TV

• Portrait of François Truffaut
This excerpt from Serge Leroy’s 1961 documentary François Truffaut shows the newly celebrated filmmaker discussing his influences and beginnings along with Les Mistons and The 400 Blows.

from the Criterion DVD

Portrait of François Truffaut is a a twenty-five minute excerpt from a 1961 documentary by Serge Leroy, covering the director’s early years. Truffaut does plenty of talking about the creative choices and influences that went into his first films, while fidgeting restlessly in a chair before the camera, with overlong clips from his first few films mixed in.

from DVDBreakdown.comRead More »

A famous French documentary director has chosen to match his talents with those of a powerful subject who talks on his youth, his formative years, his life and work. Reichenbach on Welles on Welles, one might say.

These recollections help to explain something of the creative processes of film making, comparing the behaviour of Welles the director and Welles the man. Orson at home, Orson interviewed at the Cannes Festival, Orson shooting a scene with Jeanne Moreau… Orson in portrait. No less. (MIFF)Read More »

Sean Axmaker, Keyframe wrote:
When handed the raw materials from an unfinished documentary about Elmyr de Hory, an art forger whose life was being written up by biographer Clifford Irving, Orson Welles took the opportunity to make something far beyond the concept of the traditional documentary. F for Fake has been called the Orson Welles’ first essay film, a true enough statement if you limit the accounting to feature films, but he had been doing short-form non-fiction since 1955, when he made Around the World with Orson Welles (a.k.a. Around the World) for British television.Read More »

Making its debut with Romeo and Juliet on 3 December 1978, and concluding nearly seven years later with Titus Andronicus on 27 April 1985, the BBC Television Shakespeare project was the single most ambitious attempt at bringing the Bard of Avon to the small screen, both at the time and to date.

Producer Cedric Messina was already an experienced producer of one-off television Shakespeare presentations, and was thus ideally qualified to present the BBC with a daunting but nonetheless enticingly simple proposition: a series of adaptations, staged specifically for television, of all 36 First Folio plays, plus Pericles (The Two Noble Kinsmen was considered primarily John Fletcher’s work, and the legitimacy of Edward III was still being debated).Read More »

Footage from Shylock’s monologue filmed by Orson Welles in connection with his unfinished film The Merchant of Venice.
According to the accompanying notes by Hervé Pichard, head of restoration at La Cinémathèque Francaise, the rushes were restored in 2025 by the film museum. The 4K work was carried out using a 16mm double-strip work print (Eastmancolor film, 1969) deposited in its collections by Welles’ longtime companion and collaborator Oja Kodar.Read More »

Alexander Kluge: Jeder Zirkus hat ein Ende
10vor11 Kulturmagazin, 25./26.6.18, RTL

Die 1509. und zugleich letzte Ausgabe des Kulturmagazins 10 VOR 11. Zum Abschied mit Überlänge. Mit Hannelore Hoger, Thomas Gottschalk, Friedrich Kittler, Dirk Baecker, Andrea Komlosy, Jürgen Kocka, Olli Schulz, Helge Schneider, Michel Serres, Niklas Luhmann, Heiner Müller, Hans-Thomas Janka, Andrea Kunder, David Gross (Nobelpreisträger), Rainer Weiss (Nobelpreisträger), Karin Mölling, Sir Henry, Sophie Rois, Präsident Trump und vielen anderen Gästen. Mit viel Musik, Information, Dialog, Bildern und Zusammenarbeit mit Partnern. Von Philosophie über Kunst und Wissenschaft bis zur “Abrüstung vom Sinnzwang”. So nah sind sich Helge Schneider und Michel Serres sonst nirgends gekommen.Read More »

Description: Directed by George Schaefer, this light made-for-television drama is based upon the novel of the same name by Robert Oliphant. Starring Bette Davis as Esther Cimino, a 73-year-old widow, the film traces the events following Esther’s son George’s (George Hearn) decision that she is no longer capable of caring for herself in her elderly state. Despite her protests, Esther is ruled incompetent by the legal system, leading her to wage a court battle to regain not only her estate but her dignity as well. Also starring Penny Fuller and Christopher Guest, A Piano for Mrs. Cimino first aired on February 3, 1982 on CBS and was later nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Film Editing.Read More »

In this timeless interview, Kurt Vonnegut – iconoclastic writer of science fiction and satire – discusses his family history, how he got his start as an author, his experiences in World War II, his obsession with the betrayal of humankind by science, and his vision of technology gone mad. Delving into the psyches of his characters, he even enters into a dialogue with his fictional alter ego, Kilgore Trout. Dramatizations and excerpts from Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle and Deadeye Dick bring the offbeat yet vivid world of Vonnegut’s stories to life.Read More »

Cosmos remains one of the best-known and best-loved descriptions of our universe. Seen by over 700 million viewers in 60 countries, this multi Emmy Award winning series is arguably the most popular and stunningly influential science programme ever produced.

Through a combination of special effects and Dr Carl Sagan’s enthusiastic narration every fantastic episode is an awe-inspiring cosmic journey that appeals to a mass audience. Cosmos covers a range of intriguing and fascinating topics including the origins of life, the search for life on Mars, the infernal composition of the atmosphere of Venus and the “greenhouse effect”, the lives of stars, interstellar travel and the effects of attaining the speed of light and the danger of mankind technologically self-destructing.Read More »