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- 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.
- Every year, hundreds of people die on the "waiting list" for a replacement organ that promises a second chance. In legal terms, transplantation medicine is still in a kind of grey area, has "supply problems" and is discredited. In addition to the ethical aspect, the main difference is the clarification of the question: "When is man dead? For centuries, cardiac arrest and respiratory arrest were reliable indicators. With the progressive development of medical technology, this point in time shifts into a vacuum of columns of numbers on the computer printout that is hardly comprehensible to the layman. The terminal station is the so-called brain death diagnostics, a procedure that is supposed to determine the complete failure of any brain current activity - today's criterion for the irreversible state of death. The film tries to trace the paths of those affected: "reborn", waiting and those who have decided on the second chance of others.
- They came from the East. Remains of Tatar hordes of mercenaries of the Mongol chan, highwaymen and highwaymen, but also runaway serfs of Russian princes, unfree, peasants who escaped the servitude of the Muscovite Empire. Early on, this mob of outlaws knew a common goal: to fight the Tsar's and Nogaier-Chane's henchmen in the south of the country. Their territories were feared. Hardly a caravan of traders came unscathed through the wild borderland in the Caucasus, the steppes on the Don or through the river delta of the Dnieper. From the Turktatars they adopted the name "Kazak" and already in the 15th century they caused terror and turmoil in the country. Nevertheless, they were never a people - THE Cossacks - and never will be. That belongs in the realm of legends. This film illuminates the myth of the wild warriors of the Caucasus and the Don.
- The film leads into one of Turkey's most fascinating landscapes - the highlands of Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, 150 kilometres southeast of Ankara. He accompanies the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomaios I on a journey to Mustafapasa, a former Greek rock town, and gives an insight into the everyday life of the Cappadocian shepherd Ali Sirli, who uses an old Byzantine cave church as a sheepfold. He is one of the last Cappadocians to inhabit a fairy fireplace in Uchisar and therefore has trouble with the authorities of his village Uchisar.
- He dreams of the summit of the biblical mountain. The place where, according to legend, Noah's Ark stranded. Little Erhan Ceven once wants to take over his uncle's job as a mountain guide at Ararat. Whether the 12-year-old nomadic boy is up to the task depends on whether he manages the 5165 metres to the summit this year. From his perspective, the film tells the story of a mountain adventure that has cost the lives of more than 100 people to date. Erhan belongs to the Jelali tribe. For centuries the Kurdish nomads have been wandering with their sheep on the slopes of the biblical mountain along the borders to Armenia and Iran. The Turks call them the "Guardians of Ararat". Western expedition troops hired them for decades as porters and leaders in search of Noah's Ark. Among them Jim Irving, the "Moonwalker" and Apollo 15 astronaut. The ark legend brought jobs, bread for Erhan's whole clan. Then the civil war broke out. Kurdish guerrilla fighters of the PKK used the Ararat as a retreat. The Turkish military declared it a restricted zone. The mountain has only been accessible again since 2001. Even today mountaineers need a special permit from the military and the authorities in the capital Ankara. Only occasionally do they dare to climb the biblical mountain again. The nomads in particular are suffering as a result. Now they hope that things will get better again to give little Erhan and the other children a perspective on Ararat.
- The sabre-shaped peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the last outpost of the Russian giant empire. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". Every year, tectonic forces push the Pacific Plate ten centimetres below the edge of Eurasia on a broad front. Daily earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. Grey-yellow sulphur mud, poisonous vapours and black ash - it seethes in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Where the continental plate of Africa slides under the Eurasian one, volcanism developed. Little by little, mountains of fire rose from the sea and formed islands, which today lie like a seven star off the north coast of Sicily: Lipari, Vulcano, Stromboli, Salina, Panarea, Alicudi and Filicudi. Volcanism shapes the unique landscape of this Aeolian archipelago, fire mountains determine the life of the inhabitants. Some are mute and extinct, others still active like Stromboli or Vulcano. The first settlers arrived early, attracted by the fertile soil. Greeks and Romans lived on the Aeolian islands, traded worldwide with obsidian, the valuable volcanic glass rock. Today, geoscientists, archaeologists and biologists conduct research in this region on the edge of Europe.
