A dance of shapes. A title card tells us this is an experiment in conveying the mental images of music in a visual form. Liszt's "Second Hungarian Rhapsody" is the music. The shapes, all two-dimensional, are circles primarily, with some squares and rectangles, and a few triangles. The shapes move rhythmically to the music: receding from view or moving across the screen. Red circles on a blue background; light blue squares; white rectangles. Then, a red background of many circles with a few in the foreground. Red gives way to blue then to white. Shapes reappear as Liszt's themes re-occur. Then, with a few staccato notes and images, it's over.
An abstract computer-generated animation set to music by Terry Riley.
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway.
In the near future, a group of war journalists attempt to survive while reporting the truth as the United States stands on the brink of civil war.
Following the death of the Leigh family matriarch, Annie and her children uncover disturbing secrets about their heritage. Their daily lives are not only impacted, but they also become entangled in a chilling fate from which they cannot escape, driving them to the brink of madness.
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.
When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.
During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.
After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.
Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.
A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.
In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Soon unfrozen, the form-changing creature wreaks havoc, creates terror... and becomes one of them.
A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.
A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
Utterly astounding, iridescent sand animation from Aleksandra Korejwo based around Bizet's Carmen.
This etude made up of captured snaps having a sociographic impact and expressive photo-collages by Dezső Korniss is the satirical apotheosis of the single, working urban woman from the second half of the 1960s.
A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.
Join the Muppets' best sidekick, Beaker as he spreads his passion for the classics with his rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #9 was of a concert on March 22, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Beethoven's 5th Symphony and Respighi's Pines of Rome. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)
After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.
A musical journey in the footsteps of conductor Michel Brun, an atypical character, an atheist, who nevertheless plays sacred music, and who devotes his life to Johann Sebastian Bach. With the musicians of the Ensemble Baroque de Toulouse.
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Broadcast #8 was of a concert on March 15, 1952, at Carnegie Hall, featuring Sibelius's En Saga, two of Debussy's Nocturnes, and Franck's Redemption. (Concerts #8 and #9 were released on "Vol. 5" in the DVD series.)
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This concert, broadcast in two parts, on 26 March and 2 April 1949, from NBC Studio 8H, features the opera "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi. (Both broadcasts were released as "Vol. 3" in the DVD series.)
The 1987 Glyndebourne production of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, designed by Maurice Sendak and directed by Frank Corsaro.
This animated short is about a elipse who was made an outcast of the circle tribe, but he was exiled from his tribe, and he goes on a journey to get back to his tribe. He makes friends with a traveling triangle and the hippie hyberbolies who give him some mint to help him learn how to change shapes so he can be perfect once for all so he can return to the Circle tribe for good.
At 41 years old, the Quebecois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has established himself as one of the most gifted maestros of his generation, with numerous prestigious posts with some of the world’s greatest orchestras already under his belt, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (music director), London Philharmonic Orchestra (principal guest conductor), and the Orchestre métropolitain de Montréal. One week before Nézet-Séguin's official nomination as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, filmmaker Christiaan van Schermbeek met the maestro for the first time. The once-in-a-lifetime event inspired Schermbeek to begin this documentary project, giving us a fascinating glimpse into the life of a truly extraordinary individual.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
This film is a docufiction on the great Toscanini directed by well-known filmmaker Larry Weinstein; who pushes the boundaries of conventional documentary storytelling by borrowing tools from fiction films; including dramatic reconstructions and historical cinematic stylings.
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
Ballerina Polina Semionova performs the mythic parts of Odette and Odile (white swan and black swan) with her great partner Stanislav Jermakov. The Zurich Opera House Orchestra is conducted by Russian musical director Vladimir Fedoseyev acclaimed in this repertoire.
Go behind the scenes with one of London's most important musical institutions.