Breakthru Films

Peter and the Wolf airs Wednesday December 8th at 8pm (check local listings).

Sergei Prokofiev’s fanciful musical tale “Peter and the Wolf” is given new life in this innovative new animated interpretation, which won the 2008 Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film. “Oldies will remember the work from school music lessons,” wrote London’s OBSERVER, “while those coming to the story for the first time will be delighted with this darkly comic modernization.” Originally composed in 1936, the piece famously uses personified instruments in the orchestra to tell the story — also penned by the composer — of young Peter and his animal friends the Duck, the Bird, and even a mischievous Cat (represented by an oboe, flute, and clarinet respectively). Peter, himself represented by the string section, becomes an unsuspecting hero and outwits the Wolf (French horns), who’s intent on menacing his small Russian village — not to mention Peter’s beloved animal friends. Conceived and directed by award-winning animator Suzie Templeton, this modern-day “Peter & the Wolf” uses stop-frame model animation, puppets, and digital photography to retell the enduring classic story, and features the Philharmonia Orchestra under the direction of Mark Stephenson performing Prokofiev’s beloved score.

Mark Stephenson also helmed the Philharmonia Orchestra for the film’s live world premiere at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2006. The Philharmonia was founded in 1945, primarily as a recording orchestra. It is the world’s most recorded orchestra with more than 1,000 releases and is comprised of more than 80 musicians giving concerts in London and at its residencies and other venues around the U.K., in addition to touring all over the world.

Sergei Prokofiev completed “Peter and the Wolf” after resettling in Moscow from Paris in 1936. By the autumn of the previous year, he had composed a dozen pieces for children, which according to his diary, were “published in a volume entitled ‘Music for Children,’ Op. 65.” Although the official debut of “Peter and the Wolf” on May 2 at Moscow Children’s Musical Theater was not a resounding success, the piece has subsequently delighted audiences of all ages and become his best-known work, performed by almost every ensemble, and used as an instructional tool to help children learn about the different instruments of the orchestra. Discover more about how Prokofiev’s composition was created and its story in the essay by contributor Tim Smith. The winner of numerous international awards, including a Best Animation BAFTA Award for her 2001 short film DOG, director Suzie Templeton reveals more about adapting Prokofiev’s story and creating this animated version in Dialogue. Watch an excerpt from the film, which was made at Poland’s award-winning Se-ma-for animation studio and took five years to complete.

Special funding for “PETER & THE WOLF” is provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.

The co-production between WNET.ORG and Illuminations Television, in association with the BBC, stars Sir Patrick Stewart in his triumphant, Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his coldly scheming wife.

The production, though retaining the Goold’s exciting concept of relocating the bloody action to a nameless 20th-century militaristic society, has been rethought in vivid filmic terms. The movie, marking Goold’s cinematic debut, will be presented on PBS as part of the Great Performances series Wednesday, October 6, at 9 p.m. (check local listings).

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Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG, one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers. Originating at England’s innovative Chichester Festival Theatre, the play – the Bard’s shortest tragedy — is taken out of its Scottish context to offer an allegory of war and the quest for power in the modern world. Writing for the Hollywood Reporter after its London opening, Ray Bennett enthused, “Seldom can Shakespeare’s murky Scottish tragedy ‘Macbeth’ have been staged with so much clarity and emotional punch as in Rupert Goold’s exhilarating production.”

When the production opened stateside at BAM, Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised Stewart’s “fearsome insight and theatrical fire.”

Elysa Gardner in USA Today observed Stewart’s “witty, nuanced work, which reveals Macbeth as an intelligent, rational person driven to madness by outside forces and his own violent transgressions. There is something of Lear — and Hamlet, too — in this portrait of a thoughtful, corruptible man.”

This is not your grandfather’s “Macbeth.” Shot in High-Definition at Welbeck Abbey in the U.K., Goold maintains the atmosphere and tone of the stage version, heightening the Shakespearean classic with an edgy style reminiscent of Illuminations’ recent film adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet, which was also broadcast on PBS in April 2010 by THIRTEEN’s Great Performances. Among the actors recreating their roles for the film are Michael Feast (Macduff); Martin Turner (Banquo); Scott Handy (Malcolm); Paul Shelley (Duncan); Suzanne Burden (Lady Macduff); and Christopher Patrick Nolan (The Porter).

In support of the presentation, WNET.ORG is offering a Teachers’ Guide for educators to utilize the PBS broadcast in classrooms around the country. Hosted on www.pbs.org/gperf, the activity-based analysis of the play is illustrated by various lesson plans and activities. After the October 6 PBS broadcast premiere, the complete film will be available for viewing online at pbs.org/gperf and video.pbs.org.