- Andalusia, the legendary "Al-Andalus", is considered a bridge between the Occident and the Orient, the cradle of fiery flamenco and passionate fiestas. Spain's southernmost province attracts millions of visitors every year to the beautiful beaches of the Costa Tropical and the Costa de la Luz, to the rugged mountains of the Sierra Nevada and to the fairytale sultan's palaces of Cordoba and Granada. In the south of Andalusia, the legendary palace "al-qal'a al hamra", the Red Citadel, towers over the legendary royal city of Granada. In mid-June, when the Granadinos celebrate their legendary Flamenco Festival within the walls of the Alhambra, we go on a discovery into the fairytale world of the largest Moorish fortress on earth. The Alhambra is regarded as the epitome of Arab architecture and if the legendary Sultan's Library of Cordoba could tell this "eighth wonder of the world" stories, it would hardly be enough to tell about the 700-year heyday of its rulers. In the winding streets of Granada's old Moorish quarter Albaycin beats the heart of the legendary royal city on the Rio Darro. Here in the Bazaar still much Arab blood flows and nowhere else in Spain live so many Gitanos. Thanks to the influence of Arabs and Gitanos, the Albaicín, Granada's oldest district, is considered the cradle of the Andalusian soul: flamenco. In the world of the Gitanos we go on discovery in the bullring of Granada with a concert of the probably most legendary flamenco virtuoso of our time: Paco de Lucia.
- 1995–TV Episode11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.
- 1995–TV EpisodeSaffron, the precious flower and spice of love, once gave it its name. For almost 700 years, the small Central Anatolian town of Safranbolu was the hub of the trade caravans on the Silk Road. Situated almost 200 kilometres north of the present-day Turkish capital of Ankara, Safranbolu was considered early by the Ottomans to be the "back garden of the Topkapi palace" along the Bosporus. Its inhabitants, Turks, Greeks and Jews, were famous for their craftsmanship. For centuries, blacksmiths, potters and tanners dominated the everyday scene. Many worked as bakers or saddlers at the Sultan's Court in Istanbul, some even rose to high government officers and, like the legendary Izzet Mehmet Pasha, became the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. This brought prosperity and the necessary resources for magnificent city villas. Two Grand Viziers donated mosques, provided infrastructure, urban planning and, with the construction of the first clock tower in the Ottoman Empire, also for the commemoration of a new era. The blessings of modernity, wide arterial roads, large commercial buildings and industrial complexes never reached the small town. It was simply forgotten. More than half a century later, it was realized that this preserved a unique jewel of original Anatolian urban culture. Since 1994, this urban jewel has been protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A late fortune that gave Safranbolu a second life as an "echo of the Oriental Middle Ages" in the midst of Turkish modernity.
- 1995–TV EpisodeHidden behind year-round blizzards and a month-long polar night, Wrangel Island lies just a few nautical miles from the Arctic pack ice limit. It is the last untouched natural paradise northwest of the Bering Strait. At winter temperatures as low as - 40 °C, more than 1000 polar bears, musk oxen and reindeer live alongside walrus colonies, seal families, arctic foxes, wolves and countless smaller endemic animal and plant species on a 7,608 km² Noah's Ark from the last ice age. Fossil finds prove that on Wrangel Island the mammoth grazed in the Arctic tundra until almost 3500 years ago. More recently, Russians, Britons, Canadians and Americans took turns occupying the island. Finally, on August 8, 1926, Soviet troops established the settlement "Ushakovskoe" on the south coast of the island, where almost 100 fishermen, seals and whalers lived until the end of the Soviet Union. Today the island serves as a base for a handful of gamekeepers of the "Wrangel Biosphere Reserve". It was not until the "Iron Curtain" lifted at the eastern end of the world that a few polar explorers, biologists and zoologists accompanied by Russians were allowed to visit the almost untouched paradise in the Chukshen Sea 600 km beyond the Arctic Circle. In 2004, UNESCO declared the area around Wrangel Island a World Heritage Site. Today the island is considered the last completely untouched biotope for polar bears, here they get their young and have no natural enemies. But the times in which the polar bar was only confronted with the challenges of its ecosystem are long gone. Global warming is making life difficult for the most powerful predator in the North and seriously threatening its habitat.
- 1995–TV EpisodeOne may be astonished to stand in front of the pyramids of Egypt and wonder how mortals could usually transport stone blocks weighing tons and stack them up to form Pharaonic tombs. But to turn an entire mountain peak into a tomb borders on foolhardiness and is unique in world history. On the southern flank of the Taurus Mountains, at 2,159 metres above sea level, buried under almost 200,000 cubic metres of scree and rock, archaeologists suspect the burial chamber of the legendary ruler who once brought the myths of the ancient Persian empires into harmony with the pantheon and lifestyle of the Greeks and Romans. Since the beginning of the exploration of the Ancient Orient, the monumental tomb of the self-proclaimed God King Antiochios I. Theos on the summit of Mount Nemrut near the provincial capital Adiyaman in today's southeast Turkey has been one of the wonders of the ancient world. Since 1987 the UNESCO leads the cult place on the mountain including surrounding countryside as world cultural heritage. Today, the tomb is an icon of all those mysteries of the past that have so far been able to elude their secrets from research. Dozens of stone sculptures up to 8 metres high on the two terraces below the artificially raised mountain top are considered by many to be the answer of the Near East to the stone idols of the Easter Islands. They are the last witnesses of the "Commagenic Kingdom", an enigmatic ruling dynasty that once emerged from the world empires of Alexander the Great and the Persian King Darius I and resisted the power and territorial claims of the Roman Caesars for generations.
