April 14 marks the 113th anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic’s sinking—an event that has fuelled global fascination for over a century.

National Geographic presents TITANIC: THE DIGITAL RESURRECTION, a groundbreaking 90-minute documentary that offers an unprecedented look at history’s most infamous maritime disaster. Using exclusive access to cutting-edge underwater scanning technology, including 715,000 digitally captured images, the special unveils the most precise model of the Titanic ever created: a full-scale, 1:1 digital twin, accurate down to the rivet. From award-winning Atlantic Productions, TITANIC: THE DIGITAL RESURRECTION premieres Friday, April 18, 2025 on Disney+.

In 2022, award-winning and pioneering filmmaker Anthony Geffen and his team followed deep-sea mapping company Magellan as they undertook the largest underwater 3D scanning project of its kind, mapping the wreck 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic. Over three weeks, they worked around the clock, producing 16 terabytes of data, 715,000 still images, and 4K footage, capturing the Titanic in unparalleled detail.

After nearly two years of analysis, a team of leading historians, engineers, and forensic experts, including Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper, and master mariner Captain Chris Hearn, come together in TITANIC: THE DIGITAL RESURRECTION to reconstruct the ship’s final moments—challenging long-held assumptions and revealing new insights into what truly happened on that fateful night in 1912.

Stephenson, Hooper and Hearn dissect the wreckage up close on a full-scale colossal LED volume stage, walking around the ship in its final resting place. From the boiler room where engineers worked valiantly to keep the lights on until the bitter end to the first-class cabins where the ship ripped in two, the scan brings them face-to-face with where the tragedy unfolded. Notable insights include the following:

Visible Open Steam Valve

The team discovers a steam valve in the open position, validating eyewitness accounts that the ship’s engineers remained at their posts in boiler room two for over two hours after impact, keeping the electricity on and allowing wireless distress signals to be sent. The 35 men may have saved hundreds of lives while sacrificing their own.

Hull Fragments

Sifting through the hull fragments scattered across the wreck site, the team reconstructs them like a puzzle, providing a startling glimpse into the ocean liner’s final moments. The Titanic didn’t split cleanly in two—it was violently torn apart, ripping through first-class cabins where prominent passengers like J.J. Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim may have sought refuge as the ship went down.

First Officer William Murdoch

Further analysis of the digital scans adds to the evidence exonerating First Officer Murdoch, long accused of abandoning his post. The position of a lifeboat davit—seen in new hi-res detail—suggests his crew was preparing a launch moments before the starboard side was engulfed, corroborating Second Officer Charles Lightoller’s testimony that Murdoch was swept away by the sea.

The 90-minute special also examines in stunning detail the 15-square-mile debris field, rich with hundreds of personal artifacts, including pocket watches, purses, gold coins, hair combs, shoes and a shark’s tooth charm, offering a poignant glimpse into the lives lost. Historian Yasmin Khan and the team connect these items to their original owners.

Scans also reveal the wreck’s alarming deterioration, with iconic areas of the wreck already collapsing. However, thanks to this digital twin, the Titanic is preserved in perfect detail as it appeared in 2022, securing its place in history for generations to come and marking a new era in underwater archaeology.

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Alex Pritz’s The Territory is a stunning documentary which spans the course of 2018 onwards in Brazil; documenting the fight to preserve the untouched area of the Amazon which is the home of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people.

In the beginning of the documentary a title card tells us that it was only in the 1980s that the Brazilian government had first contact with the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people. That means that a population of thousands was decimated to fewer than 200 in the span of 42 years. With this contact has also come deforestation to make way for farms that encroach on traditional Uru-eu-wau-wau land. This is hugely problematic, not just for the health and wellbeing of the Indigenous population, but also because 60% of South America’s rainforest is contained within Brazil. This is something that has disastrous effects not only on South America, but on the world as a whole.

In order to examine this issue, Pritz introduces us to various people involved in the struggle for the Amazon. There’s Bitaté, the young Uru-eu-wau-wau man who becomes leader of his people and who bridges traditional ways of living with new technologies.

We meet Neidinha Bandeira, the passionate activist who has worked tirelessly to protect the forest and who is willing to risk her life to help the Indigenous people maintain their territory and their livelihood. We are also introduced to Sergio, a man who up until now has worked the land for other people and who has become the leader of an association which is determined to capitalise on the remaining Indigenous land. Then there’s the invaders, who are not content to wait for Sergio’s Rio Bonito Association to legally secure land and who plunder at will, razing the land as they go.

The Territory spans the period prior to the election of dictator Jair Bolsonaro to the Pandemic, a period which has huge implications on the Indigenous people for many reasons. Firstly, Bolsonaro’s followers are emboldened by his anti-Indigenous rhetoric, spurring increased attacks on Indigenous people.

