Episode list

Americans tend to stereotype their cities. Pittsburgh is Steel, Los Angeles Film, Charleston the Noble South, Washington Government. New Orleans is the city of jazz, blues and still today exudes a touch of "Satchmo" Louis Armstrong, the legendary jazz trumpeter. In "The big easy", the city on the Mississippi, music is life. In the oldest quarter of the southern port metropolis, the Vieux Carré in the French part of the city, this passion is concentrated every year in spring: "Mardi Gras" is on the programme, the highlight of the "Carnival in New Orleans". For almost 200 years, this round-the-clock party has been pompous, exuberant, frivolous, and in any case immensely popular. The whole of New Orleans is disguised, jazz, blues and rock bands are playing at every turn. The film offers a look behind the scenes of the craziest carnival in the world.

The sad fate of the last Sun King of the Incas, Atahualpa, lay in the swords of marauding Spaniards. He was beheaded in 1533. Even today the legend goes that Atahualpa hid in the swamps on the western shore of Lake Titicaca, with the fishermen of the Uro, and planned to throw the Spaniards out of the Andes state again. The Uro, who earn their living by fishing in the Altiplano at almost 4000 meters above sea level, emphasize that Atahualpa is a ghost on the almost 300 meters deep bottom of the lake, but nobody has seen it yet. The film is a search for traces on the shores of Lake Titicaca after the legends about the heirs of the Incas.

The ground trembles, music roars from every corner, thousands of Rastafaris rocking to the beat of the music line the small streets: we are in Nine Miles, St. Ann - the birthplace of a reggae legend. Jamaica, Bob Marley and the Rastafari movement are inextricably linked. It is the sixth of February, the birthday of the idol of millions of music-loving reggae fans. As every year in February, the Antilles island in the Caribbean is flooded by thousands of onlookers. Already at the airport in Kingston the rhythm spills onto the baggage carousel of waiting musicians, bands and traveled Rastafaris from all over the world. Everyone knows only one goal: the reggae festival in Nine Miles, which lasts several days, then the grave of their idol and perhaps a joint every now and then. From the real Rastafaris on the island, most of the "dreadlocks" that have traveled there are called trademarks: matted lion's mane - contemptuously referred to as "dreads", would-be rasta. What is a real Rasta and what is a fake Rasta, however, the opinions on the island are far apart. The real Rasta live secluded in the interior of the island, are biblical and see their movement as an attempt to separate their own black identity from the belief in light-skinned saints imposed by the English. They derive the name "Rastafari" from "Ras Tafari Makonnen", who was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 as Haile Selassie I and is revered by the Rastas as the Messiah. Nevertheless, the movement owes its fame above all to Bob Marley and reggae, even beyond the borders of the Antilles. Who was Bob Marley ? The film is a journey to the roots of reggae.

We are in the no man's land between Burma, Thailand and Laos, a legendary triangle, surrounded in the rainforest by countless jungle paths. The "Golden Triangle" is famous for its poisonous kitchens, where Rohopium is refined into heroin and smuggled into neighbouring countries via jungle paths. Only in more recent times have the natural beauties of this area been discovered, the habitat of the reclusive mountain tribes. The Padaung tribe has lived in four mountain valleys for hundreds of years. The women of the Padaung are better known under the zoological term "giraffe women". Countless rings, distributed over wrist and ankle, neck and arms, are symbols of beauty, age, marriage and a mixture of Buddhist and animist beliefs. If, for example, the neck rings of a 40-year-old woman weighing about 10 kilograms were removed, the weakened neck muscles would no longer be able to carry the pure weight of the head. The film is a journey into the exotic world of giraffe women.

Tibet was a free country for over 1300 years. As late as 1800, Greater Tibet stretched from Ladakh in the west to the city of Dartsedo in the east - until China annexed the area and reduced it by more than half. Soon after, the Tibetan leader, the 14th Dalai Lama Lhasa, had to flee his seat of government by night and fog. Today he lives in the Indian Dharamsala and looks after his "abandoned people" from exile. Every year the charismatic Lama holds a grand audience, pilgrimages with thousands of believing Buddhists to the "Holy Mountain" at the foot of the Himalayas and receives show greats like Richard Gere or Tina Turner - all in the service of his "oppressed country": the God King as PR manager. What are his wishes, what are his goals? On the fringes of a meeting with Richard Gere, who travelled from Los Angeles to Dharamsala for a great Buddhist pilgrimage, the Dalai Lama explains his vision of a possible peace in the monastic and temple state on the roof of the world.