- 1995–TV EpisodeTo the Buryats, the native people of Central Siberia, the "Baygal nuur" or the "rich lake", is a magical place, the cradle and soul of their people. The rest of the world simply sees Lake Baikal as a most magnificent body of water. Located in the heart of Siberia, on Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia, it holds one fifth of all the liquid freshwater reserves on Earth. Baikal is the deepest and oldest lake in the world, its expanse of water covering a region larger than Belgium. To biologists, the Baikal region is the Galapagos archipelago of Russia, one of the most species-rich freshwater biotopes on our planet. When Russians speak of the "Osero Baikal", they mean the "great Siberian lake" which extends over a surface area of 31,722 km² at an altitude of 455 m between the south Siberian mountain ranges along Russia's south-eastern border with Mongolia. At 25 million years old and a depth of 1642 meters, it is both the oldest and the deepest lake on Earth, and stretches for 673 km from the south-west to the north-west, measuring 82 km at its widest point.
- 1995–TV EpisodeThe vast beech forests that have protected and nourished our ancestors from the Black Sea to the Atlantic, from Sicily to southern Sweden since the last Ice Age have almost disappeared. A single tree species once dominated large parts of the European continent. Beech trees are indestructible, almost resistant to any kind of climate change. Rain, snow, ice and even intense heat can do little harm to them. An intact beech forest is a closed ecosystem, a kind of superorganism that renews itself and creates habitat for many fellow inhabitants. Since 2011 UNESCO has listed the five German old forest stands "Grumsiner Forst" in Brandenburg, the "Kellerwald-Edersee National Park" in Hesse, the "Jasmund National Park" on Rügen, the "Serrahner Buchenwald" in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the "Hainich National Park" in Thuringia together with the Carpathian primeval forests of Slovakia and the Ukraine under the cumbersome designation "Buchenurwälder in den Karpaten und alte Buchenwälder in Deutschland" (beech primeval forests in the Carpathians and old beech forests in Germany) as a common world natural heritage site. This is nothing more - but also nothing less than a shaky insurance policy for a biological World Heritage Site as a puzzle building block for an intact environment of future generations. A kind of bet on the future of a gene database that will help to maintain the basis beyond economic efficiency and legislative periods that has ensured the survival of post-glacial people for the last 10,000 years. Preserving and protecting this heritage is a decision that requires foresight, but perhaps only "common sense".
- 1995–TV EpisodeUntil the end of 2002, one of the last European borders between Sicily and Hammerfest separates the "customs territory" of Hamburg's free port from the old town. Built in 1888 as the largest warehouse complex in the world, the Speicherstadt with its neighbouring "Chile House" has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since June 2015. The fact that at least the architectural substance of this ensemble, which is unique in the world, has been preserved, is ensured by the rigid requirements of the Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and, since June 2015, the label "UNESCO World Cultural Heritage". The facades remain red, the roofs green, even at the first Speicherstadt Hotel, which opened in February 2014. One may call the scenery-strong evocation of a working world of yesterday success or, following the history of the Hanseatic merchant spirit, "fine profit".
- Cold and scurvy were often the only companions. Shootings and impenetrable wilderness did the rest. More than 30,000 knights of fortune fought their way through the wilderness of British Columbia in the middle of the 19th century. Many failed long before their destination - the fairy tale goldfields of the Cariboo Mountains in northern Canada. Even today, fortune seekers are still searching for the "Bonanza", the fabulously rich gold vein, in the mountains of British Columbia. Around the legendary gold digger towns of Barkerville, Cache Creek and Lillooet, some of the dropouts have settled down and are digging for nuggets with rusty shovel excavators in the overburden. Most, however, lose their entire fortune, return to their homelands destitute or remain in the wilderness as modern trappers. The film visits some of the gold seekers and tells the story of their hope for fast wealth in the far north of Canada.
