Christian Blackwood

Christian Blackwood

Christian Blackwood was an American film director and cinematographer. He was initially a child actor, then a cinematographer acclaimed for his work in Charlotte Zwerin's Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser. But his major work was as the director of over 80 films, mostly documentaries, over a 25-year career. His most famous films are Observations Under The Volcano and On the Set of Death of a Salesman, behind-the-scenes looks at the creation of movies by John Huston and Volker Schlöndorff from the famous novel and play. The latter film won him the grand prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Christian Blackwood died in 1992 of lung cancer. He was married to film writer, producer and fine art photographer, Carolyn Marks Blackwood. His film archives are stored in the Museum of Modern Art.

  • Title: Christian Blackwood
  • Popularity: 0.9382
  • Known For: Directing
  • Birthday: 1942-07-07
  • Place of Birth: Berlin, Germany
  • Homepage:
  • Also Known As: Christian Schwarzwald
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Christian Blackwood Movies

  • 1946
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    The Murderers Are Among Us

    The Murderers Are Among Us

    6.9 1946 HD

    After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds a traumatized ex-soldier living in her apartment in bombed out Berlin. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

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  • 1969
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    Katja Mann: A Life with Thomas Mann

    Katja Mann: A Life with Thomas Mann

    1 1969 HD

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  • 2003
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    Conversations with Philip Guston

    Conversations with Philip Guston

    1 2003 HD

    Art historians and critics talk with Philip Guston about his ideas and new work of the 1970's. Filmed during the making of "Philip Guston: A Life Lived."

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  • 1984
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    The Soldier's Tale

    The Soldier's Tale

    6.5 1984 HD

    A soldier, returning home from war, chances upon a stranger who offers to buy his violin. The stranger is none other than the devil.

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  • 1980
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    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    1 1980 HD

    When Brooklyn's Kings Theater -- one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area -- closed its doors in 1977, the neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.

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  • 1978
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    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    7.4 1978 HD

    Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.

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  • 1986
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    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    1 1986 HD

    Playwright Arthur Miller, director Volker Schlöndorff and actor Dustin Hoffman are seen creating the Roxbury Productions and Punch Productions teleplay Death of a Salesman (1985).

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  • 1986
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    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    1 1986 HD

    Playwright Arthur Miller, director Volker Schlöndorff and actor Dustin Hoffman are seen creating the Roxbury Productions and Punch Productions teleplay Death of a Salesman (1985).

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  • 1984
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    Observations Under the Volcano

    Observations Under the Volcano

    2 1984 HD

    Documentary on the making of the movie Under the Volcano.

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  • 1984
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    Observations Under the Volcano

    Observations Under the Volcano

    2 1984 HD

    Documentary on the making of the movie Under the Volcano.

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  • 1984
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    Observations Under the Volcano

    Observations Under the Volcano

    2 1984 HD

    Documentary on the making of the movie Under the Volcano.

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  • 1987
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    Signed: Lino Brocka

    Signed: Lino Brocka

    3.75 1987 HD

    Documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood profiles controversial Filipino director Lino Brocka, detailing his rags-to-riches rise in the mainstream film industry of the Philippines. Primarily using interviews with the effusive director himself, Blackwood allows Brocka to describe, in his own terms, the common thematic threads tying together his work, from his own homosexuality to the political repression suffered by Filipinos at the hands of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial government.

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  • 1987
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    Signed: Lino Brocka

    Signed: Lino Brocka

    3.75 1987 HD

    Documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood profiles controversial Filipino director Lino Brocka, detailing his rags-to-riches rise in the mainstream film industry of the Philippines. Primarily using interviews with the effusive director himself, Blackwood allows Brocka to describe, in his own terms, the common thematic threads tying together his work, from his own homosexuality to the political repression suffered by Filipinos at the hands of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial government.

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  • 1970
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    Jim Dine: London

    Jim Dine: London

    1 1970 HD

    A concentrated look at one of America's early Pop artists, the film was made during Dine's 4-year residency in London. Actively at work in his studio on several large collages, one can clearly see Dine's masterful balance of artistic freedom and control, as he adds and modifies illusionistic images, written words and real life objects to his compositions. The artist talks about his connections to literature and about his frequent collaboration with poets; he also discusses his own poetry, some of which he reads for the camera. The parks and streets of London are the setting for Dine's frank comments about his voluntary exile in that city. On one walk, Dine encounters Gilbert and George as they endlessly repeat "Underneath the Arches" in bronze make-up, their earliest performance piece.

