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1-21 of 21
- In 1984 Kenith Trodd joined BBC team responding to Channel 4 releases, leading to transition from BBC studio plays to Screen One/Two anthology series. Trodd oversaw first group of titles in these series in 1985.
- Anthology of unconnected movies of different genres.
- Daniel Grudge, a wealthy industrialist and fierce isolationist long embittered by the loss of his son in World War II, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who lead him to reconsider his attitude toward his fellow man.
- The highlights of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
- A secret formula that can cause plants and animals to expand a thousand-fold in size is stolen by a terrorist group. During a wild chase and shoot-out, the formula is lost. It's found by a little girl who accidently gives the formula to her pet snake. After the snake grows to an immense size, it follows and protects her. When the terrorists go after the girl, the snake begins destroying everything in its path.
- As studio financing dwindled away for Hugo Haas, his last film as a writer-director-producer has certain autobiographical elements, a cast featuring several film veterans from the silent era, and a storyline containing a metaphoric commentary on Hollywood. When former European film director Agnus (Haas) witnesses bickering in a boarding house, he sets out to prove the innate goodness of people. Casting neighbors and the boarding house tenants in his new film, titled "The Chosen and the Condemned," he succeeds in creating peace, unity and harmony in the neighborhood. However, it's all a deception, since Agnus has no film in his camera. When a studio head learns of the project, he bankrolls a budget that enables Agnus to actually complete the film.
- Interviews in the Michael Moore/"Roger and Me" tradition examine life in small-town America, class conflicts and the collapse of an upstate New York community, Dadetown, when the town's once-prosperous factory, reduced to the manufacture of paper clips and staples, finally closes. Facing massive unemployment, the blue-collar Dadetown residents next find yuppies moving into town to staff the local division of a big computer outfit.
- A drifter witnesses a rape/murder. The perpetrator's father falsely accuses the drifter and orders his son to kill the drifter and another witness, the victim's mute son.
- In HBO's one-hour follow-up film, footage of the Loud family in 1983 is intercut with scenes from PBS' original 1973 An American Family documentary series. This HBO film was not aired on PBS until 1991.
- Cameras panned over individual panels from stories selected from DC Comics while voiceover actors read the dialogue seen in the balloons. Comic books chosen for this treatment included "Adam Strange," (Gardner Fox), "Nutsy Squirrel" (Woody Gelman) and "Sugar and Spike" (Sheldon Mayer). After story recommendations by Larry Hama, hundreds of pages from DC's vaults were photostatted and then recolored with luminescent dyes. There was no animation and no alteration of the original B&W panels. Complete stories were shown, panel by panel, and most came from back issues of "Sugar and Spike." Some "Adam Strange" and "Swamp Thing" stories had more extensive production work with the addition of sound effects and music. The live-action opening showed kids arriving at a store to buy comic books.
- Angus Wilson (1913-1991) wrote his novel "Late Call" in 1964, and 20 years later, Anthony Burgess ranked it as one of the 99 best novels written since 1939. This led to its inclusion in the rec.arts.books compilation list of the 425 "Greatest Books of All Time." The central character is the elderly Sylvia Calvert, and Wilson wanted to "find a way of suggesting the absurd and the compassionate at the same time in Sylvia's story," and with her son, "the sudden, incidental and completely horrible in the deadly respectable world." Adapting Wilson's novel into four episodes (each approximately 50 minutes in length), Dennis Potter expanded Wilson's prologue ("The Hot Summer of 1911") into the drama's centerpiece, intercutting between past and present as he probed spiritual desolation in the English Midlands. Retiring from a lifetime of hotel domestic service, Sylvia Calvert arrives with her husband Arthur to live with their overly fastidious son in the New Town of Carshall, where they attempt to adjust to the lifestyle of his family. Amid the alienation and the passivity of the dull and deadening retirement, Sylvia escapes into her repressed memories, looking back at the year 1911 and reflecting on the psychological wound of a long-ago incident from her childhood.
