The Miracle of Bali
television series
The Miracle of Bali is a BBC series of cultural documentaries narrated by David Attenborough and first shown in 1969. The series comprises three programs about the culture of Bali. The complete series is available as a special feature on the DVD release of David Attenborough's 1975 series The Tribal Eye.
Episodes
Episode 1. The Midday Sun
The first episode is a general introduction to Bali, its people and their varied arts, with the main focus on Peliatan village, its orchestra and dancers. It focuses first on the gamelan orchestra, before turning to the influence that Walter Spies has had on the younger generation of painters. It concludes with the training of new pre-puberty Legong dancers and their first performance.
Episode 2. Night
This episode covers the animistic rituals and festivals of Bali, officially Hindu, but with origins in ancient ceremonials practised long before Hinduism came to the island. It opens with the spirit possession of children, said to be the origin of the Legong dance; it continues with possession by pigs, horses and even pots; and concludes with the all-important Barong ritual.
“The Miracle of Bali” enters the record as television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Miracle, Bali and television can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7751632. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Miracle of Bali” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.