Secondly, Bolsonaro’s disastrous Covid response would further threaten the Uru-eu-wau-wau people as invaders wantonly encroached further on their land. It’s during this time that Neidinha finds the Department of Indigenous Affairs basically unable or unwilling to assist when it comes to invaders, insisting that there is no evidence of invasions.

Thankfully, the people of Uru-eu-wau-wau, under the leadership of Bitaté, find a way to fight back by using technology, they document evidence of invaders and arrest over 30 invaders encroaching on their land. What begins as a documentary which saddens and infuriates due to the horrendous liberties taken by non-Indigenous people becomes an inspiring and uplifting journey.

It’s very important to note that this documentary was filmed with the co-operation of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, and in fact it is the footage filmed by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people themselves with their own technology that proves to be the most inspiring.

When contacted by a journalist wanting to film, Bitaté asks them to send a shot list and they will provide the rest, all while being paid directly. In addition to filming invaders and providing their GPS co-ordinates, Bitaté is also ensuring the preservation of the traditional ways and stories through film. This convergence of old tradition with new technologies is phenomenal.

Alex Pritz is very careful to provide a very anthropological approach to the story, allowing all parties to speak freely.

It’s this intimacy of their speech that provides some of the best insight into their thoughts and motivations. For instance, Sergio romanticises colonisation, looking to the old Hollywood cowboy and pioneer scenarios as his model for his own colonisation of the Indigenous land.

The ‘Brazillian Dream’, he says, is to own land and make profit from it, and he doesn’t understand why the Indigenous people can be allowed to have their land when they “just live there” and “don’t do anything”. This provides evidence of a huge dichotomy between the driving force of late-stage capitalism and the preservation of indigenous culture and ways of life.

In order to further highlight the threat to the remaining rainforest, The Territory also splices in gorgeous shots of native wildlife with accompanying soundscapes: the glistening eyes of a frog, the dutiful line of ants carrying leaves back to their nest, a pygmy monkey frightened by the noise of a chainsaw, the cacophony of a flock of wild birds and the myriad small butterflies that float in the air like confetti.

The Territory is an important look at how an Indigenous peoples are fighting for the preservation of their ways of living, not just for themselves, but to preserve the environment which is the very lifeblood of so many.

If after watching The Territory you are moved to take action, the website for the film offers solutions.

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Following on from the success of Genius: Picasso, National Geographic has announced the third season of its acclaimed scripted anthology series will bring to life the mythmaker and towering literary figure Mary Shelley.

From Fox 21 Television Studios, the new season will again be executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment, MWM Studios and EUE / Sokolow. The new season will premiere globally on National Geographic in 172 countries and 43 languages in 2019. The first season of Genius was watched by more than 45 million people around the world, and was National Geographic’s highest performing new series launch ever.

Mary Shelley

A brilliant thinker, radical intellectual and proto-feminist, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) brought to life one of the most enduring stories of the modern age while still a teenager. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, is a cautionary tale of unchecked scientific ambition and a sophisticated meditation on social institutions, personal freedom and compassion. 

Frankenstein has captured imaginations and continues to be relevant since it was first published 200 years ago. Shelley masterfully invented the Science Fiction / Horror genre with her tale of a creature brought to life, subsequently going on to create the Post-Apocalyptic genre with her later novel, The Last Man.

An intellectual prodigy, inspired from an early age by the writing of her unconventional mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley was determined to prove that women were the intellectual and creative equals of men.

One of few women to support herself as an author during the early 18th Century, Shelley wrote novels, short stories, reviews, travelogues, and made prolific contributions to the world’s first encyclopaedia. Shelley’s inner circle included countless literary and scientific luminaries of the day, including: Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary and Charles Lamb, Humphry Davy and Leigh Hunt.

Shelley met the love of her life, the romantic poet, amateur scientist and still-married Percy Bysshe Shelley, at the age of 16. After losing her virginity to Percy at her mother’s gravesite, the pair eloped and were cast out by her father, the radical intellectual William Godwin.

Shelley was to endure a lifetime of tragic misfortune, watching three of her four children die, losing multiple friends and family members to suicide, and outliving her husband, who drowned at sea. In true gothic style, Shelley elected to keep her late husband’s heart after his death.

Shelley’s writing was heavily influenced by the great scientific innovation and experimentation of the early 19^th century. Scientists like Luigi Galvani, Giovanni Aldini and Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), figured prominently in her life. The story of Frankenstein was inspired in part by one of the most important scientific theories of the time, galvanism, the study of the effect of electricity on the dead bodies of animals and humans.   

Mary Shelley spent the last few years of her life being looked after by her only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, before dying of a brain tumour at the age of 53.

The first season of Genius, starring Geoffrey Rush as Albert Einstein, earned 10 Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination and SAG Award nomination.

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Leveraging the power of music to guide viewers through a unique perspective on planet Earth, National Georgraphic has partnered with multi platinum, Grammy Award-winning artist, DJ, composer and producer Zedd and Universal Music Group & Brands to create an original composition for National Geographic’s upcoming series ONE STRANGE ROCK. 

