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Ancient civilizations (New York, N.Y.) Art of Spain Core curriculum video libraries (Cambridge educational (Firm)) Core curriculum video library How art made the world Living stones Living stones 2 Palettes (Film for the Humanities (Firm)) Treasures of Athens and Olympia Treasures of the British MuseumFilter By Series
Ancient civilizations (New York, N.Y.) Art of Spain Core curriculum video libraries (Cambridge educational (Firm)) Core curriculum video library How art made the world Living stones Living stones 2 Palettes (Film for the Humanities (Firm)) Treasures of Athens and Olympia Treasures of the British MuseumSummary: Art may represent a quest for beauty and perfection, but throughout history it has also explored a terrifying realm of doom, decay, and darkness. This program delves into the age-old human compulsion to surround ourselves with images of death. Starting with the Neolithic relics known as the Jericho Skulls, the film identifies a pattern of morbidity and death fetishism covering a broad swathe of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: When did we begin to create images and, more importantly, find tangible meaning in them? How did this conceptual leap lay the groundwork for our modern, visually oriented culture? This program investigates when and why humanity underwent what archaeologists call the "creative explosion" and invented pictorial art. Beginning with the Altamira cave paintings in Spain, the film addresses questions...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Continuing his trek across the Muslim world, art scholar Waldemar Januszczak introduces viewers to masterworks in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia-from the gigantic and surreal mud mosques of Mali; to a rare, 10th-century Egyptian ewer carved out of a single piece of rock crystal; to the inspired urban planning of the ancient city of Isfahan in Iran; to the stunning architecture of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The origins of the Book of Kells are uncertain; it was written and illustrated around the year 800, but the monastery where it originated has not been identified. It contains the Latin text of the four Gospels, with some pages in elaborate color; almost every page has brightly-colored birds and animals, and there are portraits of the four evangelists. This program not only shows but identifies...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program covers the founding of Constantinople as a second Rome, its flowering when the Roman Empire in the West was shattered, its gradual decline under the impact of Normans, Turks, Venetians, and the Crusades, and finally, its fall in 1453. The program describes the history, art, and religious significance of Byzantium, its attempts to restore the Roman Empire, its influence in the West,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Over seven centuries of Islamic rule, Spain became the cultural jewel of Europe. This program illustrates that flowering of art and science, placing the rebirth of classical learning in Andalusian rather than Italian cities. Writer Bettany Hughes speaks with Antonia Almagro of the Spanish National Research Council about the intellectual and aesthetic revelations a visitor from Florence or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The most advanced of the pre-Hispanic peoples of Central America, the Mayans rose to great prominence, only to suddenly decline around the year AD 900. In this program, cultural historian Iain Grain delves into Mayan history, investigating topics such as the Mayans' mastery of mathematics, their extremely hierarchical society, their use of human sacrifice to induce rain, and Mayan art. Many...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is a world-renowned cultural center filled with some of the ancient world's most precious artifacts-including the famed burial mask of King Tutankhamun and the Royal Mummies of Luxor. The museum's collection is so large that it has traditionally shown only half of its holdings at any one time. This program documents an expanded presentation that enables viewers to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: When it comes to depictions of the human form, art history reveals something strange: we prefer images that don't look like us. This program seeks to understand why unrealistic figures are so prominent throughout the evolution of painting and sculpture. Beginning with the Venus of Willendorf, one of the oldest representations of the body ever found, the film explores stimulus-and-response...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: The 20,000-year-old caves of Altamira are among the greatest and the least known of the monuments of prehistory. Closed to visitors to prevent disintegration through pollution, the caves are known only through a replica located in the Archaeological Museum in Madrid. This tour of Altamira shows the cave paintings in their extraordinary power as they depict the daily life of Magdalenian people...