Under the Sun

The Mehinaku, one of several Indian groups living in the Xingu National Park, have evolved elaborate rituals to help them keep the peace. Wrestling matches and mock arrow duels help release tensions, while shared feasting ensures contented neighbours. How long can this idyllic way of life survive?

The story of millions of white people who have flooded into Amazonia over the last decades in search of fortune. For many, the reality turned out to be abject poverty and broken dreams.

Rock star Sting and his partner Trudie Styler and Anita Roddick (of The Body Shop) show how the West can help the Kayapo and Yanomami Indians and thus save the rainforests.

The Hamar people live in the remote southwest of Ethiopia, far from famine and war. Their women are proud, humorous, and outspoken. Birinda, Duka, and Hilanda live differently from us, yet share many of our concerns - teenage pregnancy, marriage, problems with men, and growing old.

Is it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace? Two Moroccan Israelis and two Palestinians have much in common; born as Arabic speakers in the Arab world, their histories and cultures overlap. But for now they are engaged in a bitter and dangerous conflict which is by no means a simple struggle for supremacy between Arabs and Jews.

The Hira Gasy is a family of troubadours, who travel the great plateau of Madagascar, earning a living at country fairs, second burials and ancestral spirit ceremonies. In brightly-coloured costumes they perform satirical plays about all aspects of Madagascan life. But their audience are not just human, they perform for the Ancestors too, for the troupe are both popular entertainers and musical intermediaries between the earthbound and the ancestral spirit world.

By the end of the century over half of the villages in rural Japan could be ghost towns. They all suffer from the same problem - an acute shortage of young women. Japanese girls just don't want to marry Japanese farmers any more. The lonely bachelor farmers are contracting international matchmakers like Sakae Shimada to help them find a bride. The programme follows two farmers from Japan and their marriage to two women from the Philippines.

Every year the work force of India's oldest steel plant beseeches their god of 'getting things done' to bless the ageing hydraulic press. So far it's been so good - but not for factory foreman Mr Sinha. Enduring 110 degrees of furnace heat he labours to support a family which prefers that he returns to the land and a meaningful life.

For thousands of years, the Lapp people have lived in harmony with the natural world. On 26 April 1986, radioactive rain fell on northern Sweden from Chernobyl. A single man-made catastrophe has threatened the Lapps' livelihood, but as levels of fall-out continue to rise, reindeer herders Lars-Jon and Lillemor are determined to maintain their way of life. (TV edit of film that won seven international awards)