- The dragon is the oldest sign of Chinese imperial dynasties. The conquerors Yandi and Huang made the dragon their sign of power. Since then, the Chinese have been regarded as sons of the dragon, China as the land of the dragon. So what could be more natural than to start the Chinese New Year with a "festival in honour of the dragon"? The Hong Kong Chinese began the New Year celebrations already under the British flag with the legendary "dragon boat race". We mingle with the audience in Aberdeen, the old port of the metropolis of millions, search in Buddhist and Taoist temples for the coveted fortune horoscopes for the New Year and let us predict the future in the quarter of the fortune tellers. The film is an insight into a bizarre Far Eastern way of celebrating the New Year.
- Disused Royal Air Force fighter jets thunder across the evening sky outside Capetown towards Table Mountains. They are Lightnings, Hunter and Buccaneer planes, names that only airforce pilots and a few flight madmen have said so far. But this community is getting bigger and bigger. For five years Mike Beachy Head, a former test pilot of the South African Air Force, has dedicated himself to this expensive and dangerous hobby and founded "Thundercity", a quite noisy company. Mike and his crew buy decommissioned fighter jets, completely refit them and offer solvent air tourists supersonic flights in the sky above the South African cape. "There are people looking for the last kick," says Mike, "people from Hollywood or rich Russians. Sometimes it's just normal people who scratch the last cent together just to have a good outbreak of sweat. Many get out and think bungee jumping is kid stuff." The film tries to get to the bottom of this - admittedly charming - madness.
- "It was an old man fishing alone in a small boat in the Gulf Stream, and he had now gone out eighty-four days in a row without catching a fish - " The Cuban fishing nest Cojima once served Ernest Hemingway as the scene of his fable about the old man and the fish of his life. The old man still exists today, Capitan Gregorio Fuentes, now 103 years old and stone old. He still remembers the "wild times with Senior Hemingway, as if it had been yesterday". Much on the Caribbean island reminds of the great narrator: his room in the old town hotel "Ambos Mundos" on Havana's Calle Obispo, today a museum; the "Bodeguita Del Medio", where Hemingway is still supposed to hold the "Daiquiri" record today (a hot brew of rum, lime juice, sugar and ice), his finca "San Francisco de Paula" south of Havana and and and and - Meanwhile the Cuban tourism authorities have opened the island in front of the Gulf of Mexico for travellers and praise their picturesque national parks, but above all the legendary capital like warm rolls: "Havana - let the word melt like the aroma of a good cigar on your tongue, treat yourself to the pleasure of the dream - " The film is a ramble through these "dreams", through the picturesque idyll of the "Hemingway'schen" fishing villages and ends with four older gentlemen earning their "pocket money" on the street: Musicians who have never heard the name Wim Wenders before and can only wonder about the hype about Cuban rhythms in the West: "We've had this all day and we've had it since we can think.
- They pray in the glow of fire, live according to the laws of Avesta, an ancient scripture and worship a god named Mazda. Their prophet died more than 2500 years ago and even today they claim that our entire world view is based on his teachings. Their religious founder, the ancient Persian scholar and priest Zoroaster, better known in the West as Zarathustra, will return as soon as mankind is ready for it. Most of the nearly 100,000 followers of this doctrine live in the third largest city of today's Iran, in Kerman near Tehran. For the first time since the "Islamic Revolution" of 1979, police and guardians of morals tolerated the celebrations of the Zoroastrian fires in Kerman and the Armenians in Tehran in 2000 and permitted recordings of the bizarre celebrations.
- Rodney Fox is one of Australia's most famous shark researchers, probably also because he survived a frontal attack of a "Great White" - at that time a sensation for the world press - and only a few years later shot the underwater shots for Steven Spielberg's hit movie "The Great White Shark". Rodney and his son William live in Glenelg, a small fishing nest on the Victoria coast in southern Australia. The waters along the rocky coast, along with the Barrier Reef in the north, are considered a paradise for fur seals and thus the hunting ground of the "Great White". For many the voracious sea robber is still a killer, a man-eating beast. William Fox has been offering so-called "Shark Watching Dives" for several years, dives for adventurous trendsetters who approach the predatory primitive animal in steel cages. GO EAST accompanies the shark researcher on one of his tours along the Australian Victoria coast. The game with fear begins .
