This film about the American humorist – cartoonist and dramatist – was shot at his summer home on Martha’s Vineyard. Feiffer talks about his early life, his obsessive mockery of figures of authority, and the genesis of his famous stock characters, Bernard Mergendeiler and Hughie. He is also seen at work on a cartoon strip.
Pilobolus on Broadway
The Pilobolus dance theatre company founded by Moses Pendleton and Jonathan Wolken is renowned for its originality and irreverence. This studio recording shows off the zany Pilobolus style and includes three pieces choreographed by the company themselves: The Empty Suitor, which is danced to a selection of jazz numbers; Walklyndon, with its atmospheric sound effects; and Day Two, set to music specially composed, arranged and produced by Gordon Johnson.
Paul Cezanne
Cézanne (1839-1906) had not found success when his father died in 1886. Finding himself a rich man, he went to live in seclusion in Provence, disillusioned and resigned to anonymity. There he took to scrutinising the landscape and made over sixty studies of the Mont Ste. Victoire near Aix, the dominating subject of his later work. Shot on location in the South of France, this film shows his work and tells his story, employing a first person narrative to great effect.
Franz Liszt
The Hungarian piano virtuoso Liszt (1811-86) led an illustrious life between Paris, his base as a performer, Weimar, where he was court musical director, composer and champion of new music, and Rome, where he took minor holy orders, entitling him to be called Abbé. Focusing on the end of his life and his last compositions, in particular La Lugubre Gondola, this film shows that he was not just one of the last great Romantics, but that his final compositions range harmonically far into the future.
The Firebird
American choreographer Glen Tetley says of his ballet, set to music by Stravinsky, “I see the Firebird as a symbol of our innermost dreams and longings for freedom and true love, and as a mythological figure representing the struggle between captivity and freedom, between good and evil.” This studio recording was made by the highly-acclaimed dance director Thomas Grimm and features the Danish ballerina Mette Honningen in the title role. A complementary documentary progamme – The Firebird in Rehearsal – is also available.
Piano Variations
Three ballets by Hans van Manen reflect his choreographic preoccupation with relationships between the sexes. Piano Variations II, to Prokofiev’s Sarcasms Op. 17, shows a couple locked in a cycle of acceptance and rejection. In Piano Variation III, to Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes, a man and a woman succumb to a growing attraction. Piano Variation IV, to Etudes by Debussy, shows a man resisting twelve women, before yielding. This studio recording includes an interview with van Manen.
The Hague School
The Dutch painters of The Hague School took the innovative step of leaving their Studios to paint nature in situ. The 1870s and ’80s saw the heyday of the movement, when artists, including Anton Mauve, Jacob Israels, Jacob Marais and Hendrik Mesdag, fled to The Hague to escape the increasing ugliness of urbanisation and to capture in their paintings the beauty of the countryside. This programme explores their work and shows the unique landscape which inspired them.
Ernest Ansermet
This portrait of the great Swiss conductor, Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), draws on a wealth of archive material and the reminiscences of his colleagues and family. As founder and life-long director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, he was instrumental in making the French and Russian repertoire of the twentieth century known to music lovers around the some of Ansermet’s favourite music, played by the orchestra, under Armin Jordan, including pieces by Stravinsky, Debussy and Chabrier. Archive film of Ansermet at work includes footage of him rehearsing and conducting Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G, de Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto, Ravel’s La Valse, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade and Schumann’s Manfred Overture.
Ernst Fuchs
Austrian painter Ernst Fuchs combines realism with fantasy in his work. In this film he is seen in his studio and shows off his magnificent Art Nouveau villa. He talks about his life, his work and his obsessions with womanhood and the symbol of the Sphinx. His belief in the mystical tradition of the Jewish culture, which, like Chagall, he is perpetuating, also emerges.
The Pleasure Gardens
In the late eighteenth century, the gardens at Vauxhall on London’s River Thames were transformed into a place of lavish and exotic entertainment. Windgassen’s innovative film uses Chromakey techniques to recreate the ‘goings on’ in the gardens and includes performances of popular songs of the day by Donald Grobe and Reri Grist. This witty evocation makes full use of the music of the classical composers of the age, such as Arne, Bach, Handel, Hook and Giordani.