The Secret of Life on Earth

Oct 14, 1993

0h 42m

★ 6.0

Overview

A breathtaking adventure across five continents and through time to reveal nature's most vital secret. Watch a flying fox gorge itself on a midnight snack of figs. Climb into the prickly jaws of insect-eating plants. Witness a mantis disguised as a flower petal lure its prey to doom.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

IMAX

Ssangyong Corporation

The Secret of Life on Earth Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Patrick Stewart

Stanley Kubrick’s debut documentary, following Irish-American middleweight boxer Walter Cartier on April 17, 1950—the day of his bout with Bobby James. The film traces Cartier’s quiet morning rituals, training, and anxious hours before the match, culminating in his swift victory that night in Newark. Opening with a brief history of boxing, Kubrick’s tightly crafted short captures the discipline, isolation, and tension behind a fighter’s daily routine.

5.1

Flying Padre

Mar 23, 1951

Stanley Kubrick’s short documentary about Father Fred Stadtmueller, a Catholic priest serving a vast 4,000-square-mile parish in rural New Mexico. To reach his scattered congregation, he pilots his own Piper Cub aircraft, the Spirit of St. Joseph. Over two days, Kubrick follows the “flying padre” as he conducts Mass, mediates between quarreling children, attends a funeral, and airlifts a sick child to medical care—capturing both the challenges and quiet heroism of his daily mission.

7.0

Flying Monsters 3D with David Attenborough

May 6, 2011

220 million years ago dinosaurs were beginning their domination of Earth. But another group of reptiles was about to make an extraordinary leap: pterosaurs were taking control of the skies. The story of how and why these mysterious creatures took to the air is more fantastical than any fiction. In Flying Monsters 3D, Sir David Attenborough the world’s leading naturalist, sets out to uncover the truth about the enigmatic pterosaurs, whose wingspans of up to 40 feet were equal to that of a modern day jet plane.

5.5

Nostradamus and the Queen

Sep 29, 1953

An elderly Catherine de Medici reflects back on how the prophecies of Nostradamus accurately predicted the fates of her husband, her three sons and herself.

0.0

Tango

Aug 9, 1985

A brief history of the emergence and artistic innovations of tango in 19th-century Argentina and Europe. The film offers a mosaic of tango melodies, art works, dance performances, historical footage, photographs of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century, and texts by Celedonio Flores and Enrique Santos Discépolo.

4.2

Blow Job

Jul 16, 1964

Andy Warhol directs a single 35-minute shot of a man's face to capture his facial expressions as he receives the sexual act depicted in the title.

10.0

Avenida

Apr 25, 2024

A place with stairs, but that leads to walls. A place with lots of space, but no one fights for it. And a place with lots of owners, but so empty that no one wants to enter.

No Image Available

0.0

Hard Border

Jan 1, 2018

Belfast-born actor Stephen Rea explores the impact of Brexit and the uncertainty of the future of the Irish border in a short film written by Clare Dwyer Hogg.

6.0

Chant

Jan 1, 1973

Creates a reorientation of vision in a union of sights and sounds which suggest a different way of appreciating and understanding the fundamental integrity of experience.

No Image Available

0.0

Starring Sigmund Freud

Nov 1, 2012

Starring Sigmund Freud is a video memento for Sigmund Freud's little-known film career. Based on an essay John Menick published in Frieze in 2011, the video collects the dozens of appearances that the character of Sigmund Freud has made on small and big screens. After the 1950s, when pill vials replaced analytic couches, the father of psychoanalysis found a second career impersonating himself in everything from a John Huston clunker to a Star Trek episode. The video suggests that maybe it is in front of the camera, alongside surgically enhanced starlets and CGI chimeras, that “Herr Doktor” will find his final resting place. This video was produced by the Kadist Foundation and commissioned by dOCUMENTA (13).

6.0

Norman Norman

Sep 8, 2018

A young woman grapples with the declining health of her beloved dog in this film about mortality, cloning, and Barbra Streisand.

6.6

Solarmax

Jul 1, 2000

Solarmax is a 40-minute giant-screen documentary that tells the story of humankind's struggle to understand the sun. The film will take audiences on an incredible voyage from pre-history to the leading edge of today's contemporary solar science.

7.0

Leave it to Beavers

May 14, 2014

From PBS - The fascinating story of beavers in North America - their history, their near extinction, and their current comeback, as a growing number of scientists, conservationists and grass-roots environmentalists have come to regard beavers as overlooked tools when it comes to reversing the disastrous effects of global warming and world-wide water shortages. Once valued for their fur or hunted as pests, these industrious rodents are seen in a new light through the eyes of this novel assembly of beaver enthusiasts and "employers" who reveal the ways in which the presence of beavers can transform and revive landscapes. Using their skills as natural builders and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers are being recruited to accomplish everything from re-establishing water sources in bone-dry deserts to supporting whole communities of wildlife drawn to the revitalizing aquatic ecosystems their ponds provide.

4.5

The Seafarers

Oct 15, 1953

Stanley Kubrick’s first color film, commissioned by the Seafarers International Union to promote the benefits of union membership. Shot inside the union’s Atlantic and Gulf Coast District facilities, it features scenes of ships, machinery, cafeteria life, and meetings, highlighting the daily routines and camaraderie of seafarers. Thought lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in 1973 and preserved by the Library of Congress.

8.1

Isle of Flowers

Sep 6, 1989

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.

7.1

IMAX Hubble

Mar 19, 2010

An IMAX 3D camera chronicles the effort of 7 astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

0.0

Eternity

Feb 21, 1973

Can heartbeats be “reactionary”? Yes, if they are the only sonic element on a montage-heavy documentary about the war dead. Made just before Enver Hoxha’s cultural purges in 1974, Dhimitër Anagnosti’s formalist, wonderfully edited affair will finally premiere in a restored version after its completion forty-two years ago.

7.1

The Living Desert

Nov 10, 1953

Although first glance reveals little more than stones and sand, the desert is alive. Witness moving rocks, spitting mud pots, gorgeous flowers and the never-ending battle for survival between desert creatures of every shape, size and description.

No Image Available

0.0

Sportsmen at Work

Jan 1, 1957

This short film focuses on how conservationists endeavor to protect wildlife.

The Secret of Life on Earth

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

The Secret of Life on Earth Trailers