Voyage of the Continents: Series 2

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5 Technical Specs
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[edit] General Information

Nature Documentary hosted by Sharon Mann, published by Arte in 2014 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

-- Original title: "La Valse des Continents" -- "The Earth's great rhythm permeates everything, and man is caught up in it, in spirit as much as in body. " This second series of 5 x 52min tells the animated story of the genesis of our continents. This real waltz of land masses sculptures our landscapes. It will take us this time in Africa and in Americas. Since its formation, 4,55 billion years, our Earth is submitted to strengths of an incredible power. The earth's crust is in perpetual evolution, redrawing indefatigably the world map. Continents assemble and part, victims of collisions and tearings. Perceptible movements through earthquakes, through volcanic raids and through tsunamis. In this "tectonic waltz "of lands and seas, real geologic epic, we follow passionate and fascinating scientists. With them, we travel more than a billion years all over the world to reconstitute the puzzle of our continents and understand the indefatigably sculptured grand landscapes. The continents are not eternally fixed in their majesty. Far from being immutable points of reference, they are born, grow, and finally succumb to the effects of time, like living beings. The heart of our planet creates and moves them in a never-ending journey. The continents come together and separate, victims of collisions and tectonic subduction. Life in the mantle can be perceived through earthquakes and tsunamis. From place to place, volcanic action adds a spectacular, often violent touch to the Earth's surface. Around a core as hot as the sun, the Earth's crust is perpetually evolving and redrawing the map of continents and oceans. This four billion year dynamic is perceptible to people who are trained to see it, people with a third eye: the eye of the geologist. To understand it, our eyes must be re-educated by looking at some of nature's lessons offered by the Earth, where we can learn to decipher its grandest creations, in landscapes that are continually being sculpted. Via the epic of continental drift, we travel to all 4 corners of the planet, to meet scientists who are carrying out state-of-the-art research on the most emblematic landscapes of each geological event. With these scientists, and thanks to their work, we discover the sites in a new light – landscapes that we often see but rarely look at closely. The journey also establishes the key reference points of life alongside the geologic time scale - the appearance of life, of plants, of terrestrial life, dinosaurs and Man punctuate the geologic time scale. Directed by Alexis de Favitski ; Co-Produced by La Compagnie des Taxi-Brousse,CNRS Images and ARTE France in participation with CNC,TFO, Ushuaia TV and Discovery Networks Asia Pacific

[edit] The Origins of Africa

Africa seems to be a young continent, as it has only been explored since the 19th century in its entirety. It is the first site inhabited by Man, 2 million years ago, and yet the African continent was born during the early childhood of the Earth. After having experienced a violent cataclysm of cosmic origin, Africa found itself trapped in the middle of the other continents. Then, jostled by its neighbours for millions of years, it finally broke free when its crust tore. A story that Steve Richardson tells us thanks to the information he gets from crushed diamonds.
After suffering a violent cosmic cataclysm in Vredefort, Rodger Hardt's playground, Africa found itself caught in the middle of every continent in the southern hemisphere. The layers of land carved by the Fish River are an open book on this history. Then, after a short trip to the South Pole that left its mark in the heart of the Namibian deserts that Nicole Ulrich travels through, Africa finally emancipated herself, abandoning Antarctica, Australia, South America, India and Madagascar one after the other, where Karen Samonds searches for the ancestors of lemurs which went through the impact of the Earth's wrath.

[edit] Africa Today

The recent African epic is the isolation of the continent into a single entity. For a while, the Tethys Ocean separated Africa from Eurasia, but it, too, disappeared, and Europe and Asia were inevitably flung together, causing repercussions from Gibraltar to Anatolia. The comings and goings with Asia generated what makes the wealth of Arabia today: oil. For prospectors, the geological past and field observation are the key to success, and the Tethys was keeping Eurasia out of Africa for a while, but it also disappeared, leaving whale skeletons in the middle of the desert… an El Dorado for paleontologist Francis Duranthon. Finally, the shock with Europe and Asia was inevitable, with repercussions from Gibraltar to Anatolia. Micro phenomena that Philippe Vernant and Yann Klinger read in the meanders of the rock.
But what tells the story of Africa today is the opening of a huge rift to the entire eastern part of the continent. Arabia is leaving the continent, as we follow the footsteps of Felicie Korastelev and Jordane Corbeau, then the ongoing opening of Palestine to Mozambique is a real open-air laboratory for Bernard Le Gall. But this rift has not only influenced the geography and climatology of our planet. For Martin Pickford, the rift had its part in the separation of man from the great apes and therefore have allowed us to appear.

