Jaap Drupsteen adapted a successful music theatre production, using a wide range of special effects and computer graphics, to create this extraordinary video fantasy. A series of scenes, as intriguing and illogical as those in dreams, make up a dramatic story-line which involves characters every bit as strange as those who inhabit the plays of Samuel Beckett. Music forms an integral part of the piece, creating and underlining tensions between the characters.
Symphony in D Workshop
A documentary introduction to Symphony in D shows Jirí Kylián rehearsing the work with students from The Royal Ballet School in London and includes an interview in which the Czech choreographer talks about his exile from his homeland and his career in dance.
Julio Gonzalez
A friend and collaborator of Picasso, admired in the art world of Paris in the 1920s, the Catalan sculptor González (1866-1942) remained detached from the luminaries around him. Adapting the metal-working techniques learned in his youth and welding skills acquired as an employee of Renault, he created a style of abstract metal sculpture seminal to the development of modern art. This film seeks out witnesses to his life and work in Paris, Barcelona and on the Riviera.
Eduardo Chillida
This profile is an exploration of the life and work of the pre-eminent Basque sculptor. It uses Chillida’s own words as a commentary to approach the inherent drama within his sculptures and their breathtaking settings. Chillida is seen forging a massive work in iron as well as creating smaller pieces.
Shirley Verrett
The cameras followed Shirley Verrett during the course of a year to capture a glimpse into the life of one of opera’s great stars. She is seen rehearsing with Domingo, performing at top opera houses in roles she has made her own – Iphigénie, Tosca, Dalila, Carmen – and talking on subjects ranging from her religious upbringing and experiences of being black, to her health, diet, style and family. She performs blues and gospel numbers specially for the programme.
Cassily Kandinsky
Russian-born artist Kandinsky (1866-1944), one of the most prominent pioneers of abstract art in the early twentieth century, was widely influential both in Germany, where he taught at the Bauhaus in the twenties, and in France, where he settled in 1933. Extensive filming at a major Kandinsky retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou and at the Lenbachhaus in Munich forms the basis for this rich visual reappraisal of his work, which also draws on his essays, considered classics of artists’ writing.
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia (1907-90), one of Italy’s foremost modern novelists, talks revealingly about his long career, his experience of Fascism, and about women and sex – concerns that lie at the heart of his writing. Filmed in Rome and on Capri, the programme focuses on his novel 1934, and includes contributions from writer Dacia Maraini and film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as readings from his work.
Ben Nicholson
Together with Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) shook English art out of the doldrums of the 1930s, helping to bring it back into the mainstream of international development with his uncompromisingly abstract art. This survey of his life and work includes personal observations and reminiscences from artists, friends and associates.
Symphonie Fantastique
In this live recording from the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Haitink conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique Op. 14. Sub-titled Episodes in the Life of an Artist by the composer, this brilliant psychological fantasy in music is thought to have been inspired by his passion for the famous Irish actress Harriet Smithson.
Ken Russell’s View of The Planets, Op.32
The Planets by Gustav Holst is one of the best-loved pieces of twentieth-century music. Ken Russell has taken a brilliant recording of this work, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, and illustrated the music with passages from a mass of documentary material. In true Russell style, his view of The Planets is provocative, entertaining and wonderfully watchable.