Ambrose Video (Firm)

An American Film Festival Red Ribbon winner, THE LONG SEARCH series gives a balanced treatment of a force that is sadly neglected in most educations, the basic beliefs of the major religions in the world today. Ronald Eyre takes the viewer on a pilgrimage beginning in London and spanning 150,000 miles including India, Japan, Israel, Rumania, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, the United States, Egypt, and South Africa.

Episode two examines the long spring following the Ice Ages. In this time, man develops agriculture and domesticates animals, imposing his will on wild wheat and horses. With the Neolithic cultivators come the mounted Nomads, the predators, and the roots of human warfare.

The spiritual impulse of the time steps beyond the boundaries of religious tradition - so wrote Theodore Roszak, spokesman for the counter-culture, who is Ronald Eyre's guide to the new religious concerns of people living in the San Francisco Bay area. Here religious ideas and life styles of East and West mingle and people brought up in a largely Christian cultural climate look East to Taoism and Hinduism for inspiration.

In the vaults of ancient Polish salt mines Dr. Bronowski embarks on a journey to the hidden world inside the atom. He traces the history of the men and the ideas that made 20th century physics the greatest achievement of the human imagination.

The Sherlock Holmes of science, James Burke tracks through 12,000 years of history for the clues that lead us to eight great life changing inventions - the atom bomb, telecommunications, the computer, the production line, jet aircraft, plastics, rocketry, and television. Burke postulates that such changes occur in response to factors he calls "triggers," some of them seemingly unrelated. These have their own triggering effects, causing change in totally...

Here, Burke offers an examination of the cultural innovations produced between the middle ages and the Renaissance, paying particular attention to how commercialism, climate change, and the Black Death influenced these cultural changes.

The first two years of the decade brought about the George W. Bush presidency, a presidency that was defined by September 11th 2001, the first attack on American mainland since the War of 1812. 2001 was also the year that began the second digital revolution.

In the 1100 churches of Indianapolis, we see bewildering multiplicity of Protestantism. Churches with the seating and styling of deluxe first-run theaters. Services conducted with the professionalism of television spectaculars. And congregations that occupy every seat at four staggered services every Sunday. All are features of the US church-going boom. We discover that religion is not in a state of apathy in America; in some quarters it is decidedly...

Examining the most significant events in America since the turn of the century.. A nation under attack on her own soil, a natural disaster destroying one of her major cities, Americans facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the nation's infrastructure - roads, water systems and electrical grids - deteriorating. It is also a decade of hope. The country elected its first African American President, the Internet connected...

In the final episode of this series, Burke recaps the theme that change causes more change. Burke ties together the modern inventions in which previous episodes had culminated: telecommunications, the computer, the jet engine, plastics, rockets, television, the production line, and the atomic bomb. He ultimately points out that all of these inventions come together in the B-52 nuclear bomber, and closes out the series by ruminating on the concept...