[edit] North America

North America is perpetually reinventing itself. The continent is also a wild world of rivers, plains and ice, where iridescent-coloured deserts lie alongside lush valleys and mountains holding many secrets. From the Far North to the Deserts of Utah, from the Rockies to Death Valley, the sites it features are on the scale of the continent itself. The Far North is among the Earth's oldest, as Don Francis hopes to confirm. Then, after being connected with the future Europe, North America became separated when the North Atlantic Ocean opened up. Mountains common to these two continents were partly on one side and Paul Olsen compares them, and when they separated, the two continents took on their share of dinosaurs. Species that have evolved on their own, but for North Americans, the "Great Plains" is an ideal giant cemetery.
Pushed by the Atlantic, the continent collided with the Pacific. As a result, mountains: Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountains. Allen Glazner ignores erosion to imagine what these colossuses were like when they were formed, but North America is a living continent. In its heart, the Yellowstone volcano spits fumaroles and geysers before it, who knows, erupts under the watchful eye of Henry Heasler National Park geologist and Jamie Farrell's sensors. But certainly closer to the rupture is the San Andreas fault that is tearing the West of the United States… Soon on a geological time scale Los Angeles could be an island off San Francisco.

[edit] Central America

Between North and South America, the forces of the Earth have made a very small place for what is called Central America and a tectonic plate: the Caribbean plate. This plate is essentially a marine world which history Thierry Calmus and François Michel know perfectly well. But at the confines of the territory, four vast masses are compressing, crushing and shaking this "paradise on earth". They are North and South America and the oceans, Atlantic and Pacific. Earthquakes and volcanic eruption are frequent in Central America. Dominique Gibert innovates volcano analysis in Guadeloupe, at La Soufriere, while Jose Luis Arce watches over Mexican volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire.
As for earthquakes… many teams in Haiti are hoping one day to predict the unleashing of the forces stored in the earth which the friction between plates will occasionally release. But the symbolic image of Central America is the junction of the two giants of the North and South meeting in Panama. In addition, the creation of Panama solely changed the fauna of the Americas, and transformed the Earth's oceans.

[edit] South America

South America is a territory of contrasts and excesses. It is home to the world's longest mountain range, the largest rainforest, the most powerful river, the driest desert and the greatest biodiversity on the planet. This world travelled around the heart of the South Pacific for billions of years, before leaving Gondwana for good to join North America and build … the Americas. The heart of the country is home to the oldest geological structure on the continent, the tepuys as they were once called by the Indians and now by geologists such as Nelson Joachim Reis, and then we look the future South America which has gathered with other continents and separated from them at least three times…
So since when can we talk about South America? For Martin Bailey Pepper it is 900 million years, and this because all the stones of all the rivers of the continent are found on this date… He checked this by riding 50,000 kilometres on a motorcycle, then episode is looking the last collision between South America and Gondwana, Renata Schmitt's field of study. Sugar Loaf mountain sits on Rio, just as other formations have remained in Africa where Nicole Ulrich works, while South America today is the Andes, a special mountain range as Thierry Sempere explains. As for the Amazonian forest, it is the tectonics that has made it the largest forest of today and the one with the greatest diversity, an infinite hunting ground for Pierre Olivier Antoine.

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: x264 CABAC High@L4
Video Bitrate: 3 314 Kbps
Video Resolution: 1920x1080
Display Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: E-AC3
Audio Bitrate: 224 kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 52 min
Number Of Parts: 5
Part Size: 1.27 MB
Source: WEB DL (Thanks to DRY )
Encoded by: DocFreak08