The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary by art critic Robert Hughes that examines how the world's most famous painting came to influence the art world. With his trademark style, Hughes explores how museums, the production of art and the way...
Documentary series looking at maps in incredible detail to highlight their artistic attributions and reveal the stories that they tell. The Beauty of Maps (Seeing the Art in Cartography) is yet another example of a BBC television series which focuses on matters...
Author Ian Fleming wanted his suave secret agent to be the ultimate spy – but who provided the inspiration for Bond? This film reveals Fleming’s wartime service in naval intelligence and profiles two men who could have supplied the basis for Bond’s character. On...
Matthew Collings has a wonderfully simple and funny way of making you understand the when, where, why and how of important is art so this programme will get your head around impressionism in a couple of hours. Matthew Collings will reappraise the Impressionists. The...
Mathew Collings makes a personal selection of the greatest artistic moments and monuments from history to examine how they have shaped our world. He embarks on an epic journey, to stunning locations across Europe, Egypt, China and the United States, to explore the...
A powerful, moving and accurate docudrama based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Paul Rhys's masterful portrayal of Beethoven is particularly noteworthy, doing well to vividly convey the isolation and despair Beethoven experienced throughout his life,...
This is the story of one of the greatest minds in history. An artist, scientist, engineer, visionary and all-round genius, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452--1519) was arguably the main figure of the Renaissance. Over three gripping episodes, this docudrama from the BBC...
An enlightening and enveloping reconstruction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (1756--1791) life. Masterfully written and directed, every aspect of the film has been given thorough thought in order to ensure an accurate historical reconstruction. Inspirational performances...
To produce one of the world's great masterpieces is impressive. To create three is truly astonishing - but this is exactly what Michelangelo did five hundred years ago. With his own hands he designed and created the most famous sculpture in the world - the David; the...
Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1956 film, The Mystery of Picasso (Le Mystère Picasso), sets out some lofty goals for itself. In only 75 minutes, Clouzot seeks to uncover nothing less than the mystery, not merely of Picasso's process of painting, but of artistic production...
Documentarian Thomas Riedelsheimer shows us Andy Goldsworthy as he creates art in natural settings using natural materials such as driftwood, ice, mud, leaves, and stones. Goldsworthy comments on his "earthworks" and occasionally responds to off screen questions from...
When director Tony Silver and co-producer Henry Chalfant delivered the broadcast version of their prize-winning film to PBS in 1983, the world received its first full immersion in the phenomenon that had taken over New York City. The urban landscape...
