Catalog Search Results
48101) William Blake
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English
Description
Ignored during his lifetime, the artist and poet William Blake is now a literary institution. How did this reversal come about? How did a republican, dissident printer, who was considered insane by his contemporaries, become transformed into an icon? The author Peter Ackroyd, Blake's latest biographer, is the guide as this program explores late-Georgian London: a world of political ferment and religious dispute, where the winds of revolution were...
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English
Description
Did the Soviet Union collapse under external pressure or its own weight? What enabled free market forces to assert themselves in China? Is socialism dead, or has it simply evolved? This program addresses these and other questions, focusing on the political, cultural, and economic factors behind the fall of the iron curtain regimes. Outlining the Cultural Revolution and its consequences, the emergence of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and...
48103) Angola: curse of oil
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English
Description
Poverty in Africa reminds us that abundant natural resources don't automatically translate into widespread economic wealth. This program brings home the disturbing reality of daily life in Angola-marked by ramshackle houses, open sewers, and a question that grows louder every day: who benefits from the country's vast oil resources? Outlining the nation's colonial and Cold War traumas, the film examines the civil war between MPLA and UNITA forces and...
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English
Description
The Donana marshland. The oyster beds below Rio. The Caspian's sturgeon fishing grounds. The coral reefs of the South Pacific. This program travels to Spain, Brazil, Iran, and Fiji to observe efforts to mitigate severe ecological damage to these sensitive regions-places primarily spoiled by water pollution, with causes as varied as upland agricultural runoff and the rupture of a mine tailings dam. Solutions such as preservation legislation, riverbank...
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English
Description
During the English Civil War, London's theaters were closed by Parliament, and many were destroyed by Cromwell. During the Restoration, new playhouses, built to stage the probing social comedies of the era, were shaped by changes in English drama, politics, and society. We learn how the Parisian tennis court theaters, attended by the court in exile of Charles II, influenced the new London theaters, particularly Christopher Wren's Theatre Royal. Other...
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English
Description
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 producer, director, assistant director, stunt person, special...
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English
Description
Philip Cumbus is the King of Navarre and Michelle Terry is the Princess of France in this performance of Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599. True to the play's original Renaissance staging and costume, this production is a festive parade of every weapon in the youthful Shakespeare's comic arsenal-excruciating cross-purposes, silly impersonations, drunkenness, bust-ups,...
48108) Richard Wagner
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English
Description
In Lohengrin Wagner links arias with recitatives-unbroken musical continuity is born. In Tristan und Isolde he changes the very role of the orchestra. And in The Ring of the Niebelungen he invents the leitmotif. This program charts the fortunes and innovations of the composer who truly revolutionized opera. Beginning with The Flying Dutchman, the video explores the connections between Wagner's themes and the events in his life that inspired them....
48109) Sustainable communities
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English
Description
What do we mean when we talk about sustainable communities? How can they be created? This program joins architects, urban planners, civic leaders, business owners, and community residents in three separate localities as they respond to the challenge of building a sustainable community. A number of environmental and urban-planning questions are addressed, including: Is the architecture sound, pleasing, and eco-friendly? What transport links does the...
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English
Description
Although genetic modification of plants and animals has been going on since the dawn of agriculture, technological changes of unprecedented scope have taken place in the food industry within the past few decades. This program explores the impact of technology on food production and the development of new and emerging foods. Viewers are introduced to recently devised methods of genetic modification and selective breeding which have expanded both crop...
48111) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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English
Description
With its real-life characters and earthly plot, The Marriage of Figaro is the first modern opera and an example of how Mozart took his inspiration from humanity and not God, as his predecessors had done. This program tracks the meteoric career of perhaps the greatest musical genius ever. Musicologist Andre Tubeuf and Mozart scholars Jean and Brigitte Massin discuss the interplay of composition and personal fortune in the artist's brief life. A varied...
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English
Description
Coffee is second only to oil as the world's most valuable traded commodity, but small-scale producers rarely profit from it. This program reveals the hardship and uncertainty faced by coffee farmers in Guatemala, and how many are taking steps to obtain better prices and build better lives. Analyzing the country's traumatic history and the lingering effects of its civil war, the video sheds light on the reluctance of some citizens to organize for fear...
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English
Description
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex. The wording of the 19th Amendment is as unflinchingly clear as the obstacles to its passage-sexism; cultural, political, and social prejudices; and even timidity on the part of women reluctant to challenge the status quo. This program examines the struggle of the women's suffrage movement and its role in the eventual...
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English
Description
As You Like It runs the glorious gamut of pastoral romance: disguises and love notes, poetry and brilliant conversation, gentle satire and full-on slapstick, and running throughout it all, passion! This staging-performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599-spotlights Naomi Frederick, Jack Laskey, Laura Rogers, Jamie Parker, and Dominic Rowan in the roles of Rosalind, Orlando, Celia, Oliver,...
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English
Description
America's magnificent storyteller Mark Twain has crafted an intriguing and classic tale of mistaken identity, deceit, and murder. At the center of it all is a slave woman who cradle-switches her master's son with her own light-skinned baby...a child, though raised as white, who never fulfills her hopes and dreams for him as he becomes an arrogant and cruel man. Acclaimed actor Ken Howard (Crossing Jordan, The White Shadow) stars as the local lawyer...
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English
Description
Over two decades ago, the original version of this program depicted the effects of wind, waves, and tides on the coastline of southeastern Massachusetts. Revised and updated for the 21st century, this edition takes a new look at the problem of erosion along America's shores, emphasizing the impact of climate change and sea level rise on our coasts. Continuing its case study of Cape Cod and the surrounding region, the film shows how beaches and dunes...
48117) Cinema Asia: India
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English
Description
While northern India's 100-year-old film industry is best known for flamboyant dance sequences and romantic plot lines, its directors have begun to step outside established formulas and explore grittier subject matter. This program surveys the world of Bollywood filmmaking, examining the personalities as well as the commercial and thematic concerns that drive central Asia's answer to Tinseltown. Interviews with directors Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowariker,...
48118) Prescription: Suicide?
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English
Description
Weaving together six stories of real families and real experiences, this program looks at the tragic impact that antidepressant drugs can have on children, teenagers, and their loved ones. The film also considers wider aspects of the ongoing controversy regarding the prescription, administration, and use of these so-called revolutionary medications - asking whether or not physicians and drug manufacturers have adequately studied the risks that newly...
48119) ICT Project Management
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English
Description
How is a good idea for a computer application turned into a tangible, functioning product? This program studies the iPod and iPad app development team at Bjango to show how an Information and Communication Technologies project is successfully managed. The video follows the stages from conception and planning to building, testing, implementing, and evaluating the finished product, looking at the personnel, tools, and methodologies used along the way....
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English
Description
Nanotechnology will likely transform the security and surveillance industries in the near future. Governments, corporations, and even individuals may have highly sophisticated sensors and tracking apparatus at their disposal - keeping tabs on everyone from customers to potential terrorists to aging parents. In this Fred Friendly Seminar moderated by Peabody award-winning correspondent John Hockenberry, hypothetical situations are used to highlight...