France télévision
Language
English
Description
The Orsay Museum is the home of a unique collection of art, unrivaled in the world with its tens of thousands of works of art. In December 2016, the museum celebrated its 30th anniversary. Its vitality is apparent: its energy is constantly put to use to stimulate curiosity and to invite the public to want to learn more. This program is an invitation to step into the inner workings of the museum to observe how it lives from day to day and discover...
Language
English
Description
Mimivirus (microbe mimicking virus), published in Nature in 2003 is the first member of a family of unsuspected organisms, some very different from each other, all astonishing different in their size, their genes and their ‘performances’ – one of them has ‘survived’ 30 000 years in the Siberian permafrost. These giant viruses seem to fill the gap between the viral world and the living cell world. Do they represent a new branch of life on...
3) Slumber
Language
English
Description
What is it about slumber that has beguiled artists and viewers alike, down through the centuries? This program focuses mainly on depictions of sleeping women-clothed, partially bared, and totally nude-in paintings, sculptures, engravings, art photos, and film, from the medieval period to mid-20th century. Topics include the latent eroticism and voyeurism inherent in such subject matter, symbolism such as entanglement in bedding, the use of veils as...
Language
English
Description
November 11, 1918. Eleven in the morning. Suddenly, there is silence. The Canadian soldier George L. Price has just fallen, one of the last victims of an unfathomable carnage that kills close to 10 million soldiers, 9 million civilians and leaves 21 million people wounded. How did it come to this? What are the origins of this madness that takes over the world for four long years? That ruins entire countries and brings down several empires? In 1914,...
Language
Français
Description
Under the pretext of holding an improvised rehearsal at Versailles, Moliere gathers his actors and attempts to explain his conception of drama while defining the poetics of a rigorous and innovative dramatic art-and in the process settles some accounts with the troupe of the Hotel de Bourgogne. This play, along with La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes, served as Moliere's response to the severe criticism of his L'Ecole des Femmes. Directed by Georges...
Language
English
Description
When artists worked in the service of the state, they glorified their cities and gave them imposing facades. But as the place of artists in society has matured over the centuries, artistic expression has became increasingly more penetrating. Beginning with the Renaissance, this program describes how visual artists have represented, deconstructed, and reconstructed the cityscape as they dealt with issues of spatial perspective, the delineation of public...
7) Manga world
Language
English
Description
Filmed in Japan, this program pushes beyond the stereotypes to objectively examine the history of manga, how manga are drawn, and manga's influence on Japanese life as illustrated by cosplay bars, where people dress up as their favorite characters; manga kissa, 24/7 manga cafes; and Comicket, the twice-annual comics market that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. The program also introduces viewers to a cross-section of mangaka icons: Vagabond...
8) Dom Juan
Language
Français
Description
A notorious lothario, Dom Juan is the despair of his longsuffering servant, Sganarelle. He carries on his many seductions without a care, deceiving and leaving woman after woman-including the noble Elvire, whose brothers promptly swear vengeance against him. After successfully eluding them, Dom Juan mockingly invites to dinner the statue of a man he had recently killed. When the statue's arrival prompts him to fake a repentant change of heart, an...
9) Playing
Language
English
Description
For a child, play is serious fun. This program will help parents, teachers, caregivers, and students understand the complex functions of play. The relationship to objects, whether toys or everyday things, is explored through dozens of scenes of children interacting in classic situations. Discussion by experts and parents and video footage of children at play offer insights into games of imitation, the development of the imagination, stimulation of...
Language
English
Description
According to some, the concept of landscape originated with the painters of northern Europe and their use of light-a light that models objects and creates successive planes that draw the eye into the distance. This program traces the evolution of the landscape in art, from its function as a stylized setting to its employment as a realistic part of a scene, and the technical challenges of depicting a landscape's constituent parts. Paintings, film clips,...
