Summary: This classic tale of revenge and murder depicts a victim lured to his doom by the false promise of riches-in this case, a highly prized cask of vintage wine. Pomerleau portrays both victim and villain with consummate skill as greed is punished with inescapable and eternal imprisonment.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: One of Debussy's impressionistic Estampes, La soiree dans Grenade vividly recalls the landscapes and architecture of Spain and the Far East. Virtuoso pianist Martino Tirimo directs a thrilling master class in this program-enabling the diverse group of students gathered at London's Royal Academy of Music to achieve the atmospheric tonality that Debussy intended. Artists from the United States,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Does science have a monopoly on reason? Not at all, says philosopher and novelist Colin McGinn-reason is the foundation of morality as well. Bill Moyers talks with the author of The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World and Ethics, Evil, and Fiction about his adoption of atheism, his views on the practicalities of religious tolerance, and his belief that rational scrutiny and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program with Bill Moyers examines why America has become an unfriendly culture for families and children, and explores ways to rebuild a web of support for families. Among those featured on the program are Rosalie Streett, Exec. Director of Parent Action (Baltimore, MD); Jill Bradley, Director of Child Care Services, Chicago Housing Authority; and Richard Louv, author of the book...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The Hudson River, the catalyst for the conservation movement of the 19th century and the environmental movement of the 20th, remains a focus of conflicting desires and competing demands. In this Bill Moyers program, Robert Boyle, author of The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History; Hudson Riverkeeper John Cronin; folksinger Pete Seeger, founder of the Clearwater Foundation; Franny...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Lorna Dee Cervantes began writing poetry at the age of eight and founded her own press to publish the works of Mexican-Americans. Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, an English professor and Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, uses her Chinese/Malaysian roots to bring a unique Asian-American perspective to her writing. In this program, Bill Moyers and the two poets discuss topics that revolve around the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Can spirituality, compassion, and emotional honesty survive in the face of oppression and religious fundamentalism? Canadian author Margaret Atwood, author of such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, The Edible Woman, and The Blind Assassin, speaks to Bill Moyers about agnosticism, the hunger for meaning, and the distinction between belief and knowledge.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program summarizes and distills what we have learned about the great religions in this series. Smith's lifetime of experience and study helps him to go beyond the differences between each tradition. He shows how the cultivation of virtues valued by all religions-intelligence, compassion, creativity, truth, beauty, and goodness-can lead to transcendence. In the many faces of God he has...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States for an unprecedented third term, finds his inspiration in common things, transforming the culturally unpoetic into masterpieces of verbal expression. In this program, Bill Moyers and Mr. Pinsky discuss topics including his love of the English language, the pervasive influence of history, and the flourishing of poetry on the Internet. Readings by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program with Bill Moyers focuses on Dallas, TX, to examine how violence is affecting American life. Dallas has the highest crime rate of any American city with a population above 500,000. The program visits a hospital emergency room, citizens who patrol their neighborhoods, and follows a police officer who patrols one of the most dangerous beats in Dallas. Featured in the program are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: The end of World War II brought a desolate European landscape with two countries and two ideologies in an epic face-off. Sir David Frost and noted historian Michael Beschloss examine a multitude of essential topics and events of the period, including the roots of the Cold War, the early challenge to Truman, the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War and the spread of "red scare" paranoia, the arms race...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Other than Freud, no psychologist has been so discussed, critiqued, and, at times, maligned as B. F. Skinner. Using both archival and newer film, this program takes a penetrating look at who Skinner was and what he really said in his 20 books. Skinner’s specialized terminology is introduced in context so students will understand how it was intended to be used and the research that produced it....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1999
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Summary: Emotions deeply color individual human existence and shape all aspects of our interpersonal and intellectual experiences. In this program, animations and fMRI images introduce students to the sub-cortical emotional circuits in the brain and chemical processes that produce emotional responses and contribute to decision making and mental health. Live action sequences, both in laboratory and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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: This program with Bill Moyers examines the crisis within the American court system. In many parts of the country, funding for already burdened and backlogged courts is being reduced. And public defenders and legal aid attorneys are in short supply, leaving the poor without adequate or timely representation. Yet, few politicians have stepped forward with solutions. In this program, a panel of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program with Bill Moyers talks to Americans in San Antonio, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., about why they don't vote, and to citizens who are trying to increase voter registration and turnout. Featured in the program are Father Andrew Greeley, author, priest, and sociologist; and Michael Franti, a rap artist.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the two great religions to come from India. "The historian of religion can find almost anything he wants in India, enacted with intensity. What remains is to carry its insight into everyday life. Smith uncovered the mysteries of multiphonic chanting among Tibetan lamas, previously unknown in the West. Characterizing these chants as "the holiest sound I have ever heard,"...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The effect of Jane Hirshfield's reading is almost transcendental, like the sound of distant echoes in a canyon. "I know that many of my poems don't evoke clapping," she says, "and I want to assure you that I take silence as a high compliment. In this program, Bill Moyers and Ms. Hirshfield discuss topics including her experience as a practitioner of Zen and the relative merits of sound and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Raised with parental expectations that she become a Christian missionary, the teenaged Jeanette Winterson embarked instead upon a defiant journey of self-discovery-sparked by the books she smuggled into her bedroom. In this conversation with Bill Moyers, the author of Sexing the Cherry, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Lighthousekeeping talks about Weight, her new version of the story of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the Martin Amis novel London Fields, a cynical and disjointed society hurtles toward doomsday; in Amis's follow-up book, Time's Arrow, the narrative follows an absurdly reversed course-backward from the Holocaust to purity and innocence. Bill Moyers talks with Martin Amis about humanity's present condition and the ongoing conflict between fundamentalism and secular values.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Experts are increasingly focusing on prevention efforts based on community and family. This documentary looks at two of those efforts. One works with parents addicted to heroin by teaching them how to repair the damage to family wrought by drug abuse, and in spite of it, how to raise strong, resilient children. In a second program, vigilant counselors in Dade County schools watch for kids at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: “Opera is usually full of drama, tragedy, and death. In fact the writer George Bernard Shaw once said that he knew when it was the end of an opera because no one was left alive on stage. But there are also many comic operas, operas that are full of comic characters and situations. According to the great composer Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest comic opera ever written is the subject of today’s...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
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Summary: Can you imagine? That woman went on for pages just about ironing. Standing there ironing! said an unimaginative judge about Tillie Olsen's short story, submitted in a competition for a fellowship at Stanford University. Olsen credits that fellowship, which she won, as the catalyst that transformed her back into a professional writer after 20 years of motherhood. In this interview conducted by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program uses in-depth interviews with two generations of five African families now living in the Denver area to explore the dynamic process that is ethnic identity. Having emigrated from Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, the families bring unique traditions to a shared experience: life in America. The interviews reveal the hopes of the first generation for the second, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006