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: One of the world's most fascinating museums is by far one of the oldest. But can the paintings there really be called art? This program goes inside the Lascaux cave complex to examine the richest and most beautiful collection of Paleolithic cave drawings in France. Who were the artisans who rendered those arresting images, and how exactly did they do it? Different theories are presented as the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Throughout history, one type of individual has instinctively grasped art's power to persuade and manipulate-and indeed, images have become at least as deadly as swords or guns in the hands of political and military leaders. This program revolves around a basic question: when did art mutate from a vehicle of the imagination into a tool of the ruler? Beginning in Britain, the program looks at the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: This program looks at the British Museum's extraordinary collection of Near Eastern antiquities from Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria, from 5000 BC to the 7th century AD. The Assyrian friezes, reliefs, and statuary provide a stark portrait of a brutal, efficient war machine on which depended the land of Nineveh and Nimrud. The camera also moves to the sites in Iraq where these and other excavations...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The illuminated psalm book of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is a priceless treasure, containing beautiful calligraphy and extremely fine illustrations. Packed with scenes from the Bible and from everyday life-plus all manner of creatures, including bizarre monsters called babewyns-the book provides a mysterious glimpse of life during the Middle Ages. Section one of this charming program discusses how...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: From the creation legend of Panku to the demise of the Han Dynasty, this program traces Chinese history and explores the roots of Chinese culture today. Visit the Great Wall of China as scholars discuss why it remains even today a symbol of oppression, exemplified in the legend of the weeping woman; the Imperial Palace and how it exemplifies Chinese beliefs in harmony; and the Beijing Opera,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Before there was writing, people remembered-the history of the tribe, how to make tools or placate the gods, who owned what. The growth of commerce required written records. This program traces the development of writing, from the earliest Sumerian cuneiform examples and the almost parallel development of hieroglyphics in Egypt, through the evolution of different concepts and shapes to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Discovered by chance in the early 1930s, the ancient city of Mari provides insights into Mesopotamian culture and humankind's first steps toward urbanization. In this program, archaeologists Jean-Claude Margueron and Beatrice Muller-Margueron lead a team in the excavation of Mari's urban center as they work to uncover the successive layers of the third, second, and first towns. Geographic and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Once the Berber town of Volubilis, in modern-day Morocco, was absorbed into the Roman Empire, subsequent construction aimed at Romanizing it. The result was a blend of European and African, imperial and tribal, that brought out some of the best of both worlds. This program tours the ruins of the town to point out key landmarks and explain their primary political purpose: to tightly bind this...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
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
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Summary: Was there a "big bang" in human language and cognitive development, or did speech and abstract thought evolve slowly-perhaps across 200,000 years or so? Surveying prehistoric burial sites and other archaeological finds, including what might be the world's oldest work of art, this program attempts to locate the junction of creativity and communication at which human intelligence was born....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Byzantium: spanning eleven centuries and a major portion of the Old World's landscape, its name stands for power and affluence. In this program, noted journalist Paul Solman discusses a magnificent display of Byzantine art garnered from 117 collections with Harvard professor and art expert Loli Kalavrezou. Paintings, mosaics, carvings, and ceramics facilitate an exploration of Byzantine...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program studies cultural transformations that began in the fifth century BC as Greek art discarded religious functions and moved toward human-centered concerns. Views of Cycladic sculpture and Koiros statues demonstrate an evolving realism, leading to stunning examples of the idealized human figure: the Kritios boy, the Temple of Zeus pediments, Praxiteles' Hermes, and others. With...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Under Muslim rule, Spain became the most advanced, wealthy, and populous country in Europe, with great leaps forward in art, architecture, and many other fields. In this program, art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon travels from Cordoba to Seville and on to Granada as he tells the story of art in Islamic and medieval Spain. Richly designed and decorated buildings such as the Great Mosque in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the many similarities among tribal nations, including a profound respect for nature, myth, and tradition; matriarchal governance; a communal lifestyle; a belief in an afterlife; and the use of pictographs, symbols, and patterns rather than an alphabet-based language. Also featured are brief scenes of re-created warfare: the French and Iroquois vs. the British as a part of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005