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  • 1982
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    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    1 1982 HD

    Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.

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  • 1982
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    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    1 1982 HD

    Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.

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  • 1978
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    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    7.4 1978 HD

    Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.

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  • 1978
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    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    7.4 1978 HD

    Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.

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  • 1978
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    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

    7.4 1978 HD

    Documentary examining the life and career of producer/director Roger Corman. Clips from his films and interviews with actors and crew members who have worked with him are featured.

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  • 1969
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    Harlem Theater

    Harlem Theater

    1 1969 HD

    HARLEM, USA: in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, German filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn turned his 16mm camera on the New Lafayette Theatre as its players rehearsed scenes, ran public workshops and conducted exercises in uptown Manhattan. New Lafayette (or NLT) had been founded by actor-director Robert Macbeth the previous year, with the aim of producing theater for black people, by black people, to reflect the experiences and vernacular of the Harlem community. Within the Black Arts Movement, NLT would become a significant institution: it published the journal Black Theatre, and employed a host of talents – including the Black Panthers’ Minister of Culture, Ed Bullins, and the great pianist Junior Mance, both of whom appear in Wildenhahn’s film as resident collaborators.

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  • 1970
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    Summer in the City

    Summer in the City

    1 1970 HD

    German writer Uwe Johnson lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside where he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings-on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film for broadcast featuring interviews with various neighborhood characters.

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  • 1970
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    Sex-Business: Made in Pasing

    Sex-Business: Made in Pasing

    4.4 1970 HD

    Documentary film about the successful erotic film producer and author Alois Brummer. Documentary filmmaker Hans Jürgen Syberberg accompanies Brummer for six days in his daily business during the shooting of Brummer's film “Graf Porno und die liebesdurstigen Töchter” (Count Porno and the Love-Thirsty Daughters). In addition to Brummer, his employees and actors also have their say.

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  • 1982
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    Philip Guston: A Life Lived

    Philip Guston: A Life Lived

    1 1982 HD

    Late in life, the artist looks back over a career that originated in social realism during the '30s, moved to the center of Abstract Expressionism, and culminated in a return to figuration. Filmed at his retrospective in San Francisco in 1980 and at his Woodstock studio, where Guston is seen painting, the artist speaks candidly about his philosophy of painting and the psychological motivation for his work.

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  • 1970
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    San Domingo

    San Domingo

    5.3 1970 HD

    This surrealistic experimental film finds the son of a young nobleman staying with hash-smoking hippies in a seamy section of Munich. He falls for a hippie girl who is involved in shaking down the young man's parents for money. She falls in love with the young man but the group continues to extract money from the parents in return for their wayward son. When he discovers the shakedown, his rage leads to tragedy for the star-crossed lovers.

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  • 1989
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    Motel

    Motel

    6.5 1989 HD

    Documentary looking at the culture of three motels and their owners who remain untouched by homogenization and corporatism, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Florence, Arizona; and the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. Everyone has an unusual story to tell.

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  • 1989
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    Motel

    Motel

    6.5 1989 HD

    Documentary looking at the culture of three motels and their owners who remain untouched by homogenization and corporatism, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Florence, Arizona; and the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. Everyone has an unusual story to tell.

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  • 1981
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    Edith Head

    Edith Head

    1 1981 HD

    A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.

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  • 1981
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    Edith Head

    Edith Head

    1 1981 HD

    A light-hearted, toe-tapping portrait of the well-known 8 Oscar winning Hollywood costume designer filmed in her opulent house and garden. Edith Head presents some of her famous designs using glamorous models to impersonate Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. They move to the music of the films for which she was the designer as Head recalls the times and places that served as inspiration for the famed looks.

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  • 1982
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    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story

    1 1982 HD

    Documentary profile of singer-actress Eartha Kitt.