11) Le Misanthrope
Language
English
Description
Having lost all patience with the flattery and hypocrisy of fashionable society, Alceste has vowed to speak and act only with complete sincerity. Paradoxically, he falls in love with the epitome of all that he despises: the cruel coquette Celimene. Disgusted by his loss in a lawsuit in which justice was on his side, Alceste resolves to abandon society once and for all, and asks Celimene to accompany him. Unfortunately, she is more in love with her...
Language
English
Description
Gorgibus, a provincial bourgeois, moves to Paris in the hopes of marrying his daughter and niece to a pair of young men of good families. Unfortunately, Magdelon and Cathos, enamored of the affectations of Parisian society, reject their suitors for lacking the flamboyant manners they so adore. In retaliation, the suitors pass off their valets as highly fashionable noblemen, who succeed in infatuating the snobbish young ladies-and when the subterfuge...
13) Bathing
Language
English
Description
Throughout early childhood, the ritual of bathing is an important opportunity for children to develop an objective understanding of the body. In this program, mental health specialists and others immerse themselves in the subject of bathing, examining how it bonds parents with their babies and helps shape a child's self-perception. Footage of parents and their children offers additional opportunities to observe how hygiene, culture, and socialization...
14) Double vision
Language
English
Description
From the multiple perspectives in Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage to the multiple soup cans of Andy Warhol, Western art abounds with examples of "double vision." This program looks first at duplication within works of art via mirrors, naturally reflective surfaces, and shadows and then at stylized repetition, whether it be through patterns integral to a work or through patterns that in themselves constitute the work. More esoteric aspects, such...
Language
English
Description
Eager for knowledge, a child is by nature curious about everything. Why, then, is school such an unpleasant place for some children? In this program, teachers, researchers, a psychoanalyst, a neurologist, a neurobiologist, a psychomotor specialist, and others examine the process of learning and the classroom as a learning center. Mastery of reading and writing-the key to unlocking all forms of communication and the entry point to many other exciting...
Language
English
Description
Expressing a dead body, wrote Leon Baptista Alberti, in 1435, "is one of the most difficult things in the world." This program examines the portrayal of death in art, from ancient times to the post-World War II era. Sarcophagi, paintings, sculptures, funerary statuary, news photos, cinema, mixed media, and a living pieta reveal the intricacies and nuances of rendering incidents of natural, accidental, and violent death, including Jesus' crucifixion....
Language
English
Description
This program studies how children continue to transform between the ages of 4 and 11 as they confront and come to terms with fear, adversity, death, and their nascent sexuality. Much attention is paid to the latency period, the intermediate age when boys and girls suddenly stop playing together, crave alone-time, and often clash with their parents. Child psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors discuss the value of saying no and how establishing...
Language
English
Description
Physical metamorphosis as a theme in painting, sculpture, photography, and cinema reveals an ongoing fascination with all manner of transformations and distortions of the human form. Ranging from classical to modern times, this program presents zoomorphism; hybrids from mythology, the hells of Hieronymus Bosch, and the caricatures of Granville; "botanomorphism," people as plants; treatments of body as landscape and landscape as body; the personification...
Language
English
Description
August 27, 1933. In East Prussia, Hitler and Goering, both veterans of the First World War, pay tribute to Marshal von Hindenburg in the vast, excessive setting of the Tannenberg battle memorial. Hitler says "Tannenberg is a symbol. It was here, in 1914, that the destiny of Germany was played out". For Hindenburg, the Battle of Tannenberg is the most important moment of his life, and of the First World War. As the Russians advance into Prussia territory,...
Language
English
Description
The 11th century saw calamities, famine, and war. The literate clergy interpreted these events as confirmation of the predictions in St. John's Book of Revelation. This program depicts this tumultuous time by dramatizing the life of Ademar de Chabannes, a monk who wrote a remarkable chronicle of the early years of the millennium. Through his eyes the whole range of 11th-century life can be seen, with all its hysteria, religious zeal, and visions of...