After 20 years of a war that encompassed genocide, widespread destruction and the collapse of civil society, Cambodia in 1993 finally initiated a process aimed at establishing democracy. In Isabelle Abric’s documentary, narrator William Shawcross - a veteran UK reporter on Cambodian affairs - explores the climate of fear that over-shadowed the campaign. Khmer Rouge guerrillas claimed that "to vote would be to commit suicide". Both Cambodians and United Nations volunteers were murdered. But the authorities fought back - ingeniously using television and radio soap operas to reassure Cambodians that it was safe to vote, and that only by voting would they ensure democracy. The strategy triumphed when over 90 per cent of the electorate voted, and, the film claims, the Khmer Rouge were driven into exile.

Length : 50’

Language : English

Production Co. : International Broadcasting Trust

Producer/Director : Ani King-Underwood

Set in India, SCIENCE FOR SURVIVAL looks at a people’s movement - spearheaded by ex-nuclear physicist turned activist and ecologist, Vandana Shiva - that has grown up against the perceived threat of ‘reductionist Western science’. In India, argues Vandana Shiva, the introduction of high yielding crop varieties has failed to take women’s knowledge of seeds into account. "A science which does not respect nature’s needs and a development which does not respect people’s needs inevitably threatens survival," she claims. But is there a meeting point, the films asks, between western science and indigenous knowledge? Silk technologist Prabha Shekar claims that, if done sensitively, the fusion of modern science with indigenous knowledge can provide a powerful way forward for poor communities.

Length : 52’

Language : English

Production Co. : Yokshire Television

Producer/Director : Nick Gray

In the vicious civil war that raged between the military and the Sendera Luminos guerrillas in the 1980s in Peru, 15,000 Peruvians were killed and 10,000 kidnapped, or ‘disappeared’. One of the victims was Angel Escobar Jurado, secretary of the Human Rights Commission in the small town of the Huancavelica. ANGEL IS MISSING follows Felicita, Angel’s wife, and Belsa, his daughter, as they set out on a long search to find him. Their investigation seems doomed from the start. "So you’re admitting that it’s impossible to administer the law and stay alive?" they demand of the public prosecutor; "That is so," he replies. Inter-cutting interviews with victims of torture and those in authority, Nick Gray’s film explores Angel’s fate and the options left for his family.

Country : UK

Fifteen years of violent civil war in Mozambique have left a grim legacy - three million refugees, widespread habitat destruction, more than 50,000 elephants slaughtered. SPOILS OF WAR investigates how the war machines of both sides were financed at the expense of the environment. Jan Brackenbart, a former south African government official, describes the vital supply line between South Africa and the right-wing Renamo rebels: out went thousands of elephant tusks through South African ports to lucrative ivory markets in the Far East; in came South African weapons to arm the rebels. With the end of the war, there are plans to revive the tourist industry with a new ‘peace’ park stradding the frontier. But will it take account of the needs of local people? q