Rococo: Travel, Pleasure, Madness

Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper is a 1995 short documentary film about Herbert Zipper. It was written, directed, and produced by Terry Sanders, with Freida Lee Mock co-producing. The extraordinary story of Vienna born musician and conductor Herbert Zipper who survived Dachau, Buchenwald, and a Japanese concentration camp to become one of the great music educators of the world, continuing at 92 to bring music to the inner city schools of America. In Dachau, Zipper organized secret concerts using makeshift instruments. He learned the lesson that music and the arts are essential to the very existence of life. For the last half of the 20th century, Zipper has pioneered in bringing professional orchestras into America's inner city schools. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short at the 68th Academy Awards in 1996.

"Nora" is based on true stories of the dancer Nora Chipaumire, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965. In the film, Nora returns to the landscape of her childhood and takes a journey through some vivid memories of her youth. Using performance and dance, she brings her history to life in a swiftly-moving poem of sound and image. A girl who is constantly embattled - struggling against all kinds of intimidation and violence - but who slowly gathers strength, pride and independence.

The Challenge... A Tribute to Modern Art is a 1974 American documentary film directed by Herbert Kline. The film shows footage of great modern artists in their studios creating and commenting on their work, with narration and commentary by Orson Welles. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

A young woman is sent to Paradise Hills to be reformed, only to learn that the high-class facility's beautiful facade hides a sinister secret.

Martin Stone chose freedom: in 1966, he took his young daughters, Deborah & Jacqueline and hit the road on a six-year adventure with America's wildest hippy community, the Hog Farm. Five decades later, Martin and his girls live very separate lives. Martin remained true to his counter-culture beliefs and today, lives "in community," sharing his rambling Montreal, Mile End apartment with young roommates who dig his alternative vibe. For Martin, being a hippy wasn't a phase, it's a way of life. His daughters, both now living in Philadelphia, decided on less eccentric existences. Martin and his girls give honest accounts of their lives together and why their paths and dreams ran so far apart. This is a film about choices and how they impact those we love.

Michael Reeves s a martial arts instructor. Michael meets Marina who brings her young son, Christopher to his school. Michael develops a relationship with Marina. Marina's ex husband, Jimmy owes money to a crime syndicate, Christopher is kidnapped. Michael brings Jimmy to the gangsters insisting they free Christopher but defeats one of their best fighters in self-defence. Michael is offered to fight in an underground tournament to free Christopher. Michael agrees.

These days, nobody takes Rubens seriously. His vast and grandiose canvases, stuffed with wobbly mounds of female flesh, have little appeal for the modern gym-subscriber. And it's not just the bulging nudity we don't like. The entire tone of Rubens's art offends us. Everything in it is too big - the epic dramas full of tragedy, the fantastical celestial scenery, the immense canvases and murals adorning the walls and ceilings of Europe's grandest palaces. All of it seems too much for modern sensibilities. But Waldemar Januszczak begs to differ. In Waldemar's eyes, Rubens has been traduced by modern tastes, and a huge misunderstanding of him has taken place. By looking in detail at Rubens's fascinating life, by understanding his art in more enlightened ways, Waldemar sets out to correct the extra-large misconceptions that have arisen about Rubens.

Art Critic Waldemar Januzczak presents this documentary which details french artist Toulouse-Lautrec's life.

Waldemar Januszczak explores the impact of Mary Magdalene's myth on art and artists. In art all Christian saints are inventions but Mary Magdalene has been the subject of more invention and re-invention than any other.

Art critic Waldemar Januszczak is on the quest to explain exactly what the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is actually trying to tell us.

From the far north of Canada to the southern tip of Chile, through the southern United States, central Mexico and the Brazilian Mato Grosso, new concordant but still controversial archaeological discoveries have brought a new paradigm to the archaeology of American prehistory: the appearance of the first humans on the continent could date back to nearly 30,000 years before our era, that is to say, about 15,000 years earlier than the commonly accepted and taught thesis. Although there were a few mavericks in the past who disputed the scenario according to which the first ancestors of Americans arrived on foot through the Bering Strait 16,000 years ago, they were long kept out of the scientific community.

A survey of Hans Holbein's career from his beginnings as a religious painter to his work for Henry VIII and beyond. The program also includes a close analysis of "The Ambassadors".

