Summary: Charles Loloma was one of the first Native American jewelers to use gold instead of silver and diamonds and other precious gems in addition to turquoise, coral, and shell. His innovative designs, so sculptural in quality, were internationally acclaimed. And his clients included celebrities, monarchs, and presidents. This program examines the work of Charles Loloma-and how the visionary behind...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program examines the pottery of Grace Medicine Flower and her brother Joseph Lone Wolf, members of the renowned Tafoya family of Santa Clara Pueblo. They revived and expanded the traditional forms and techniques of their pre-Columbian ancestors, the Mimbres, to create exquisite works featuring abstract designs and emphasizing sgraffito and polychrome techniques. Together with their father,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Sculptor Allan Houser won international recognition for his depiction of the stoic, powerful figures of his Chiricahua Apache and Navajo families in wood, stone, and metal. This program follows Houser-also acclaimed for his murals and paintings-from quarry to studio, where he sculpts a face in marble, and to the Shidoni Foundry, where he casts a bronze head. The art of Houser, whose father was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: My role as a writer is to create positive myths, says Amin Maalouf. The Lebanese-born novelist and journalist also acknowledges "the material that history gives me." This program features conversations with Maalouf about his imaginative, historically grounded novels and his identity as a Christian Arab living in Paris. On-screen readings by the author present excerpts and themes from Leo...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Unconventional and "paradoxical" are two of the more common words people use to describe R. C. Gorman, an award-winning Navajo painter and printmaker who treats Native American subjects ranging from geometrics to nudes with a distinctly Mexican artistic sensibility. This program films the man The New York Times dubbed "The Picasso of American Indian Art" as he works, capturing his fascination...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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: Amy Tan is the author of several bestselling novels, including the The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and the beloved Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages and became a commercially successful film in 1993. Tan has said in the past that "books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable." In this TEDTalk, she speaks further on the human response...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The first to portray the Native American as "real, not red," Fritz Scholder has been a major influence on an entire generation of Native American artists. This program films Scholder, an artist of Luiseno descent, as he takes his painting Television Indian and his lithograph Film Indian from conception to completion. His unsentimental vision and his technique-a blend of abstract expressionism,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: The abstract geometric paintings of Helen Hardin beautifully illustrate the artist's struggle to depict aspects of her native heritage yet depart from the Santa Fe/Dorothy Dunn model of her predecessors-including her mother, the acclaimed Pablita Velarde. This program takes a close look at the work of a gifted Santa Clara painter and printmaker who acted almost as if she knew that her time to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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: More than just a manufacturer of goods, the craftsperson is an artist who draws on a bountiful lineage to create objects that are as beautiful as they are useful. This three-section program profiles a variety of craft artists to explore the origins, techniques, and significance of that process. 'Memory' provides a historical overview, and then introduces craftspeople whose work is informed by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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: Where do craft practices come from? How are they preserved? And how do today's artists acquire the skills to carry on the handmade tradition? This two-section program visits instructors, apprentices, and the self-taught to survey both the roots and the flourishing branches of American craft. The artists featured in 'Origins' honor African, Native American, and European sources as they pass...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as "The Einstein of the Theater" watches his plays and, away from the footlights, confronts the paradoxical nature of his life. Portions of Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; Right You Are, If You Think You Are; and The Rules of the Game are meticulously...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: For biographer Michael Holroyd, playwright George Bernard Shaw is practically an alter ego. Using archival footage and Holroyd's painstaking detective work, this intriguing program questions the extent to which Shaw's life and art fed upon each other, addressing issues including the effects of the triangle between his father, his mother, and Vandeleur Lee on his plays, as seen in Misalliance...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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: Albert Paley is world-renowned for his metal work in jewelry and large-scale sculpture. This program provides a comprehensive overview of his life and work, including his studies at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, his early work in jewelry design, and more contemporary works such as the Renwick Gates and his decorative architectural sculpture for Bausch & Lomb. Commentary from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Henry Moore's work is so representative of mid-20th-century modernist concerns that a generation of art viewers may be unfamiliar with it. This program facilitates a rediscovery of the brilliant sculptor and draftsman by freshly examining many of his drawings, graphics, and monuments. From his most iconic pieces to his lesser-known works, including the amazingly relevant WWII-era tube shelter...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: One day.I had a vision: I saw the Earth as sculpture. Isamu Noguchi often said that the space around a thing is as important as the thing itself. This program shows Noguchi turning landscapes into participatory works of art as it follows in dramatic detail the struggle to bring his ideas to fruition at Miami's Bayfront Park and at Moere Numa Park, outside Sapporo. His austere sets for Martha...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Since their appearance in Europe some 300 years ago, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights have entranced Western readers with visions of an exotic, magical Middle East. In this program, actor and director Richard E. Grant revisits the book he loved as a child and seeks to understand its persistent hold on the collective imagination. Grant travels to Paris to discover how the Arabist...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: No sooner had Europe declared an end to its Great War than the seeds of new conflict were sewn-in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. With typical global awareness, photography patron and archivist Albert Kahn chose to document the historic changes occurring in the colonial Middle East. This program traces his team's expeditions into Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine as Western powers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: From the immense golden sun of The Weather Project at the Tate Modern to his New York Waterfalls, Olafur Eliasson has created large-scale installations that situate viewers in the ambiguous zones between communal and individual awareness. Filmed over a period of five years, this program follows the Danish-Icelandic artist's work in locations around the world. English-language interviews with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Charming, Mercuria. Mystifying, Overpowering, the list of adjectives used to describe Anish Kapoor's installations and public sculptures seems endless. And yet, as varied as the responses to his work are, Kapoor has precise goals in mind for each piece, and his creative outlook, while certainly wide-ranging, is enriched by specific influences and traditions. This program follows the Indian-born...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009