The new 10-part series is hosted by Will Smith and produced by acclaimed filmmakers Darren Aronofsky and Jane Root

The partnership, conceptualized and managed by Universal Music Group & Brands, also sees Nashville-based Evolve Studio handle production of the films featuring Zedd’s creative journey and performance.

ONE STRANGE ROCK is a visual journey that alternates from the microscopic to the cosmic and reveals our planet through an alien lens by integrating Aronofsky’s distinctive style with Root’s iconic storytelling. The series explores some of the questions many of us take for granted: Why is Earth the only planet (that we know of) to support life? How fragile are the perfectly tuned systems that sustain this living planet? What are the greatest threats to the environment and human existence on Earth? Are we alone, and where did we come from? Is there really no place like home?

Zedd

Mirroring how ONE STRANGE ROCK unravels the story of our planet, we follow Zedd through an intimate lens over the course of his creative journey as he develops an original composition driven by the series’ different themes. National Geographic will release a series of four Zedd films, an interview and a behind-the-scenes look at Zedd’s recording process — culminating in a unique performance of the final track.

The first film will allow everyone to hear for the first time the original piece Zedd has composed based on ONE STRANGE ROCK. The track is cut to incredible footage from the show. 

The second film captures Zedd’s absorbing conversation with astronaut Leland Melvin as he learns about space and ONE STRANGE ROCK, fueling his creative inspiration. Melvin is the only person drafted to play for the NFL who has flown to space. Having blasted off twice, he has logged more than 565 hours off Earth. Zedd also speaks with series composer Daniel Pemberton to better understand how he scored the series and use those insights for the composition. From there, Zedd composes a one-of-a-kind track that touches on the emotions evoked from the captivating imagery showcased in ONE STRANGE ROCK and explains how this drove him to experiment with sound.

Will Smith

The third film will show Zedd in his natural environment, the recording studio, where he composes and develops the track in real time. He shares his creative process and techniques, adding instrumentation and creating loops, giving the composition a melodic character.

The final film goes from the studio to the stage with a unique performance video that tells the story of ONE STRANGE ROCK by using cutting-edge technology to show the transformation and unexplainable wonder of our world.

Follow Zedd’s Vevo Account to see the full piece when it is released on April 6, 2018.

“I’ve always been a fan of Darren Aronofsky, and am really excited to partner with National Geographic to create an original composition for the series,” said Zedd. “I’ve immersed myself in the visual spectrum and am inspired to take on a different approach by experimenting with natural sounds and exploring grand themes that are representative of the world around us.”

Multiplatinum, Grammy Award-winning artist, DJ and producer Zedd made his debut with Clarity after signing with Interscope in 2012 and has been breaking down barriers surrounding music genres ever since. His current hit single, “The Middle”,  with Maren Morris and Grey is No. 2 on Top 40 Radio in the U.S. and No.6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The track is currently Top 10 in Australia. 

“The Middle” follows his 2017 hit singles “Get Low” with Liam Payne and “Stay” with Alessia Cara. In 2015, Zedd released “True Colors,” which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart.

Throughout his career, Zedd has worked with a diverse range of artists to create hits, including Hayley Williams on platinum hit “Stay the Night,” which racked up more than 400 million streams, and Selena Gomez on platinum track “I Want You to Know,” which spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Dance / Electronic Songs chart.

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When it comes to hearing the words ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Warming’, people either run for the hills or preach their views to the choir. I fell into neither but instead had a curiosity around a subject I had heard so often about and yet perhaps not enough.

Lead by Leonardo DiCaprio and National Geographic, Before the Flood explores the complexities of climate change in a simple yet fascinating way. It follows Leonardo across various destinations whilst he meets various people. Although this may sound boring and restricted, Before the Flood sheds light on the subject in a way that is never preach-y for its viewers. It instead educates and informs those watching the film of a subject that is usually taboo.

What I loved about Before the Flood was its ability to show the different side of Leonardo that tends to be overshadowed by his Hollywood success. Like most well-known actors and actresses who branch out into other areas, Leonardo’s work around climate change tends to be ridiculed, as is shown briefly in the film.

If there was ever any doubt about Leonardo’s passion, determination and intelligence around the subject, then people need to watch Before the Flood or any number of his speeches for the UN or his interviews with the Pope, NASA or other world leaders in his role as a Messenger of the Peace.

Something I never realised about climate change wasn’t necessarily the difference between whetherit exists or not, but rather whether it was man made or not. These kinds of thoughts occurred often when watching Before the Flood and it was surprising to experience a documentary that allowed my thoughts to wander in the first place.

A highly recommended viewing, Before the Flood allows its audience to sit back and listen but also engage your mind in a way that is both thought-provoking and interesting despite its underlying environmental and political messages.

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