Sickert vs. Sargent brings to life two of the biggest characters in modern British art; Walter Sickert - the gruff, aggressive man-of-the-people; and John Singer Sargent - the urbane and charming dandy. The film focuses on some of the most beautiful and alarming paintings ever made in this country; pictures of aristocrats and prostitutes, coronations and killings, opera houses and music halls, and will evoke the long-lost atmosphere of Edwardian London. But above all it will show that from their two outposts in Chelsea and Camden, Sickert and Sargent were waging a war whose legacy still haunts us today.

Produced by Cook Group Incorporated and Star of Indiana, BLAST! brings together 68 brass, percussion and visual performers in a unique explosion of music and theatre. Born on athletic fields across the nation, BLAST! is a novel art form evolved from the showmanship of outdoor pageantry. Ranging from classical to the blues, it is jazz, rock and roll, and techno-pop. With color, light, movement and music, BLAST! explores and explodes the genre with new artistry.

The space race, the cold war, "free love," civil rights and more: The decade of the 1960s shaped our history -- and changed the world. In collaboration with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog, CNN explores perhaps the most transformative decade of the modern era in a 10-part documentary series and brings new insights into how those events shaped today.

The renowned definitive eight part series on the rise and fall of the modern art movement presented by Australian art critic Robert Hughes.

Art writer Waldemar Januszczak explores the revolutionary achievements of the Impressionists.

Christianity slowly emerged from being a persecuted minority to the state religion of the Roman Empire. This episode is a history of the ways believers grappled with a way to depict Jesus. Simple symbolic meaning developed into splendid art and churches.

Wild Sri Lanka is a three part mini series about this tropical island in the Indian Ocean, off the southeastern coast of India. This land was wracked by civil war for decades. But now, researchers can bring modern science and technology to bear, in order to take stock of what lives here. The series explores the diverse wildlife of the country's coast and seas, taking clues from the water around the island to examine how the landmass came to be and why its complex climate and unique location see such a diverse range of species inhabiting its shores.

John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone: these are just some of America's most notorious outlaws. Their violent crime sprees are the stuff of American legend, but there are two sides to every story. Natural Born Outlaws explores the true stories of iconic American desperados and the epic manhunts that would eventually bring them down.

Les Belles Histoires des pays d'en haut is a Canadian television drama series, which aired on Radio-Canada from 1956 to 1970. One of the longest-running programs in the history of Canadian television, the series produced 495 episodes during its 14-year run and was one of the first influential téléromans. Written by Claude-Henri Grignon as an adaptation of his 1933 novel Un Homme et son péché and initially set in the 1880s, the series starred Jean-Pierre Masson as Séraphin Poudrier, the wealthy but miserly mayor of the village of Sainte-Adèle, Quebec, and Andrée Champagne as Donalda Laloge-Poudrier, the young daughter of a village resident who is given in marriage to Séraphin as payment for a family debt even though she remains in love with her suitor Alexis Labranche. With a vast ensemble cast of extended family and other villagers, the series also delved much more deeply than the novel into the dramatic interactions of the larger community, depicting the early settlement of Quebec's Laurentides region and evolving from the novel's satirical portrait of Séraphin's moral values into a complex soap opera. Among others, the show's ensemble cast included Geneviève Bujold, Jean LeClerc, Yves Corbeil, Paul Dupuis and Juliette Béliveau.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, B.C., the Greeks built an empire that stretched across the Mediterranean from Asia to Spain. They laid the foundation of modern science, politics, warfare and philosophy, and produced some of the most breathtaking art and architecture the world has ever seen. It was perhaps the most spectacular flourishing of imagination and achievement in recorded history.

A history of American art with Waldemar Januszczak

Shaun Greenhalgh and Dr Janina Ramirez research and remake a selection of precious objects from the past using traditional materials and methods.

Art historian Waldemar Januszczak uncovers the secret meanings hidden within some of the greatest paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Seurat .

One woman's journey to discover the truth about Synanon, the experimental community that turned into a full-blown cult.

Everyone born from a donor might have siblings they had no idea existed, who were born from the same stranger. Here, a man gets instant results putting his DNA on websites.