Istanbul

PBS Nova - Hagia Sophia: Istanbul's Ancient Mystery (2015)
HDTV | 1280x720 | .MKV/AVC @ 2864 Kbps | 53mn 10s | Audio: English AC3 384 kbps, 2 channels | Subs: None | 1.23 GiB
Genre: Documentary

Whether serving as Christian church, Islamic mosque, or secular museum, Hagia Sophia and its saring dome have inspired reverence and awe. For 800 years, it was the largest enclosed building in the world—the Statue of Liberty can fit beneath its dome with room to spare. How has it survived its location on one of the world’s most active seismic faults, which has inflicted a dozen devastating earthquakes since it was built in 537? As Istanbul braces for the next big quake, a team of architects and engineers is urgently investigating Hagia Sophia’s seismic secrets. Follow engineers as they build a massive 8-ton model of the building’s core structure, place it on a motorized shake table, and hit it with a series of simulated quakes, pushing it collapse—a fate that the team is determined to avoid with the real building.

Adventurer James Brennan returns to Istanbul five years after being ejected under suspicion of diamond smuggling. In flashback, he recalls his last days there, his torrid love affair with Stephanie Bauer, the efforts of shady characters to obtain a strange ornament he received from a friend, and Stephanie's disappearance during a fire. Now that Brennan is back, Stephanie (or her double) reappears, and there's still the question of where the supposedly smuggled diamonds are…

Ucan Daireler Istanbulda (Flying Saucers Over Istanbul) is a Turkish sci-fi comedy from 1955. It's recommended for fans of old Turkish movies and psychotronic cult films. It has a quite different feel than the more familiar superhero films from the country like Kilink Istanbulda, etc. It more closely resembles something like Abbot and Costello On Mars, with the addition of belly dancing. There are leotard-clad female aliens, a Plan 9-style spaceship, a Marilyn Monroe imitator. and a robot made out of a cardboard box.

Award-winning director Fatih Akin takes us on a journey through Istanbul, the city that bridges Europe and Asia, and challenges familiar notions of east and west. He looks at the vibrant musical scene which includes traditional Turkish music plus rock and hip-hop.