Macbeth was produced by John Wyver and Sebastian Grant, with Mark Bell as executive producer for the BBC; for Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer, and David Horn is executive producer.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS.

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Frederick Wiseman, widely praised for his observational documentary films, has had a long and prolific career. His oeuvre includes Titicut Follies, High School, Basic Training, Public Housing, Domestic Violence, and Ballet (on the American Ballet Theater). Critic Philip Lopate has called Wiseman “the greatest American filmmaker of the last 30 years.”

Of his desire to make a film about the Paris Opera Ballet, Wiseman says, “Since movies are about movement, I wanted to make a movie about a group of dancers and choreographers who represent the highest level of achievement in the conscious use of the body to express feeling and thought. I have great admiration for the dancers, choreographers, administrators, and technicians at the Paris Opera Ballet and welcomed this opportunity to film them at work.”

A Zipporah Films, Idéale Audience, Opéra National de Paris Production, in association with THIRTEEN for WNET.ORG, La Danse – Le Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris is directed and edited by Frederick Wiseman, with sound by Wiseman and photography by John Davey, and produced by Pierre-Oliver Bardet, Frederick Wiseman, and Francoise Gazio.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major support for the telecast is also provided by The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Arts Fund. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

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Hamlet aired in the UK on Boxing Day at Christmastime 2009, and more than 900,000 viewers tuned in for the BBC broadcast. In an article in The Observer, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote: “Like many people, I had my love of Shakespeare reawakened by David Tennant’s TV portrayal of Hamlet over Christmas.”

Best known for his performance in the title role of the popular British TV series Doctor Who since 2005, Tennant made his debut in October as the host of MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY on PBS. His many other credits include his recent portrayal of Barty Crouch Junior in the big-screen blockbuster Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Tennant has also received numerous awards from the theatre community for his lead roles in several Shakespearean productions and other classic plays.

Veteran stage and screen actor Sir Patrick Stewart reprises his 2009 Laurence Olivier Award-winning role of Claudius in the screen version, which is directed by Gregory Doran, who also returns to reprise his stage direction of the production. Co-produced by Illuminations Television and the RSC for the BBC, in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG and NHK, the adaptation recreates the tone and atmosphere of the stage production in a film-style interpretation shot in HD on location at St. Joseph’s College in Mill Hill, London. The production is produced for television by John Wyver and Sebastian Grant.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers, and PBS. Major support for the telecast is also provided by the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer.

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Great Performances is a production of THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG – one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

Despite all the success and visibility of its debut, the intervening decades have found Opus Jazz infrequently performed. The concept of taking this little-seen ballet and adapting it for the screen in a modern, real-world context was the brainchild of two New York City Ballet soloists, who, while dancing the ballet, found that it had urban themes and a contemporary relevance that spoke to them. “Sean and I danced Opus Jazz at the New York City Ballet revival in 2005,” explains Bar. “We thought the ballet seemed a bit dated in its 1950’s trappings, but the themes that came out in the dancing — the energy and raw emotion of urban youth — were just as relevant today as they were then.” Mr. Suozzi adds that because the ballet is danced in sneakers, instead of toe shoes, it seemed especially fitting to be filmed on location. “We decided to put our dancers in regular clothes, instead of costumes,” says Suozzi. “It makes the dance even more accessible. Ballet doesn’t have to be a mysterious art form — it’s our most natural, visceral expression.”

Enlisting filmmakers Henry Joost (Catfish) and Jody Lee Lipes (Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be The Same, Afterschool), Bar and Suozzi set out to make the most ambitious dance film in recent memory — the first to return Jerome Robbins’ choreography to the streets of New York since the movie version of West Side Story. Shot in widescreen 35mm film format, this on-location adaptation utilizes New York City locations like the pre-renovation High Line, McCarren Pool, Coney Island, Red Hook, and Carroll Gardens as backdrops for the five very different movements of the ballet. Scripted interludes between the dance scenes draw the audience further into the lives of the young, restless characters, all played by dancers from the New York City Ballet. “Acting out rage and delight through Robbins’ carefully cultivated steps, the cast demonstrated the pent-up emotions of a new generation,” raves The New York Times of this film (read the full review here). The stylized cinematography captures the majestic landscape of New York City as well the subtle beauty, energy and sensuality of the dance piece. The resulting film is a unique and compelling 43-minute abstract narrative that highlights the form, structure and energy of the dance, while embodying the raw emotional experience of urban youth.

Following the dance film is a 10-minute documentary by director Matt Wolf (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) and Anna Farrell (Twelve Ways to Sunday) that recounts the history and summarizes the enduring significance and appeal of Opus Jazz. Choreographer (and original West Side Story dancer) Eliot Feld, Sondra Lee (one of Robbins’ original “Opus” dancers), along with other Robbins’ friends and colleagues join the current cast of dancers to contextualize the cultural and historical importance of Mr. Robbins’ career and NY Export: Opus Jazz.

