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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Promoted in its time as a celebration—or at least a fully informed study—of foreign ethnicities and customs, the 1900 World’s Fair is recognized today as a spectacle of Eurocentric myopia. This program lays bare that conceit as it interweaves archival photographs, film clips, and posters from the Fair with commentary from renowned art historians. Offerings from museum collections across the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Its influences include comic books, B-movies, rock 'n' roll, surfing, hot rods, and Cold War imagery. Art historians call it Pop Surrealism; practitioners call it Lowbrow. With dozens of artist and gallery curator interviews, along with hundreds of examples, this program chronicles Lowbrow's evolution, its iconoclasm and often antagonistic relation to abstract expressionism, as well as the rise...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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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: Where do abstract painters and fashion designers find their muses? To what extent does the creative process differ between video artists, sculptors, and fine art embroiderers? How do illustrators and mixed media artists handle the business side of their work? Using capsule interviews with contemporary figures on the U.K. visual arts scene, this program draws viewers into the studio space and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Praised by the New York Times at the time of her death as one of the world's foremost sculptors, Barbara Hepworth left a legacy of creations that continues to inspire new generations of artists. This program reveals the beauty and the power of her sculptures through footage of her naturalistic carvings of the 1920s, her increasingly abstract sculptures of the '30s, her ambitious postwar works,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Amid the clamor of business and technological advances, a reverence for age, custom, and craftsmanship endures in Japan. There, the title of "Living National Treasure" is bestowed on some seventy master artisans and performers who are charged with passing on the country's cultural heritage to future generations. This program takes viewers into the studios, workshops, and homes of the remarkable...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: n the villages of sub-Saharan Africa where traditions are still strong, art is an integral part of daily life. This illuminating program examines the symbolism, aesthetics, and functionality of African art through the vast region’s sculpture, masks, architecture, ornaments, clothing, and utensils. In addition, indigenous African religious beliefs are explored through rituals—a spiritual form of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Belgium's Tervuren Museum contains the world's largest collection of Central African art, which consists of approximately 250,000 pieces. Noted journalist Paul Solman discusses the power and the true price of this collection with art historian Ramona Austin and journalist/author Adam Hochschild. In the immense Congo region, there are more than 250 different cultures, so there is a broad range...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Who actually built the pyramids? What innovations enabled the ancient Egyptians to practice mummification? Why did they select certain treasures for their journeys to the afterlife? This classic program travels to a land of mystery and marvel as archaeologists investigate the secrets of long-lost Pharaonic culture and technology. Viewers encounter the sophisticated methods used to construct the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: With the grandeur and geometric sophistication of the Alhambra as a powerful opening example, this program looks at Islamic culture in southern Spain following the Berber invasion of 711. Scholar Bettany Hughes talks with Professor Antonio Fernandez-Puertas of the University of Granada, who has studied Nasrid art and architecture for 40 years; with Professor Lauro Olmo Encisco of Alcala...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Concerned primarily with the sociopolitical history of art, scholar T. J. Clark has, in the past, come into conflict with critic Michael Fried, a proponent of aesthetically based views of painting and sculpture. This program documents a discussion of two Jackson Pollock works in which Clark and Fried strive for common ground. Studying Lavender Mist, both commentators remark on the compressed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Historically, the arts in Africa were largely communal and unrecorded. But much has changed over the past century, and this program takes a look at art in sub-Saharan Africa as it exists today through profiles of Senegalese rap groups Alif and Wageble and the rap collective Fight and Forget, who use their music as a form of political activism; Senegalese sculptor Babacar Niang, whose workshop...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: The idea of using art to explore the human condition rather than the divine was a significant departure from the predominantly religious artwork that preceded this secular revelation. In this program, Matthew Collings seeks the first glimmerings of humanist art in the Italian Renaissance-particularly in the works of Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci. He also contrasts two 18th-century artists who,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009