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  • 1976
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    Hollywood's Musical Moods

    Hollywood's Musical Moods

    1 1976 HD

    In the silent film era, movies were never really silent. In the background of films that made figures like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton into cultural icons, were the musical giants whose compositions defined the very films that captivated a generation of movie-goers. Arthur Kleiner converses with the still-living legends from that bygone golden age of cinema.

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  • 1976
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    Hollywood's Musical Moods

    Hollywood's Musical Moods

    1 1976 HD

    In the silent film era, movies were never really silent. In the background of films that made figures like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton into cultural icons, were the musical giants whose compositions defined the very films that captivated a generation of movie-goers. Arthur Kleiner converses with the still-living legends from that bygone golden age of cinema.

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  • 1968
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    Monk

    Monk

    5 1968 HD

    Part one of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York and Atlanta. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley.

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  • 1968
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    Monk

    Monk

    5 1968 HD

    Part one of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York and Atlanta. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley.

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  • 1969
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    Christo: Wrapped Coast

    Christo: Wrapped Coast

    1 1969 HD

    In 1969, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped 2.5 kilometers of coast and cliffs up to 26 metres along the coast of Little Bay, in Southeast Sydney, Australia.

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  • 1985
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    Aznavour: Breaking America

    Aznavour: Breaking America

    1 1985 HD

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  • 1987
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    Signed: Lino Brocka

    Signed: Lino Brocka

    3.75 1987 HD

    Documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood profiles controversial Filipino director Lino Brocka, detailing his rags-to-riches rise in the mainstream film industry of the Philippines. Primarily using interviews with the effusive director himself, Blackwood allows Brocka to describe, in his own terms, the common thematic threads tying together his work, from his own homosexuality to the political repression suffered by Filipinos at the hands of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial government.

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  • 1987
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    Signed: Lino Brocka

    Signed: Lino Brocka

    3.75 1987 HD

    Documentary filmmaker Christian Blackwood profiles controversial Filipino director Lino Brocka, detailing his rags-to-riches rise in the mainstream film industry of the Philippines. Primarily using interviews with the effusive director himself, Blackwood allows Brocka to describe, in his own terms, the common thematic threads tying together his work, from his own homosexuality to the political repression suffered by Filipinos at the hands of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial government.

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  • 1980
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    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    1 1980 HD

    When Brooklyn's Kings Theater -- one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area -- closed its doors in 1977, the neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.

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  • 1980
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    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    Memoirs of a Movie Palace: The Kings of Flatbush

    1 1980 HD

    When Brooklyn's Kings Theater -- one of five "Wonder Theaters" in the New York area -- closed its doors in 1977, the neighborhood mourned. In a series of interviews, local aficionados of the palace as well as its projectionist, its organist, and former employees, reminisce about the Kings and its charmed days gone by.

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  • 1976
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    Yesterday's Witness

    Yesterday's Witness

    1 1976 HD

    For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.

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  • 1970
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    Summer in the City

    Summer in the City

    1 1970 HD

    German writer Uwe Johnson lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside where he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings-on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film for broadcast featuring interviews with various neighborhood characters.

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  • 1989
    imgMovies

    Motel

    Motel

    6.5 1989 HD

    Documentary looking at the culture of three motels and their owners who remain untouched by homogenization and corporatism, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Florence, Arizona; and the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. Everyone has an unusual story to tell.

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  • 1990
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    Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

    Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

    8 1990 HD

    "Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies. Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society.

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  • 1968
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    Monk

    Monk

    5 1968 HD

    Part one of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. In 1968, we had the opportunity to spend time with Thelonious Monk and his musicians, following him in New York and Atlanta. In New York his quartet plays at the Village Vanguard and at recording sessions for Columbia Records; in Atlanta they appear at a Jazz Festival organized by George Wein. The members of the quartet were Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley.

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  • 1968
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    Monk in Europe

    Monk in Europe

    1 1968 HD

    Part two of a two-part portrait of the great Jazz composer and pianist. On his European tour his quartet was joined by Ray Copeland, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, and Johnny Griffin. They traveled as part of George Wein’s Newport Jazz Festival road company to London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Mainz, and Rotterdam.