- The largest picture book in the world has been opened up in the highlands of the Peruvian Andes: gigantic figures and lines carved into the rainless pampas by the indigenous coastal people of the Nazcas more than 1000 years ago. Ever since Erich von Däneken, the Munchausen of the space age, declared the Nazca lines an airport for extraterrestrials, Nazca has been almost as well known as the Empire State Building. The gigantic "geoglyphs", earth drawings, on more than 1000 square kilometers of dust-dry desert crust have survived thanks to the rainless climate until today. Caught in a web of lines and surfaces, a whole bestiary sits here: monkeys, spiders, dog-like four-legged creatures, reptiles and giant fish; the smallest is just 26 metres long, some giants even measure several hundred metres. There are still no clear indications what exactly the monstrous creatures may have meant for the Nazca culture. But one thing is clear: the whole area was a gigantic necropolis, a necropolis of the prehistoric Nacza - priests from the catchment area of the Rio Grande. More recent speculations suggest that the images served the priests as a gigantic astronomical calendar for predicting the solstice, sowing and harvesting times. "GO EAST" approaches the mystery of the giants of the Peruvian pampas and provides insights into the highly developed "cosmos" of a culture that dominated large parts of the South American world long before the Inca princes.
- For almost half a century Hong Kong has been considered THE stronghold of the "EASTERN", films which captivate by the fact that a more or less talented kung fu expert struggles as an actor in action films. Over the years, the Hong Kong Chinese have developed an incredible range of bizarre aid techniques to free the actors from the laws of gravity. Success proves them right. The so-called "cookbook" of the younger directors uses these techniques, combines it with the plot of the script and the meal is ready. Jumps spanning 20 meters across the screen, preferably choreographed in pirhouettes and salti, have long been nothing unusual for the filmmakers of the Far Eastern metropolis. Today, modern computer-aided editing and animation techniques help to present the supernatural in an earthly way. "GO EAST" provides insights into the "making-off" of Hong Kong film, into the work on the nightly film sets along the Victoria Quay and - today more important than ever - into the digital trick studios of the Chinese film industry.
- Mentawai - a magic word and the best kept secret of a conspired community of surf surfers until a few years ago. This refers to a palm paradise on the coasts of the four Mentawai islands off West Sumatra. Until a few years ago, Hawaii or the West Australian coast were considered the "Mecca" of surfing, but today the four small Sumatra islands are considered the "high C" of surfing. On Siberut, the largest of the four Mentawai islands, lives the people of the Sakkudai, rule forest inhabitants. They are animists, believers in nature, whose shamans still ascribe their own soul to every piece of nature - whether plant or animal. Monkeys even have the reputation to accompany the souls of their ancestors to the afterlife. Since the island was "discovered" a few years ago by some surf freaks, this last enclave of a paradise on earth is about to strand in the glossy brochures of international tourism multinationals. GO EAST accompanies some surfers on a breathtaking journey through the island world off West Sumatra and illuminates their "balancing act" between gentle adventure tourism and the knowledge that this could be the beginning of the end of one of the last paradises.
- In order to please the spirits of the Mongolian steppe, it takes dance and singing, the magic drum and lots of smoke. "Burne", a 70-year-old blind woman, depends on the goodwill of the spirits. She needs her spiritual strength to help other people. Burne is a shaman. The woman with the leather-tanned skin is the eldest of the "Zaatan", a nomadic people in the extreme north of Mongolia. They are reindeer herders who have been wandering through the taiga on the border to Siberia for centuries. It is winter, cutting cold - minus 25 degrees Celsius on average - and the Chuwsgul Lake is frozen to a metre thick. The mountain valleys around the fourteenth largest fresh water reservoir in the world in the far north of Mongolia are home to the last "Zaatan" - just 300 people - and are considered the last refuge of shamanism alongside Siberia and Amazonia. Here, in the uncontrollable vastness of the Mongolian highlands, the animistic belief in nature has survived 70 years of Soviet communism. GO EAST accompanies the "Zaatan" on their hike through the icy tundra of mountain valleys in the far north of Mongolia and looks behind the myth of the shamanistic natural healers of the last steppe nomads.
- On a warm summer morning in 1867, the intoxication began. The farm boy Erasmus Jacobs had found a strangely glittering stone in his parents' garden and brought it to his sister to play with. Three years later, a handful of such stones were found on Nicolaas de Beers' Zandfontein farm. Barely two weeks later, the entire area of the South African Transvaal was flooded by over 30,000 knights of fortune. It was the beginning of the legendary diamond rush at the South African Cape. The most productive finds were on the Colesberg Koppie, the location of the later Kimberley Mine. The mound was quickly eroded, and soon shafts had to be driven into the depths. Over the years, the world's largest man-made hole was created - the legendary "Big Hole", 473 metres in diameter and almost 600 metres deep. Today, the Kimberley diamond mine is considered to be the best guarded area on earth. The stories of the workers revolve up to today: stories of monster diamonds, big as chicken eggs. They are legends, because hardly any of the almost 2000 "Minors" will ever see a stone the size of a pebble. GO EAST follows the myth of the South African diamond madness: on land and under water, from the air and in the shafts of what was once the world's largest diamond mine.