Nepal, land of a thousand mountains, gods and legends. There are probably few countries in the world that exert such a magical attraction as this Hindu state between the eight-thousanders of the Himalayas. The highest mountains in the world make it a kind of natural wonder of the world. "Namaste - Welcome to Kathmandu". It is PHALGUN, following the Nepalese Hindu lunar calendar, end of February, and it is the time of the new moon day. One of the most important Hindu festivals is on the roof of the world: "SHIVATRI", the night of Shiva, one of the most important gods from the holy phantom of the Hindus. Throughout Kathmandu, the capital of the mountain state, prayer flags blow, bells ring and the beats of the heavy copper gongs reverberate muffled. The film is a journey into the mystical world of the gods in the "Kingdom of Yeti".

"Have a drink - for today I have to forget - that I am without friends - far away from home ...", a typical line of the most famous South American dance. Tango, the classical folk music of Argentina, is anything but cheerful. Its themes are loneliness, despair, jealousy and homesickness. The dance is a proud self-portrayal of the South American macho: passionate, erotic and pompous. Believe it or not, the tango lies like the scent of another epoch in the air of Buenos Aires. The tango, first danced by men waiting in a queue in front of a brothel, also has its heroes: Carlos Gardel, a boy from the working class district of Buenos Aires, and Astor Piazolla, a composer who fused tango with jazz. For most Argentinos, the tango is still the soul of the Andes country today.

The "pow wows" of the indigenous people of British Columbia are becoming increasingly rare, the Norkanadas are threatened with extinction. Meetings of the Indians scattered over the vast forest areas of the former Gold Rush Treks today have almost only one goal: "we must defend ourselves against the theft of our land. Their land, their rites and their language were taken from them, huge forest areas were cleared, the profit thinking of the big timber entrepreneurs seems to have won. The last battle of the North American Indians is no longer fought with bows and arrows and the tomahawk, one goes the way of the "white man" through the instances - and usually loses. Only a few years ago, the political leaders started thinking about a rescue program for the last survivors of the indigenous people: "Save the Nation" - more than just a program on paper of the white man ? The film shows insights into the everyday life of the last aborigines of British Columbia, their customs, rites and festivals, but also into the struggle for survival on the edge of civilization.

Every three years in India, the festival of festivals is held at one of 4 changing locations: the KUMBH MELA, the oldest and most exciting religious carnival in the world. KUMBH MELA is a Hindu festival. According to legend, demons once stole the sacred nectar of immortality from the gods. In the subsequent battle between gods and thieves, the KUMBH, the vessel, broke and the nectar poured over 12 places in the universe, eight in heaven and four on earth. The four holy cities of India were born. KUMBH MELA begins when the sun and moon are in the most favorable astrological position. Then millions of pilgrims from all castes descend to the banks of holy rivers and believe that the floods now suddenly carry the life-supporting nectar with them. Ash-smeared "Gurus" clothed with leopard skin captivate the audience, "Gods" children sovereignly distribute blessings and naked ascetics perform enigmatic endurance performances on huge stripes of sand in the river. Who marries at the time of the KUMBH MELA, so the legend, should be blessed with a particularly large child wealth. The film looks behind the scenes of one of the most mysterious and exotic festivals in the world.

Santiago de Chile, the Atacama - desert on 4500 meters height, the Andes, Tierra del Fuego and the hostile Beagle Channel around Cape Horn are the stations of an adventure journey through Chile, the country at the southwestern end of the world. Thomas Miklautsch and Richard Pichler, two Austrian surf freaks, actually "only" wanted to drive through the eternal ice of the Beagle Channel off the coast of Tierra del Fuego. The result was an eight-week tour-de-force through what is probably the most extreme surfing area in the world. At the end of the world the surfers meet the last three survivors of the Yamanes - Indians, a Chilean Indio tribe that was considered extinct in 1940. At the Beagle Channel, they try to follow the path of Charles Darwin, who documented the life of the Yamanes Indians, with their surfboards. A company that ends almost fatally for the surfers. Tons of icebergs break off the mainland every hour, thunder from the Cordillera Darwin into the sea with a deafening roar, marking the end of the civilized world.