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American literature History 20th century American literature History 21st century British literature History 20th century British literature History 21st century Irish literature History 20th century Irish literature History 21st century Literature 20th century Literature 21th century Spanish drama Spanish literatureSummary: This program examines the ramifications of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where Viet Minh revolutionaries defeated French forces and changed the future of Southeast Asia.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
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Summary: This program describes a great musical culture in decline in turn-of-the-century Vienna, and discusses how that decline led to the musical revolution whose reverberations are still felt today. Names like Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg still strike terror in the hearts of many concert-goers. With the help of Simon Rattle, however, we hear in their powerful, brooding music the collapse of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: This program examines 20th-century music from the perspective of its most fundamental force-rhythm. It shows how western orchestral music has freed itself from the domination of melody and explored the richness of musical pulse. Starting with the driving power of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Rattle uses works by Gustav Mahler, Sibelius, and modern composer Steve Reich to show that the labels...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Poet, editor, publisher, printer-Manuel Altolaguirre achieved success in all of these roles, living a life fully committed to Spanish literature. This program documents his career, travels, and romances, focusing on his membership in the Generation of '27, his actions during the Spanish Civil War, and his later years in Latin America. Featuring accounts of Altolaguirre's magazine and book...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Believing that a philosopher's chief aim should be to challenge prejudices and useless traditions, Jose Ortega y Gasset promulgated a worldview based on "reason with life as its foundation." This program depicts the life and accomplishments of the famous Spanish intellectual, from his early studies in turn-of-the-century Malaga to his spectacular funeral in Madrid in 1955. Featuring interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature, Juan Ramon Jimenez was a master of impressionistic language and imagery. This program explores the Spanish poet's life and career with the help of scholarly interviews, archival photographs, and excerpts from Jimenez' writings. Conveying his youthful interest in Romanticism and Symbolism, his subsequent emphasis on color and tonality, and his lifelong...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Believing that a philosopher's chief aim should be to challenge prejudices and useless traditions, Jose Ortega y Gasset promulgated a worldview based on "reason with life as its foundation." This program depicts the life and accomplishments of the famous Spanish intellectual, from his early studies in turn-of-the-century Malaga to his spectacular funeral in Madrid in 1955. Featuring interviews...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Poet, editor, publisher, printer-Manuel Altolaguirre achieved success in all of these roles, living a life fully committed to Spanish literature. This program documents his career, travels, and romances, focusing on his membership in the Generation of '27, his actions during the Spanish Civil War, and his later years in Latin America. Featuring accounts of Altolaguirre's magazine and book...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Literature, Juan Ramon Jimenez was a master of impressionistic language and imagery. This program explores the Spanish poet's life and career with the help of scholarly interviews, archival photographs, and excerpts from Jimenez' writings. Conveying his youthful interest in Romanticism and Symbolism, his subsequent emphasis on color and tonality, and his lifelong...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: No other poet in modern history matched the rhythmic drive and verbal flamboyance of the Welshman, Dylan Thomas, destroyed by alcoholism at age 39. In this program, poet Danne Abse, Thomas's wife Caitlin, and others speak frankly about his dissolute lifestyle and its influence on his writing. Readings from poems including "Return Journey," "Ceremony after a Fire Raid," "Old Garbo," and "Poem in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea. These titles immediately bring to mind the adventurous life of their Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Ernest Hemingway. This program explores his life and literary psyche through the eyes of those who knew him. As the program progresses, the many identities of Hemingway are revealed: husband, journalist, World War I...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: William Golding's power to create contemporary myth is unparalleled in modern literature. In this program, Golding, his daughter, and others discuss his life as a child, father, and naval officer in World War II. They also summarize his views on human nature. Excerpts from several works-including The Inheritors and Pincher Martin-are used to illustrate those who inhabit Golding's fiction as...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Born in Dublin, James Joyce first chose a medical career, then wandered through the singing, acting, and teaching professions before finally settling his fortunes on writing. His most controversial work, Ulysses, shocked early 20th-century readers and was banned in Britain and the U.S. until 1936. In this program, critics and those who knew Joyce trace events in his life through passages in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Few contemporary writers have captured the image of "everyman" as well as American short story writer, poet, and essayist, Raymond Carver. In this program, fellow writers, Carver's wife, and others discuss his lower-middle-class roots in the Northwest as the source of inspiration for his characters and stories. In rare interviews filmed before his death, Carver speaks candidly about his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Orlando. All of these titles, written by novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf, stand at the forefront of 20th-century literature. In this program, those who knew Woolf trace her life and prolific career from her childhood in London to her final days as a victim of mental illness and eventual suicide. As a leading member of the Bloomsbury group,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: The German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer who developed the drama as a social and ideological forum is the subject of this program, in which those who knew him discuss his life and many works. Excerpts from plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Antigone highlight the development of Brecht's austere form of irregular verse....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Certainly one of the most colorful and controversial writers of the 20th century, D. H. Lawrence's humble beginnings as a fragile child in a Nottingham mining town hardly foreshadowed the fame he would acquire through his writing. In this program, Lawrence biographer John Worthen and others who knew the writer discuss the author's life, his many love affairs, and his turbulent marriage to his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program covers Baldwin's life, from his youth in Harlem to later years as an expatriate in Paris to his death in 1987. Interviews with the author, his contemporaries, and critics create an intriguing portrait of Baldwin the man, the writer, and avid civil rights activist. The program explores Baldwin's views on the African-American experience through his writings, which include the novels...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Forster's biographer, friends, and literary critics paint a detailed portrait of this widely successful and accessible author. Forster's humanistic views promoting equality among races, classes, and nationalities are revealed in readings from his masterpiece, A Passage to India. Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread-largely set in Italy-compare repressive middle-class...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Few writers conveyed the spirit of the roaring twenties as accurately as F. Scott Fitzgerald. In this program, writer Jay McInerny, Fitzgerald biographer Scott Donaldson, and others talk about Fitzgerald's life, writing, and marriage to the ill-fated Zelda. Fitzgerald's ascent to the dizzying heights of Paris literary society and later failure as a Hollywood screenwriter are documented. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Relatives, friends, and professional associates examine the life and works of the Russian-born novelist and critic. Nabokov, who began his literary career as a poet, is perhaps best known for his controversial novel, Lolita, and an irreverent critical work on Nikolai Gogol. Writing extensively in both Russian and English, his intricate, stylish literary effects and unorthodox structure are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: No single force has changed American politics more than television-especially the television commercial. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the phenomenon of the "30-second president" and the role of advertising in 20th-century American politics. The video features an interview with Rosser Reeves, an advertising executive who worked on early political television campaigns for Dwight D....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: In 1932, the United States had almost no provision by which the federal government could offer a helping hand to the victims of economic collapse. But with a staggering number of Americans out of work, soup kitchens and private charities were simply overwhelmed. Enter Franklin D. Roosevelt-a leader ready to act, armed with a New Deal for the country. Bill Moyers explores America's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: For African-Americans, the 20th century was fraught with contrasts. There was the glowing promise of equality in the nation's charters and there was the actual bigotry that shadowed and shrank that promise. In this program, Bill Moyers is joined by a distinguished couple who have long spoken for black aspirations-Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Together they re-create, in dramatic dialogue and often...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010