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English
Description
Women who have developed successful careers in the motion picture industry now share their stories with students. This program profiles Vali Fugulin, a director of short films and documentaries; Braydon Haggardy, a camera assistant specializing in underwater cinematography; and Cynthia Greer, a technician who repairs and maintains movie cameras. Remarks from co-workers and supervisors provide additional layers to the descriptions of each job.
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English
Description
In spite of competition by other media, movies have remained a perennial favorite of American viewing audiences. But what is it like to make them? This program analyzes the film industry from a variety of technical, financial, legal, and business perspectives. Topics explored include marketing and merchandising, financial influences on content, special effects and Hollywood action movies, the domestic versus international marketplace, the role of...
3) Film History
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English
Description
The Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison would definitely be impressed if they could see how far the medium created with the invention of the movie camera has evolved. This program examines the history of film, from its beginnings in the late 19th century to the invention of VCRs. Filmmaking's roots as an entertainment and storytelling medium are examined, along with the emergence of Hollywood, the studio star system, and birth of the talkies. Film...
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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
After the veritable riot that ensued from his 1938 radio directorial effort, "The War of the Worlds," Hollywood recognized the extraordinary genius of Orson Welles. A contract with RKO Studios and full creative control over his masterpiece Citizen Kane soon followed.and then he married Rita Hayworth. This robust program juxtaposes the biographies of Welles and Hayworth. Career pressure led to the end of their marriage: Hayworth's iconic portrayal...
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English
Description
This richly personal documentary uses first-person narration, artwork, film clips, and photographs to trace the life and achievements of this legendary artist and filmmaker. Rare and extensive footage from several important films, including Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, illustrates the use of montage and subject-to-subject camera cuts-techniques developed by Eisenstein that revolutionized filmmaking. His relationships with celebrities...
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English
Description
Full of insight about filmmaking outside Hollywood, this program presents an interview with British writer/director Mike Leigh. The acclaimed filmmaker discusses his highly personal approach to story development and his refusal to categorize his work as "art house" or strictly political. Insisting that he makes films for popular enjoyment, Leigh asserts his artistic mission: to create stories that resonate on a basic, emotional level, featuring characters...
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English
Description
Brando and Kazan: two dynamic forces of heightened realism who used each other to further their aims. This valuable program goes behind the scenes of some of their best-known collaborations-A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront-to illustrate how Kazan was like a father figure to Brando, challenging him to excel. Both men's careers leading up to their first meeting at Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio are highlighted. The program also conveys...
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English
Description
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 Inuit myth.
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English
Description
They helped to instill the mythic qualities of the cowboy in American cinema. This powerhouse program focuses on the friendship of John Wayne and John Ford, beginning with their first meeting in 1928 and spanning their collaboration over 130 pictures, 14 of which were made without a contract-unheard of in 21st-century Hollywood. The program analyzes chiefly their work in Stagecoach and Red River, as well as Fort Apache, one of the first pro-Native...
11) Roger Donaldson
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English
Description
For his first feature, Australian-born Roger Donaldson tried to cast Jack Nicholson. The star was unavailable, but the fledgling director's attempt signified his commitment to the project and his passion for making movies. In this program, Donaldson revisits many of his behind-the-scenes experiences, focusing on The Bounty, Thirteen Days, The Recruit, and other blockbusters. He explains what attracted him to certain projects and the anxiety which...
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English
Description
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 Wilder's Fedora, sequel to his masterpiece Sunset Boulevard...
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English
Description
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 shots, crafting the soundscapes that support the action...
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English
Description
When Tim Supple directed the filming of Twelfth Night, he was a stickler for sticking to the words as the Bard penned them. Everything else, though, was up for grabs as he and screenwriter Andrew Bannerman shifted and intercut scenes and in general translated the play into the all-encompassing language of film. In this program, members of the cast and crew use snippets of the screenplay to demonstrate how scene, setting, character, action, and dialogue...
15) Ivan Reitman
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English
Description
I love making people laugh, says filmmaker Ivan Reitman, summing up the driving force behind his body of work. As the producer of National Lampoon's Animal House and director of numerous comedies in the 1980s and '90s, Reitman has amassed a wealth of filmmaking knowledge and shares elements of it in this program. He explains how many of his projects were developed, describing early concepts and script drafts for Stripes, Ghostbusters, and Twins, as...
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English
Description
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 Taymor's Titus and Kenneth Branagh's musical Love's Labour's...
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English
Description
In this program, artist, filmmaker, and dramatist William Kentridge demonstrates his remarkable filmmaking technique-stop-action animation using photos of charcoal drawings in which he has erased and redrawn scenes in different arrangements-as he works on Stereoscope. Footage from that piece as well as from History of the Main Complaint; Felix in Exile; Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old; Mine; and Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris powerfully...
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English
Description
For the cost of tuition, an independent filmmaker could do a feature-length movie-so why go to film school? Three film students at Columbia and New York Universities, along with NYU alumnus Spike Lee, talk about why school was right for them and how academic experience helps them as filmmakers. The strengths and differences of the two schools are discussed by numerous professors, including Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts;...
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English
Description
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 installations. The locations, characters, and symbols...
20) Adrian Lyne
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English
Description
A far cry from his origins in advertising, the feature films of Adrian Lyne are designed to impact viewers on a primal level. This program spotlights the director in an earnest discussion of his work, revealing what it was like to make Fatal Attraction, 9 1/2 weeks, Unfaithful, and other visually innovative, sexually charged movies. Lyne emphasizes his need for a solid story premise, highlighting the narrative potential he saw in Jacob's Ladder and...