (and their artists) face the same ...

East to West is an exciting seven part series charting the birth of a flourishing civilisation in the Near and Middle East, and its dynamic influence on the West. Examining a largely untold story with a fresh perspective, the series follows the spread of civilisation across the globe from the first cities of Mesopotamia. Episode 2 - The Triumph of Monotheism [video width="720" height="400" mp4="https://video-clump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/East-to-West-The-Triumph-of-Monotheism-ep.2.mp4"][/video]   Today one god is worshipped by two thirds of humanity. It is the culmination of an extraordinary story by which a single deity emerged from a pantheon of thousands in the crucible of religious ideas that was the ancient Middle East. In this episode we trace the birth, development and explosion of the religion of Abraham and Moses, from its very beginnings in Judaism to its triumph as Christianity within the Roman Empire. Also we look at the earliest form of...