- Not only did they hunt down their enemies to eat them, but sometimes even members of their own clan had to believe it. The peoples on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea have long been considered man-eating headhunters, according to reports from explorers and first missionaries. The "cannibals from the bush" instilled such fear in many sailors until 100 years ago that they anchored their ships far outside the bays and tried to avoid any contact with the natives. Headhunting and cannibalism, as researchers of modern times found out, were by no means mere ends in themselves. Most of the nearly 800 peoples on Papua New Guinea are animists, believers in nature and the headhunting probably served to appease their gods. At the beginning of the last century such blood rites were forbidden by the colonialists, although even anthropologists were astonished by individual cases until the 1960s. GO EAST goes in the bush of Papua New Guinea on the search for the last "man-eaters" - and - finds none . Most of the peoples have renounced headhunting and use a worthy substitute. Gray spotted domestic pigs wander into nirvana, screaming loudly, to appease the spirits of the dead of the indigenous peoples. Does it help? Even die-hard pig breeders could not get a clear answer.
- Jesus live . A young man with a lion's mane drags himself year after year almost 8 kilometres through a green Easter landscape in southern Poland. We write the year 1642, "Oberammergau" was not invented yet, the first miracles blossomed here already. Marian apparitions and wounds had to serve as evidence for the holiness of this place from then on. We are in Zebjodovska, a small village near Krakow. All Easter, a group of hundred laymen fights their way through the confusion of the "Passion Story", drags woods, clashes with sabers and wears a selfmade cloth. The story takes place against a breathtaking backdrop. A gigantic monastery, an even bigger church including a forecourt and 40 chapels: a truly worthy ambience for "Kalwaria Zebjodovska", the second largest passion spectacle after Jerusalem. Expert staff - monks, priests and monastic offspring - are always available, and sometimes even exchange the fine silk ornament for a freshly forged Roman shell. Golgatha live at Krakow, history lessons and religious tuition sometimes quite modern. GO EAST mixes with the Polish Romans and celebrates Easter with thousands of onlookers under the cross of Zebjodovska.
- Water - the world here seems to consist only of this element. Whoever lives here needs amphibious abilities. We are in Bangladesh, more precisely, in the delta of the Bay of Bengal. After the Amazonas and the delta of the Congo, the Bay of Bengal is the third largest "water landscape" on earth. The inhabitants have adapted, live on ships, boats and if the monsoon doesn't wash away whole regions, on small islands in the middle of the moving water hell. The water is an animal, unpredictable and cunning - say the Bengali - because you never know whether your house will still stand tomorrow. Most of the "water people" of the Gulf live from fishing, smaller odd jobs or "in hell". Hell" is a monstrous scrapping yard, a house of the dead for disused soul sellers, a gigantic ship cemetery near Cittagong, Bangladesh's largest port city. Here, unskilled workers manually dismantle rusting refrigerator ships, passenger steamers and container ships around the clock. The area is regarded as a poison toilet that no one enters voluntarily. GO EAST visits the "scrappers from the Gulf" who work in an area that could be the backdrop for Hollywood's screen apocalypses.
- Mexico around the turn of the century. Evil tongues claim that Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, the two Mexican revolutionary heroes, owe their plans for the century only to a century's intoxication - Tequila as the trigger of a revolution of the century ? Too far-reaching ? Legends are legends - the truth lies - as always - somewhere in between. Both were actually gifted drunks and that is historically handed down. In Mexico there was hardly anything more exhilarating than the national drink Tequila. "Aguamiel", the honey-sweet juice of the "Blue Agave", is the basis for the stuff that dreams of wild Mexico are made of. Tequila - agave schnapps - first a drink of the gods, then the "lubricant of machismo", is Mexico's number one export today. "As sharp as if a cat in heat were running down your throat," as connoisseurs rave. And, if it's good, just as smooth. Tequila is still produced today according to a centuries-old ritual: After approx. 10-12 years of growth, agaves are cut, fermented, cooked, distilled - the devil's stuff is ready. But only secretly kept ingenious details of this procedure bring the really good spirit into the bottle, which provides atmosphere at the bars of the world. A community of grim-looking machos from 178 distilleries around the city of Guadalajara watches with Argus eyes to ensure that this is done to the highest standards. Because only the high percentage that is bottled here may call itself Tequila. The best, by the way - nomen est omen - is in the small town of "Tequila". GO EAST observes an exhilarating piece of Mexico.