“Great Performances has been bringing the best in American dance to public television viewers via the Dance in America series since 1976,” says Executive Producer David Horn. “WNET was very fortunate to be able to collaborate with Robbins during his lifetime on several landmark productions for television. So we are proud to serve as the broadcast partner for this film, and we are confident the adaptation will make an impact on today’s generation, as it has on generations before.”

Written for the screen by Jody Lee Lipes and edited by Zac Stuart-Pontier, NY Export: Opus Jazz was produced by Kyle Martin and Melody Roscher. Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian Milstein, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. Major funding for NY Export: Opus Jazz was also provided by the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Emily Blavatnik, Chandra Jessee, Gillian Attfield, Arlene C. Cooper, Judy Bernstein Bunzl and Nick Bunzl, Marty and Perry Granoff, and Nancy Norman Lassalle. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.

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Passing Strange is the semi-autobiographical story of a young black man who leaves behind his middle-class, church-ruled upbringing in mid-1970s Los Angeles to travel to Europe in search of his artistic and personal identity, or what he calls “the real.” There he finds he can exploit a “South Central” persona, playing the cool, black expatriate-musician who speaks for his people. Picaresque misadventures with sex, drugs, politics and art find him in a far-out Amsterdam and a hyper-militant Berlin. But in the end, he discovers that cultural complexity—and hypocrisy—are not limited to middle-class African American life, and that while to him art may be more real than life, only love is truly more than real. Co-starring with Stew as ‘Narrator’ is an extraordinarily talented ensemble cast, featuring DeAdre Aziza, Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Daniel Breaker as the story’s central character, ‘Youth.’

The Broadway show won a 2008 Tony Award for “Best Book of a Musical,” and in total, it received seven Tony nominations, including “Best Musical.” The show also won a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and two Obie Awards. The highly-acclaimed score does not stand apart from the action as in some rock musicals, but advances the narrative through a sophisticated libretto. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times raves: “Passing Strange is bursting at the seams with melodic songs, and it features a handful of theatrical performances to treasure. Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful.”

Passing Strange was originally created and workshopped at the Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah in 2004 by Stew, his long-time musical partner Heidi Rodewald, and Annie Dorsen, who collaborated on the creation of the show and directed it as well. It was performed at Berkeley Rep in California before coming to New York City’s Public Theater in 2007. The production then moved to Broadway and opened to critical acclaim in February 2008 at the Belasco Theatre. Spike Lee, who had seen the show, was contacted by producer Steve Klein, who was interested in making a film of the stage production. “When I saw the play I was knocked out,” says Lee. “The story, its musicianship and the acting was a revelation. Unlike recent translations of theater onto the big screen, the film doesn’t alter any of the cast, staging or production. This is a hybrid.”

Lee, working with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (“Miracle at St. Anna,” “Iron Man,” “Inside Man”) shot two performances of the Broadway show before its close, including the final performance. Lee then filmed the production without the audience, enabling dynamic close-ups, dolly shots, crane shots and other cinematic coverage. Lee’s long-time editor, Barry Brown, edited the final film.

A 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks and Apple Core Holdings production in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG, Passing Strange was produced by Steve Klein, with Klein, Kenneth Greif, Laurence Horn, and William Kohane serving as executive producers.

Great Performances is funded by the Irene Diamond Fund, Vivian Milstein, LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television viewers and PBS. For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer and David Horn is executive producer.

Originating at England’s innovative Chichester Festival Theatre, director Goold’s exciting interpretation relocates the bloody action to a nameless 20th century nether world. Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood also returns to reprise her stage role performance as Lady Macbeth.

Shot in High Definition on UK locations, Goold will maintain the atmosphere and tone of the critically acclaimed stage production, heightening the Shakespearean classic with an edgy style reminiscent of Illuminations’ recent film adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet, which will be broadcast on PBS in April 2010 by THIRTEEN’s Great Performances.

For Great Performances, Bill O’Donnell is series producer; David Horn is executive producer. For Illuminations, John Wyver and Sebastian Grant are producers.

