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Art Political aspects Drama 16th century Drama 17th century Mass media and culture Mass media Political aspects Mass media Social aspects Motion pictures Appreciation Motion pictures Production and direction Vocational guidance United States Popular culture History and criticism Sound Recording and reproducingSummary: Gary Hill's transformative films, performances, and video installations offer resonant philosophic and poetic insights as he explores the tensions that reverberate among electronic media, language, the senses, and the self. In this program, Hill uses a number of his pieces to investigate otherness and ambiguity, dislocation of the senses, the boundary between words and comprehension, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: No storytelling medium is more powerful than the modern movie-but the ability to inspire and entertain by combining words and pictures is hardly a recent phenomenon. This program reveals the age-old roots of the cinematic narrative form and their evolution over the centuries. Beginning in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh, the film points to the Epic of Gilgamesh as one of the earliest...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: With the five-part Cremaster Cycle of films, multi-award-winning artist Matthew Barney invented a densely layered and interconnected sculptural world that surreally combines sports, biology, sexuality, history, and mythology as it organically evolves. In this program, Barney, Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, and others deconstruct the Cycle's filming and subsequent translation into sculptural...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Racism, unemployment, aggression, excess-the USSR's animation studios frequently took aim at these aspects of American culture. Representing five decades of animated Soviet propaganda, this program features short films that blast the United States and its perceived evils. Black and White and Mister Twister extol the absence of bigotry in Soviet society, while Someone Else's Voice portrays jazz...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Just as America envisioned Communist threats during much of the 20th century, the specter of capitalism loomed large in the Soviet Cold War psyche. This program surveys Soviet animated propaganda embodying that fiercely anti-capitalist spirit. Foreshadowing the space race, Interplanetary Revolution depicts a Communist triumph over free-market forces on Mars; China in Flames warns against...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This award-winning documentary explores portrayals of Asian men in American cinema, chronicling the experience of actors who have struggled against Hollywood's ethnic stereotyping and discriminatory practices. The Slanted Screen covers the practice of using Caucasian actors in yellowface makeup, drawing upon a wealth of materials, including 50 rare film clips spanning a century. The program,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North created the very genre of film documentary, with its documentation of Nanook the Inuit and the Eskimo traditions which were even then being threatened by the influences of whites. This program revisits the site of Flaherty's filming, and learns that he staged much of what he filmed, sired children to whose future he paid no heed, and is himself now part of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: What is it like to work in one of the world's most exciting communications industries? Going behind the scenes on the set of the TV show Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, this program provides an inside look at careers in television and film. Interviews with industry professionals provide a clear picture of the training, duties, and job opportunities offered by the positions of producer, assistant...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: With the abyss of the Cultural Revolution far behind it, cinema in the People's Republic of China is as vital and complex as any in the world. This program examines the so-called Fifth and Sixth generations of Chinese filmmakers, exploring their thematic and stylistic differences and their varying approaches to domestic and international markets. It also looks at underground auteurs who use...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Forbidden to depict sex, obscenity, or violence, Iranian filmmakers carefully choose their subjects and practice skillfully indirect, allegorical storytelling. Movies featuring children-filled with intimacy and social commentary that would be harder to realize using adults-have become common. This program examines the evolution and enduring individuality of Iran's film industry while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program studies the art that underlies the craft of filmmaking-a painstaking process that culminates in the take, that shared moment of concentration when everything comes together. Twelfth Night director Tim Supple and his first assistant director, production designer, director of photography, costume designer, stunt coordinator, and others offer their insights into set design, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Computers are changing everything, including filmmaking. This program illustrates the digital postproduction process through numerous editing examples taken from Twelfth Night. Key crew members-a film editor, sound designer, sound recording engineer, digital effects artist, and others-share their expertise with setting the film's pace and rhythm, constructing sequences with different types of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Fascinated with comic books as a boy, Chris Columbus set his sights on working for Marvel or DC-until he realized that making movies provided the same thrill, only more so. This program allows viewers to sit down with the director and hear his recollections of breaking into Hollywood, making hit films, and working with high-caliber talent. Columbus talks about his early screenwriting efforts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Beginning with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, this program provides a detailed look inside that most distinctly American of film traditions, the musical comedy. Interviews with dancer Cyd Charisse, famous for her starring roles in MGM musicals, and Hermes Pan, renowned choreographer and collaborator with Fred Astaire, help to illuminate the advent and evolution of the genre. Excerpts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: After World War II, the wholesomeness of American movies faced a tidal wave of change-from outside, as a growing number of provocative foreign films made their way to the U.S., and from within, as car culture flowered and drive-in theaters sprang up across the country. This program documents the period, from the birth of art house cinema to the ascent of boundary-busting American actors and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Hitler's invasion of Russia and Germany's post-WWII partition inspired a great deal of animated Soviet propaganda. This program presents short films that disparage fascist aggression and America's supposed continuation of it. Fascist Boots and Cinema Circus vilify Hitler and the Nazi invaders; A Lesson Not Learned plays on Russian fears of a reunited, vengeful, and American-supported Germany;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, art historian Briony Fer analyzes the techniques and applications of film montage as they developed in the 1920s in the Soviet Union and Germany. By comparing and contrasting clips from October and Strike; Man with a Movie Camera; and Berlin-Symphony of a Great City, she illustrates how Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Walter Ruttmann employed montage to address the concept...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As an investigative journalist in Austria-Hungary, Billy Wilder espoused ideals that would be the themes in his later films: a play of ambiguity; changes of identity; and a fascination for America. This compassionate program explains how Wilder used these themes to craft Marilyn Monroe's performances in The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. Their joyful complicity is best illustrated in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Completed a year after his death in 1983, this program presents the definitive biography of Spain's renowned Surrealist film maker and iconoclast, Luis Bunuel. Using photographs, film excerpts, and numerous interviews with Bunuel, the video chronicles his early friendships with Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca, the stormy reactions to many of his groundbreaking films, and the influence...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The struggle between heroes and villains and the influence of a higher force are the essence of mythology and resonate within all cultures, providing storytellers with a natural framework for spinning tales. In this program, George Lucas discusses his efforts to tell old myths in new ways, the role of faith in his own life, and the influence of his mentor, Joseph Campbell. Using extensive film...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Since its emergence in the 1960s and early 1970s, video art has been both a hothouse and a sanctuary for radical modes of expression disparaged by the mainstream art community. This program combines film clips and interviews with artists John Wood and Paul Harrison to consider a medium that continues to fly in the face of the fine art tradition and the culture industry. Host Dave Beech argues...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: There's a fine art to selling earlobe lifts, inflatable massage boots, and mini-staircases for arthritic dogs. This ABC News program enters the strange world of A. J. Kubani and his New Jersey-based company, Telebrands-a purveyor of quirky household products showcased in late-night TV infomercials. In a one-on-one interview, Kubani discusses his main strategy: identifying a mundane, irksome...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: How do critics serve the public and the artistic community? Dr. Dwight DeWerth-Pallmeyer, director of the Department of Communication Studies at Widener University, spent several months traveling the country and interviewing prominent commentators-including Good Morning America film reviewer Joel Siegel, Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel, Nashville Scene music critic Bill...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Effortlessly making the leap from stage to cinema, the plays of William Shakespeare have enjoyed decades of popularity in theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. This program combines clips from significant movie productions with an eclectic group of interviews to demonstrate the Bard's uncanny ability to fire the modern imagination-especially through the medium of film. Excerpts from Julie...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006