Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art.
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A look at the formative role art and imagination have played in the forging of humanity.
2018 • History
In this episode of Civilisations, Professor Mary Beard explores images of the human body in ancient art, from Mexico and Greece to Egypt and China.
2018 • History
Simon Schama explores one of our deepest artistic urges - the depiction of nature. Simon discovers that landscape painting is seldom a straightforward description of observed nature - rather it is a projection of dreams and idylls, as well as of escapes and refuges from human turmoil, the elusive paradise on earth.
2018 • History
Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art.
2018 • History
Think Renaissance and you think of Italy. But in the 15th and 16th centuries, the great Islamic empires experienced their own extraordinary cultural flowering.
2018 • History
In the 15th and 16th centuries distant and disparate cultures met, often for the first time. These encounters provoked wonder, awe, bafflement and fear.
2018 • History
If David Olusoga's first film in Civilisations is about the art that followed and reflected early encounters between different cultures, his second explores the artistic reaction to imperialism in the 19th century. David shows the growing ambivalence with which artists reacted to the idea of progress, both intellectual and scientific, that underpinned the imperial mission and followed the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
2018 • History
Simon Schama begins Civilisations with this premise: that it is in art - the play of the creative imagination - that humanity expresses its most essential self: the power to break the tyranny of the humdrum, the grind of everyday.
2018 • History
From Roman marbles and Egyptian mummies to Renaissance masterpieces and African sculptures, in this special accompanying programme to Civilisations, Mary Beard goes in search of extraordinary works of art from all over the world that can be seen here in Britain.
2018 • History
Join coffee roaster Dean Cycon and food lover Judith Jones to explore America’s love affair with the red bean that arrived on American shores not long after the Pilgrim Fathers themselves. “Coffee: The Drink That Changed America” explores the brew’s amazing story, from its origins in the Middle East to the 21st century coffee palaces in America.
2018 • History
For the last 35 years, they have been exploring the most mythical wreck in the world, but now 108 years after it sank, the Titanic is under threat. Resting at over 12,500 feet below sea level and 380 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, in pitch darkness, the most famous shipwreck in the world is being consumed by a colony of iron-eating bacteria. This slow and irreversible decay, according to the most concerned experts, will sweep away all the secrets of the mythic liner within a few decades.
2021 • History
The Story of the Parachute Parachutists are a breed apart, for few experience the freedom and the whims and the very substance of the air as they do. From its original development and use during the Great War, through the beginning of sport parachuting between the wars and its use in World War II (including airborne forces) to the skydivers of today. Includes footage of early unsuccessful attempts. A history of parachuting incorporates the pioneers, those who have leapt for their lives from stricken aircraft, the paratroopers who used the parachute to carry them to battle , the show-jumpers, the Sky Divers who jump simply for pleasure and the test jumpers who made it possible for them to do so. Like many inventions the parachute was originally developed during the heat of battle in the Great War. During the inter-war years it started to develop as a sport but came into its maturity in the Second World War with the development of airborne forces, which played a key part in Hitler's invasion plans. The skydivers of today are the latest in a long list of those who sought to descend from the skies; sometimes with unfortunate consequences. It is a story that relates the excitement, the triumph, and the tragedy that have accompanied parachuting through the years.
5/10 • The True Action Adventures of the Twentieth Century • 1996 • History
1944: The Soviets continue on the path towards liberation. On the road to Berlin, they discover the horror of Hitler's extermination camps. Stalin's people have sacrificed the most: 9 million soldiers dead and 20 million civilians killed. Has he become Master of the World?
S1E3 • Apocalypse Stalin • 2015 • History
Between 1950 and 1953, more than 24 nations sent troops to Korea as the opposing ambitions and ideologies of the emerging Cold War superpowers - China, Russia and the USA - fought for supremacy on the peninsula. With first-hand testimony and new historical material, Korea: The Never Ending War retraces the history of a conflict that resulted in millions of deaths, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, and continues to shape history to this day. The 1953 armistice brought a fragile peace to the Korean Peninsula, but the war has never officially ended and deep divisions - and the threat of nuclear conflict - remain.
2019 • History
This film tells the story of the last year of the war in Europe, from the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944 to the dual German surrender, first in Reims then Berlin, in May 1945. Eleven months of unprecedented combat.
S1E1 • Hitler's Last Year • 2015 • History