The monumental tragedy of an old king who decides to divide his kingdom among his daughters, but imposes a love test on each to merit her portion. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter him falsely, sending Lear into a rage. He withdraws her portion, exiles his best friend, and generally becomes increasingly irrational. Cordelia leaves to marry the King of France. His eldest daughters subsequently turn on him, finally tossing him out into a stormy night. In a parallel plot, Lear’s close friend Gloucester succumbs to the plot of Edmund, his bastard son, who wants the rights of a legitimate son. As this plot develops, Gloucester’s legitimate son Edgar must flee and disguise himself, as Edmund becomes sexually embroiled with Lear’s two daughters, and with them the politics of the kingdom. As Lear rails against man and nature during a violent storm on the heath, Gloucester becomes involved in an invasion from France. Betrayed by Edmund, he loses both his eyes. In this wretched state he attempts suicide, but is spared by Edgar. He then meets Lear in a reunion of madness and blindness – “reason in madness” as Edgar describes it. Next Lear reunites with Cordelia in a moment of sublime forgiveness. But the war is lost. Edmund has Cordelia hung while in prison. One daughter poisons the other, then commits suicide. Edgar kills Edmund in a duel, but not in time to save Cordelia. Lear finally dies over her dead body in grief. As one of those still alive at the end observes, “our present business is general woe.”

Cast
King Lear – Ian McKellen
Goneril – Frances Barber
Regan – Monica Dolan
Cordelia – Romola Garai
Albany – Julian Harries
Cornwall – Guy Williams
Gloucester – William Gaunt
Edgar – Ben Meyjes
Edmund – Philip Winchester
Kent – Jonathon Hyde
Fool – Sylvester McCoy

The PBS film version of this play may be purchased now at www.shoppbs.org. Put ‘King Lear’ in the search bar.

King Lear is a masterpiece of literary fiction.  Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn have rendered the play in a masterful fashion.  PBS has broadcast the play, and now makes it available here, at Great Performances Online.  A masterpiece done in masterful fashion should not be missed.

However, King Lear is long, complicated, and quite strange.  It has also been interpreted more broadly and in more diverse ways than any other Shakespeare play.  As all great art that can be endlessly appreciated, King Lear can be explored and experienced in many ways, but not all at once.  Much as one must view a great cathedral from a particular vantage point, one can only appreciate King Lear from some perspective or point of view—one or many.  This Lear section of the Great Performances site provides a great deal of information about King Lear, and offers a variety of points of view. We cordially invite you to watch the film at Great Performances Online.  We also invite you to explore the many ways in which the play can be appreciated, and contribute your own thoughts.  King Lear may be fiction, but it offers one the richest ways we have for thinking about life.

McKellen’s riveting film may also be purchased at www.shoppbs.org.  Put King Lear in the search bar.

“It is we who paint the leaves.”

As a work of the dramatic arts, King Lear places unusual demands upon us. A temple, a painting, even a poem or a novel, have some sense of permanence, a thing itself to be seen or read. A play is more like a symphony, marks on a page that must be brought to life by someone other than the author. We can read King Lear of course; indeed, to understand the play it must be read. But the written play presumes a state of incompleteness. The complete work demands a director, actors, a place to perform it, and an audience. It is the ultimate experience of art as collaboration.

Before movies, King Lear in this complete state was ironically transient, gone when the curtain closed. But we now have eleven movie versions of King Lear.  Next year we will receive a movie version with Al Pacino as Lear.  (A planned movie with Anthony Hopkins and a star-studded cast has been either canceled or indefinitely delayed.)  They are all worthwhile, but they are each different from the others, sometimes dramatically so. Despite the sense of permanence that the reproduction of movies gives us, King Lear on film still requires collaboration with the one thing that all art involves in the end—us.

This web site offers the following sections to allow us to appreciate and engage with the play.

Interview with Ian McKellen. Ian McKellen talks about his sense of filming King Lear.

Watch the Play. The full film in small screen format.

The Play in Summary and Full Text. Brief synopsis.  Introduction through film clips.  Full scene-by-scene synopsis with commentary.  Full text of Shakespeare’s King Lear divided into scenes or scene segments with companion clip from McKellen film for each segment, including indication of text cuts for PBS version of the McKellen film.

Films and Print Editions.  Introduction to the McKellen film. Biographies of Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn.  Reviews of McKellen film.  Ten more films of King Lear with casts and reviews.  Six film adaptations of the Lear story.  All in-print editions of King Lear with reviews and recommendations. All in-print collected works of Shakespeare with reviews and recommendations.

Background on Shakespeare.  Shakespeare biography.  Did Shakespeare write his plays?  English stage history.  Shakespeare’s England.

Background on King Lear.  Sources Shakespeare plundered for King Lear.  The problem of two different texts for the play.  The bizarre stage history of King Lear.

Engaging with the Play.  What this might mean.  Ways of seeing the play, from diverse perspectives.  Themes the play naturally, or unnaturally, provokes—the play’s questions.  Ways King Lear might be connected to other plays of Shakespeare, other literature, or other things in the world at large.

Education. At present, a compilation of lesson ideas around King Lear from high school teachers, supplied through the Folger Shakespeare Library.