Summary: An intimate look inside a living time capsule, this program explores the planning and reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, presenting a day in the working life of the unique artistic institution. The video guides viewers through the facility, painstakingly designed and built to resemble the original Elizabethan playhouse, and offers commentary from the actors, artisans, and educators...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Channel 4 commissioning editor John Richmond, producer Rachel Gesua, director Tim Supple, screenwriter Andrew Bannerman, and members of the cast and crew talk about the business of making a modest TV adaptation of Twelfth Night. Step by step, they walk viewers through scripting; budgeting for talent, crew, cameras, sound, sets, blue screen, lighting, and costuming; casting...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program studies the art that underlies the craft of filmmaking-a painstaking process that culminates in the take, that shared moment of concentration when everything comes together. Twelfth Night director Tim Supple and his first assistant director, production designer, director of photography, costume designer, stunt coordinator, and others offer their insights into set design, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Men playing the stage roles of women is as old as the history of theater; in the tradition of Kabuki, the portrayal of female characters has become a tradition of its own. This program looks at the history of Kabuki and the role of women, and looks particularly at the dynastic development of the onnagata-the female impersonator-and the intricate techniques and details by which a thoroughly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the English Civil War, London's theaters were closed by Parliament, and many were destroyed by Cromwell. During the Restoration, new playhouses, built to stage the probing social comedies of the era, were shaped by changes in English drama, politics, and society. We learn how the Parisian tennis court theaters, attended by the court in exile of Charles II, influenced the new London...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Over the course of a single year at the RSC, 150 actors play 500 different roles, each requiring authentic period costuming and makeup. In this remarkable program, master costumers and makeup artists demonstrate their crafts as expressed in productions of The Tempest, Measure for Measure, and Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. How does cleverly designed clothing help make Pompey more arrogant...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: It can take more than 100 specialists working 8,000 hours to create the set for a single stage production. How is it done? In this extraordinary program, the dynamic process of set design for RSC productions of Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, and Measure for Measure is described by the people who make it all happen. From creating a full-size tree for Benedick to climb that can be removed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The theater familiar to most modern viewers had a lowly medieval birth-in churches, on festival platforms, and in the great halls of the European nobility. Hosted by Professor Richard Beacham of King's College London, this program weaves together elaborate visual tours and the latest scholarly research, surveying the evolution of Elizabethan and Renaissance stage formations and the conventions...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Beginning with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927, this program provides a detailed look inside that most distinctly American of film traditions, the musical comedy. Interviews with dancer Cyd Charisse, famous for her starring roles in MGM musicals, and Hermes Pan, renowned choreographer and collaborator with Fred Astaire, help to illuminate the advent and evolution of the genre. Excerpts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Viewed by many as the preeminent dramatist of our time, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was also an accomplished actor, steeped in the relationship between text and performance. In this program, produced two years prior to his death, he advises a group of actors as they conduct staged readings of scenes from his plays. In addition, Pinter grants a candid and detailed interview, accompanied by his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Producer David Merrick conquered Broadway in 1981 with an adaptation of the movie musical 42nd Street. But soon the biggest hits were arriving from an unexpected source-London. This program illustrates the reshaping of the Broadway musical as the curtain fell on the 20th century and reopened on the 21st. From Stephen Sondheim’s contemplative Sunday in the Park with George to blockbusters like...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: Taking viewers back to the Roaring Twenties, this program examines the Broadway of the Jazz Age-the era of Runnin' Wild, George White Scandals, and Shuffle Along, which helped reopen Broadway's doors to African-American artists. The film also features unique talents like the Marx Brothers, Al Jolson, the Gershwin brothers, and the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. But the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: West Side Story not only brought unconventional subject matter to the musical stage, it ushered in a new breed of director-choreographer and a need for performers who could sing, dance, and act. But by the time Jerome Robbins’ last original musical, Fiddler on the Roof, closed in 1972, the world of Broadway had changed even more radically. Rock ’n’ roll, civil rights, and the Vietnam War took...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1893, the intersection of Broadway and 42nd was nobody's idea of "the crossroads of the world." But by 1913, Flo Ziegfeld had transformed the area into an entertainment mecca. This program tells Ziegfeld's story, introduces many of the era's key figures-such as Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Bert Williams, and George M. Cohan-and culminates with a look at Ziegfeld's 1927 production of Jerome...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Throughout history, musicians and musical works have reflected the fashion, culture, and social attitudes of their times. Music today is more diversified than ever, from the megahits of teen pop stars to the depth and emotionality of gospel choirs to the tones and textures produced by large-scale orchestras. Add to this the unstoppable forces of MySpace, YouTube, the iPod, and a rapidly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Liszt frequently expanded upon the work of previous composers to create new musical forms. His transcription of Verdi's Rigoletto was part of a completely new style of piano composition. In this program, Martino Tirimo guides students toward a mastery of the Rigoletto paraphrase and an understanding of its compositional layers. Assembled at London's Royal Academy of Music, pianists from the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: From the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, this production of Shakespeare's rollicking classic battle of the sexes stars Len Cariou as Petruchio, the strutting male chauvinist suitor who sets out to undermine the spirit of young Katharina. Taped before a live audience, this production is treated in a solidly traditional fashion by British stage director Peter Dews, retaining the integrity of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1982
View online at AVOD
Summary: Ridiculed by some, admired by others, and ignored by no one, Yukio Mishima has remained a paradox in both life and death. This program combines extensive archival footage of Mishima; interviews with colleagues, including his biographer, Henry Scott Stokes, and two of his translators; and readings by actor John Hurt to portray Japan's immensely popular novelist, playwright, actor, and patriot of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Insiders' observations of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, featuring commentary from high-ranking officials, Iraqi civilians, American soldiers and prominent analysts. Examines the U.S. policy decisions surrounding the invasion and their consequences in Iraq, including such issues as low U.S. troop levels, the uncontrolled looting of Baghdad, the purging of...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Magnolia Home Entertainment 2007
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC NO1 available in TC Film Fest DVDs, Call number: DVD TCFF NO
Summary: As You Like It runs the glorious gamut of pastoral romance: disguises and love notes, poetry and brilliant conversation, gentle satire and full-on slapstick, and running throughout it all, passion! This staging-performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599-spotlights Naomi Frederick, Jack Laskey, Laura Rogers, Jamie Parker, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010