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  • 1965
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    Not Reconciled

    Not Reconciled

    5.9 1965 HD

    A story about the continuity and collapse of history, the power of suppression, and the terror of reconciliation; loyalty, treason and revenge. In a brave cinematic game, Heinrich Böll’s story Billiards at Half-Past Nine is split up into cracks, blocks, breaks and sudden turns, as the life story of a German family, covering numerous generations, is propelled forward.

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  • 1976
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    Yesterday's Witness

    Yesterday's Witness

    1 1976 HD

    For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.

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  • 1970
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    David Hockney's Diaries

    David Hockney's Diaries

    1 1970 HD

    Renowned English painter, David Hockney, takes us on a visual journey as he shares with us his treasured photo diaries. Consisting of polaroids Hockney has been collecting since 1967, the diaries act as both a tribute and an artist's notebook, often times including images the painter used for his large canvas works. A fine example of Hockney's pictorial inspiration are several photographs of castles he took during a boat trip down the Rhine that were later adapted for a suite of etchings to accompany six Grimm's fairy tales. Seeing his projects long before the work begins, Hockney used his camera to slow time and capture images that would go on to boast his unique style of realism. In David Hockney's Diaries the artist is seen at work on a large canvas of his friends Celia and Ossie Clark and their cat Percy, commissioned by the Tate Gallery.

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  • 1967
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    Hans Werner Henze: Summer of 1966

    Hans Werner Henze: Summer of 1966

    1 1967 HD

    Hans Werner Henze: Summer of 1966 follows the acclaimed German composer to Salzburg and Berlin, documenting his rehearsals for his now famous opera, "The Bassarids". Based on a fragment of a Euripides play, the opera was a widely celebrated point in Henze's career, capturing his compositional style and progressive musical attitudes. Celebrating his 40th birthday at the time, Henze was then living in Rome and enjoying a growing reputation all over Western Europe as a conductor and composer.

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  • 1972
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    Larry Rivers

    Larry Rivers

    1 1972 HD

    In free-ranging conversations as he works in his studio, Rivers oppositional nature and independent mind are apparent. He reflects on his past painting and its critical reception, and speculates on his place in art history. Like his art, Larry Rivers is the opposite of self-contained. Alive, gregarious, fraught with feeling, he has always been drawn to poetry and to jazz. His own saxophone playing appears to be an extension of the expressive and experimental character found in his paintings, drawings, constructions, and video works. Rivers is shown at work in his New York studio. He examines a series of his Dutch Masters paintings, inspired by the standard cigar-box image which recalls Rembrandt, as well as several of his iconoclastic portraits. Among these are his naked renditions of the late poet and critic Frank O'Hara and the bold double images of his former mother-in-law, Berdie. He died in 2002.

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  • 1972
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    Isamu Noguchi

    Isamu Noguchi

    1 1972 HD

    Isamu Noguchi talks about his career in this documentary featuring Ezra Pound.

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  • 1986
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    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    Private Conversations: On the Set of ‘Death of a Salesman’

    1 1986 HD

    Playwright Arthur Miller, director Volker Schlöndorff and actor Dustin Hoffman are seen creating the Roxbury Productions and Punch Productions teleplay Death of a Salesman (1985).

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  • 1970
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    Juilliard

    Juilliard

    1 1970 HD

    A visit in 1971 to the classrooms of the Juilliard School, New York's prominent music academy, introducing some of the talented students and many of the brilliant faculty. Through interviews and observations this film explores the history of the school and showcases the musical curriculum, which the students throw themselves into with rigor and passion. Encouraged by their professors the budding musicians learn to study, analyze and approach a piece with curiosity and determination. "Juilliard" serves as a meaningful documentation of the school that was founded in 1905 as the Institute of Musical Art before becoming The Juilliard School of Music in 1962.

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  • 1951
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    German Film Award

    German Film Award

    6 1951 HD

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  • 1970
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    German Film Award

    German Film Award

    6.9 1970 HD

    Since its 1988 premiere, this critically acclaimed documentary series has presented hundreds of films that put a human face on contemporary social issues by relating a compelling story in an intimate fashion. "POV" has won virtually every major film and broadcasting award available, including 38 Emmys, 22 Peabody Awards and three Oscars.

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