- Many had been here, adventurers, millionaires, hobby researchers - magically attracted by this Mayan enigma, who ate dog schnitzel, stuffed the heads of deceased relatives and sacrificed the lifeblood of beautiful virgins for breakfast. The ball game, which is so popular with us, also delighted the jungle inhabitants long before our time, only the material of the ball was different. Especially popular were the severed heads of defeated enemies. It sounds terrible, it was probably also, however, with our yardsticks the former Maya universe can be grasped only with difficulty. On Mexico's peninsula Yucatan, home of the former high culture and her today's descendants, one needs a proper portion of confidence in his guardian angel, so the warning of a Campesinós, because the country is a mixture of blood and Tequila. A warning that has unfortunately been justified since 1993. Since the rebel organisation "EZLN", famous - notorious under the popular name "Zapatistas" - has made the area in the Mexican state of Chiapas unsafe, even the "Foreign Office" has warned against travelling to this region. The rebels merely insist on their ancestral land rights: they are Maya, descendants of a people that once belonged to the most highly developed peoples of South America. GO EAST fights its way through the dark rainforest of Selva Lacandon. The rainforest is considered the last retreat of the "Lacandons", one of the probably last true Mayan clans on the border to Guatemala.
- Voodoo, the word itself associates ritual acts: archaic and sometimes barbaric. The roots of this bizarre cult lie in West Africa, where Niger, Liberia and Benin can be found today. For at least 4,000 years already, that is secured, people follow this religion. "Voodoo" was originally called: "That which cannot be fathomed", "The power which is effective". Religious regulations or even written foundations are unknown. The slave trade brought the cult to South and Central America and to the Caribbean to Cuba. So-called "Ronda Santerias", secret brotherhoods of the plantation slaves, quickly formed on the sugar cane island. The secret societies often still exist today and are now regarded as cultural heritage worth protecting. GO EAST visits a Voodoo Seance in a "Ronda Santeria" in Cuba and looks behind the scenes of this bizarre cult. The basis is an irrevocable law of natural faith, according to which there is no strict separation between life and death, between the "spheres of the visible and the invisible world". Similar to the conservation laws of physics, the universe is seen as a closed system in which nothing disappears. The gods and spirits of the ancestors thus also intervene directly in the lives of human beings.
- Said bin Sultan, the legendary ruler of the "Army of the Silver Sabres", was the Lord of an area that had continental dimensions: it stretched from Mombasa via Zanzibar to the Indian subcontinent and included the entire Arabian peninsula. 150 years ago the empire of the Omanis was regarded as a world empire and the Dhau fleet of the Sultan as almost invincible. Above all the fairytale figure "Sindbad" as an icon of the daring seafaring people. Today, the Sultanate of Oman is just another OPEC oil supplier along the Strait of Hormuz - and by no means the richest. Closed off from the outside world, the former splendour was lost, the state fell back into a kind of medieval Sleeping Beauty state. We start our journey in Mascat, the legendary "coffee town" of the Sultanate. The brown powder, however, has long since served its purpose as a currency earner. Today, as 500 years ago, the waters around the Sultanate are considered the El Dorado of fishermen. Already the travellers of the Middle Ages had described the fish wealth of this coast. Marco Polo, for example, complained - several times even in writing to the Sultan - about the "terrible smell of decay that is stored above the markets". Hammerhead sharks, dolphins, moray eels: almost every hour new sea creatures are landed. A dive trip into the underwater world of the coastal waters still today confirms the impression that the French maritime researcher Jacques Cousteau already had 30 years ago: "Unique !".
- It is the 18th day of the second Muslim month and in Gambia's capital and port Banjul all ferries are bursting at the seams. Thousands stand with small bundles at the jetty, dervishes dance and fish markets turn into rushing celebrations. It is the time of the "Magal" and GO EAST goes on the pilgrimage of the "black Islam" to Touba, the holy city of the Marabuts in the neighbouring country Senegal. Like every year, the Caliph of Touba invites you to a great feast. The caliph is a sorcerer, his opponents think, as a saint with magic powers, his followers cheer him on. His mere sight would suffice and one would recover from any illness. At the time of the "Magal" in Touba, hundreds of so-called dervishes dance in trance in front of Africa's largest mosque, screaming and stomping on the dusty ground. They put the pilgrims in the mood for a celebration to commemorate the founder of the religion "Ahmadou Bamba", who has his last resting place in Touba's mosque. To be close to him and the caliph of today once in a lifetime promises "gris-gris": happiness, child blessings and good business - for a lifetime.
