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Description
Like the author, Jacques is a discursive talker and a fatalist. Recounting the story of his amorous adventures to his master as they travel from inn to inn, Jacques is continually interrupted by the interference of events, chance encounters, conversational digressions-which, together with the thread of the main story, serve to expound Diderot's central thesis of fatalism.
Description
A look into the brief life (he died at age 37) of the explosive and tormented artist, whose personal alchemy combined wealth and a noble title with physical deformity and psychological degeneracy to create some of the best-known and most vibrant and flamboyant work in the history of French art. Contains explicit nudity and mature themes. (French, 64 minutes)
3) Trotsky
Description
This documentary portrait of one of the key figures of the 20th century - Lenin's companion and Stalin's favorite target - uses nearly 1,500 hitherto unpublished photos and film clips to tell the story of Leon Trotsky's intellectual and political role in the birth of the Soviet Union; his leadership positions before, during, and after the Revolution; the death of Lenin and the exile of Trotsky; the Stalinization of the Soviet Union, the elimination...
Description
Here is a spectacular French production of Racine's great play that treats the classical past with respect while demonstrating its continued, living interest. If it was the playwright's goal to show people as they are-not as they ought to be-then this performance represents French classical drama at its most moving, with equal attention to the language itself, the lavishness of sets and costumes, and the passion and appropriateness of the acting.
5) The Cubans
Description
This documentary takes a look at Cuban and the daily life of Cubans thirty years after the Revolution. Away from Havana, as removed as possible from the promoters of the official Party line on the one hand, and the dissidents on the other, the program seeks to show how ordinary people live out ordinary lives so close to the U.S. and yet so far.
Description
During the Middle Ages, Cluny Abbey dominated western Europe with a power that rivaled the papacy itself. The abbots of Cluny-men of great sanctity and commanding ability-centralized the Benedictine Order into a system in which they directly controlled all of the hundreds of other monasteries. Under their guidance, thousands of monastics joined together in studies and activities that greatly enriched medieval life. As an outgrowth of their efforts,...
Description
Fueled by an unflagging determination, Francois Mitterrand succeeded in revitalizing France's political left and then holding the nation's highest office for fourteen pivotal years. Drawing on interviews with Mitterrand, his former cabinet members, and others, this program sorts out the melange of triumphs, failures, rivalries, and scandals that made up the late president's career in power politics. Archival footage firmly sets the life of the magisterial...
Description
Like most Romantic writers, Musset was his own favorite subject. Here the protagonist is being courted simultaneously by a cynical libertine and a shy Romantic-both of whom are aspects of the author. The Romantic, mistakenly believing himself betrayed by his friend and rival, dies brokenhearted, whereupon the other man rejects Marianne.
Description
During the Middle Ages, Cluny Abbey dominated western Europe with a power that rivaled the papacy itself. The abbots of Cluny-men of great sanctity and commanding ability-centralized the Benedictine Order into a system in which they directly controlled all of the hundreds of other monasteries. Under their guidance, thousands of monastics joined together in studies and activities that greatly enriched medieval life. As an outgrowth of their efforts,...
Description
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 development of a workable alphabet, explains how the mysteries...
Description
This extraordinary documentary presents the psychological case histories of four hostages who were released-a French businessman kidnapped in Paris, two French journalists captured in Lebanon, and a Dutchman hijacked by Moluccans in Holland. Through expert questioning, the hostages reveal why they were seized, how they lived during captivity, what went through their minds at the time, and their feelings toward their captors and fellow hostages-several...
Description
A brilliant program, this thoughtful and analytical quartet of videos probes the moral questions that plague journalists: What is the truth and whose truth is it? Is there such a thing as true objectivity? What does it mean when the same picture can be used to illustrate opposite points of view? What distortions are introduced by the journalist's own ego -- to be first, best, most artistic, most insightful? These programs show how reporters have to...
13) Nanook revisited
Description
Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North created the very genre of film documentary, with its documentation of Nanook the Inuit and the Eskimo traditions which were even then being threatened by the influences of whites. This program revisits the site of Flaherty's filming, and learns that he staged much of what he filmed, sired children to whose future he paid no heed, and is himself now part of Inuit myth.