- "Where Adam Stood" is "based on" the 1907 autobiography, "Father and Son", by Christian fundamentalist and naturalist Edmund Gosse, but Dennis Potter adapted only one section of the book, adding much material of his own invention. The drama was filmed on the Devon coast near Torquay, not far from where Gosse lived. With a literal belief in the Old Testament, Philip Gosse is opposed to the new theories of Charles Darwin, espoused here by biologist Brackley. Assuming "the Lord's will" determines the fate of his ailing son Edmund, Philip Gosse creates a life-threatening situation, even suggesting the illness is God's punishment because of Edmund's desire for a toy ship. While looking at the ship in a shop window, Edmund is approached by the village's mad Mary Teague, and the deranged woman lures the child into the forest for an attempted sexual attack. He resists, throws a stone at her and flees. Later, he also resists and challenges his father's belief system by stating, "The Good Lord says I am to have the ship."
- Dennis Potter, Esther Dyson, William Gibson and other techno-thinkers appeared in this award-winning three-part documentary series which examined social changes brought about by new information technologies, along with other issues and dilemmas facing society in the 21st Century.
- Live dramatic plays presented in the round with minimal props, scenery and costumes.
- Described by "Radio Times" as "a kaleidoscope from the world of books," this Sunday afternoon BBC series featured book reviews, interviews and dramatized excerpts, scripted by Dennis Potter, from both contemporary books and classics. Although Potter's title was Script Associate, he provided "ideas" and script outlines and wrote the finished scripts. Potter also conducted interviews with Francis Chichester, Edward Hyams, James Morris and Francis Newton. His drama sequences included Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," Dashiell Hammett's "The Glass Key," Iris Murdoch's "Under the Net," Kingsley Amis' "That Uncertain Feeling," Stan Barstow's "A Kind of Loving" and Colin MacInnes' "Absolute Beginners."
- Introducing some innovative film techniques, Emshwiller won a Special Award at the Brussels Experimental Film Festival for this expression of internal anguish. He described the film as "The confrontation of a man and his torment. Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat."
- In 1976, Francis Lee edited footage he shot during the years 1941 to 1945 while an Army combat motion picture cameraman. A pacifist and painter living on New York City's East 10th Street before World War II, Lee initially requested classification as a conscientious objector. Realizing WWII was a war against racism, fascism and totalitarianism, he reconsidered, was classified 1-A and enlisted as an Army cameraman. The film looks back on his growing maturity as he moves closer to combat. Lee calls this a testimonial to "one man's initiation: mine." Scenes of basic training are followed by the 6 June 1944 D-Day landing at Omaha Beach, where his unit suffered a 75% loss, the Liberation of Paris and his visits in Paris with Pablo Picasso. Jonas Mekas commented, "His D-Day footage is so spectacular, so real that I don't think I have ever seen war footage as real, as believable. You know Lee was there and he took it all and you know it was a hell. His Paris liberation footage is about equally spectacular." The film concludes with Lee's return to East 10th Street at the war's end.
- Employing experimental techniques, Emshwiller magically moved through a collection of objects and artifacts in order to capture the spirit of George Dumpson and his backyard museum, as he noted: "George Dumpson was a scavenger. He created a small universe with what he found and could carry on his homemade wagon. To me he epitomized the soul of the artist. He put together what things he could in such a way as to satisfy some inner need, just as I had to make this picture of him and his place."
- This biker documentary was selected for screening at the 1964 Flaherty Film Seminar. Emshwiller described it as "a roaring picture of motorcyclists in action. Modern Lancelots and their ladies-in-waiting go wide open for a day at the races. An impressionistic film of guys and gals who get their kicks in direct physical action."
- During the Civil Rights movement of the early Sixties, Emshwiller documented voter registration efforts by SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in Greenwood, Mississippi. Three decades later, this film was restored by Anthology Film Archives.
- Documentary details the life and career of writer Dennis Potter.