- The Bahamas - just the mention of this archipelago off the coast of Florida has been nourishing holiday dreams and snorkeling fantasies for decades. Only five years ago, some resourceful diving school owners "discovered" that the Bahamas have more to offer than miles of sandy beaches, palm-lined coastal groves and turquoise snorkeling areas. They chose the dolphin as the secret landmark of the archipelago and advertised it - not altruistically - as a "Diving Guide": after all, they earned several million hard dollars in no time at all with so-called "Dolphin Diving Tours". However, hardly any of the young "Dolphin Start-Ups" had enough experience to approach the curious animals with tourist snorkelers. Accidents were not uncommon - the vacationers simply had no idea how to deal with the marine mammals. Wayne Scott Smith, an American marine biologist, is one of the most famous dolphin researchers in the area and has been diving along Grand Bahama Island for more than 25 years. He knows the area like the back of his hand and warns of "diving quickies" with dolphins, which often lead to accidents without specific preparation. GO EAST accompanies Wayne on his diving adventures to "his" dolphin family and to old Spanish shipwrecks along the Grand Bahama Bank.
- "No go - area", a super secret test area of the US Air Force, a hiding place of aliens: all this, spiced with thousands of rumors and legends, is the AREA 51. A paradise, a "dreamland" for UFO hunters and ET believers. In fact, the Pentagon founded the so-called "Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range" in 1954 along Groom Salt Lake, in the heart of Nevada, probably the most secret military object in the world. Such legendary spy planes as the "Blackbird" or the stealth bombers invisible to radar come from the test laboratories of the strictly guarded desert area. Until 1994, the military denied the existence of the test site. When the first photos appeared, one had to admit to maintaining some aircraft hangars in this area. To this day, the spectacular story of the physicist Bob Lazaar has not been refuted that he worked on an alien flying object in the sanctum of the facility. Food for all UFO hunters. Rumours refer to a legend according to which President Eisenhower himself once negotiated with extraterrestrials about the use of their technology. In return, "little grey creatures" should be allowed to use the desert area in Nevada as a kind of landing and take-off facility for their ships. Pure nonsense is claimed by many, while others believe that just about anything is possible.
- Eight hundred kilometres off the south-east coast of the African continent, a patch of earth "floats" in the Indian Ocean, which is still one of the most mysterious regions of our planet today. Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, has been trapped by ghosts for almost 1500 years, paralyzed as if under a "voodoo magic". The spirits hide themselves behind "Fady", a word with multi-layered meaning. It denotes a taboo, a ban. Any contact with Fady brings bad luck, often even death, the locals say. In former times the French occupiers and their cannons were "Fady". Today "Fady" ghosts through the jungle in the interior of the island and along the turquoise coast of the island. "Tonga soa": welcome to Madagascar . The porcupine fish is "Fady", the poisonous water snake off the coast, chameleons and of course lemurs, the heraldic animals of the island. Lemurs, monkey-like creatures, live worldwide only on Madagascar. The locals in the rainforest speak only quietly of the "pitch-black forest monster", the "Aye Aye". It brings death and steals the coconuts at night. The Madegassen immediately kill these cat-sized lemurs as soon as they appear. However, the nocturnal mammal rarely shows up. This increases the fear. "GO EAST ..." gets to the bottom of this myth, with local fishermen on the coast and in the middle of the jungle of the unspoilt interior of the island. "Nevertheless, we have not seen "Fady". Only locals saw that "myth". And they say, we only had luck. Next time "it" knows us and then we should be careful.
- No living creature spreads so much fear and terror, no animal has such a bad reputation. Cold blooded robber, killer and man-eater, in short: the shark. Marine biologists are now in the process of fathoming the mystery of this great unknown of the seas. They replaced horror myths that were ready for filming with astonishing insights into a perfect successful model of evolution that went into series production around 400 million years ago. Gary Adkinson, a renowned shark researcher, lives and works on the small archipelago of the "Abaco Islands" northwest of the Bahamas. The sea around the "Little Abaco Islands" is considered to be heavily "shark contaminated", a true paradise for researchers like Adkinson. Swarms of bull, hammer and Atlantic reef sharks live in front of the sandbanks of the Abaco Atolls. "It is dangerous to dive there, the sharks too unpredictable," warn even the professionals among the many diving instructors of the neighboring Bahama Islands. Only a few years ago, the then outsider Adkinson started an experiment that brought him international prestige in the conspiracy of the Haiforscher community. On the small Abaco island Walker's Cay he founded a shark research centre and a diving base, which is open for every diver with basic knowledge. Adkinson's recipe is surprisingly simple and yet not without a thrill. He claims that every diver can move safely even in a pack of eating sharks once he has learned to correctly assess the reactions of the animals. This is exactly what Adkinson and his staff are trying to teach shark enthusiasts in a 2-week course. "Until now", says Adkinson, "it still worked. Once you have the fear of the animals under control, you are ready to dive into a crowd of hunting sharks.