Documentary News

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 21 May 2012

SBS's weekly programmer picks - 21/5

Here at SBS something we hear a lot is that people find it difficult to navigate their way through our TV schedule to find what they’re interested in. I thought that the best thing I could do to help would be to start up a regular weekly blog pointing out my own personal highlights and tidbits that you may have otherwise missed. My intention is to post every Monday and give SBS doco fans a guide to what’s on that week. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this format and on what you would like to know more about.

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 20 Feb 2012

Coming soon on SBS: Empire and Civilization

Coming up on Wednesday nights are two challenging and provocative series that may get the blood boiling. History, and especially what is or isn’t taught in schools, has been an ideological battleground in Australia. The legacy of the British Empire is one area that is particularly fraught and these TV series let two influential thinkers – British journalist Jeremy Paxman and economic historian Niall Ferguson – push their opinions in this territory.

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Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 13 Dec 2011

Documentary schedule: New year, new look

To our wonderful SBS viewers can I first just say a big thank you for watching in 2011 and for being part of the fantastic SBS community! I hope you found some great documentaries on SBS over the past year (if you have some favourites please let me know what they were in the comments below) and I also hope you get time for a break over Christmas and New Year. The point of this post is to look forward to what’s in store for next year – there’s a lot of really exciting documentary content coming and as you’ll soon discover, the SBS ONE schedule has a new look from January.

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Inside SBS John MacFarlane 25 Nov 2011

SBS launches Television Production Trainee Scheme

Updated March 2012: Following a popular call out earlier this year for a 2nd Assistant Editor on a history documentary, a Research Assistant position for a science documentary has just been announced to start in April. Application Form, Role Description and Guidelines can all be found at the bottom of this page.

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 14 Nov 2011

Crime in focus on SBS TWO

Starting November 25 and continuing into January, Fridays on SBS TWO are going to be your home for true crime.

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 27 Sep 2011

Machine love

In 2006, SBS aired the documentary series The Power of Nightmares as a special event over three consecutive nights. Written and directed by British filmmaker, historian and provocateur Adam Curtis, this series - which drew parallels between the fanaticism of US neocons and Al Qaeda - grew in audience numbers across the three nights to become a (SBS-sized) hit. Curtis now returns with a new series All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace - a dystopian vision of a world modelled on computers where political leadership has been all-but-relinquished.

Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 30 Aug 2011

New York City Season on SBS ONE

In 1999, on a holiday in New York with my brother, we found ourselves on the observation deck of one of the World Trade Center towers. The moment caught me off guard, as there I was staring at that iconic skyline I'd only seen before on screen – a signature of films as diverse as Ghostbusters, Saturday Night Fever and Superman.

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Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 19 Aug 2011

Deepwater Documentaries on SBS ONE

Here at SBS we have been caught off-guard by Australia’s embrace of digital multichannels. But now that Inspector Rex has successfully made SBS TWO his own ("SBS TWOOF", as he calls it) we’ve realised its time for us to embrace it too.

So though we were reluctant to give up our Saturday evening Iron Chef ritual, we give you an even better ritual – Iron Chef every night! (It’s now on at 6.30pm every weeknight on SBS TWO.) Fortunately for those familiar with Iron Chef’s live seafood specials, we haven’t wandered too far astray. Now over four weeks on SBS ONE we’re exploring the weird and wonderful creatures that live beneath the waves.

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Inside SBS Ben Nguyen 26 Jul 2011

Crime spree on SBS

If you are drawn to the drama of true crime stories - like those portrayed in the recent documentary series Behind the Force – then I’d like to bring your attention to a season of four films we have coming up in our Hot Docs slot (Tuesdays 10:05PM SBS ONE). Starting after the Tour de France, each of these films explores the twists and turns behind a murder investigation and ultimately asks important questions about whether justice has really been served.

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Inside SBS John MacFarlane 31 May 2011

Your Questions: A series of fortunate events

This occasional feature exists to provide our audiences with an idea about how things work at SBS, especially with respect to documentaries. This isn't a service to answer specific scheduling or DVD queries, but rather to explain bigger picture decisions and issues. Ask us something!

The next question we're going to answer is this one: How does SBS decide if it's going to get another season of a series (and will the next season of One Born Every Minute be on SBS)?

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Inside SBS John MacFarlane 16 May 2011

Your questions: Repeat after me

This new, occasional feature exists to provide our audiences with an idea about how things work at SBS, especially with respect to documentaries. This isn't a service to answer specific scheduling or DVD queries, but rather to explain bigger picture decisions and issues. Ask us something!

The first question we're going to answer is this one: How you decide when to repeat a documentary (and do you know when Gasland will next screen)?

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