Sight And Sound

This program, specifically designed to help people get the most from their vision and hearing as they age, considers how these senses change throughout life and what people can do to keep them healthy and fully functional.

Powhatan tribal people stare in wonder as three ships approach shore… It's a story every schoolchild knows. And, as told by filmmaker Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) in this Extended Version with over 20 minutes of footage unseen in theaters, it's a story you never imagined. Working in part from firsthand histories and adding his extraordinary sense of image and human drama, Malick crafts a spellbinding tale of the Jamestown settlement, of cultures connecting and of deadly consequences when connections fray. Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas, John Rolfe: You know the names. But you could never experience the visceral power of the stories behind those names until now.

Tokyo March is a 1929 black and white Japanese silent film with benshi accompaniment directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. It is a classic melodramatic love tragedy addressing social inequality in modern Japan, depicted in Mizoguchi's typical style. The nostalgic scenes of Tokyo in the 1920s offers a valuable visual experience.

In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

Why does a curveball curve? Why does ice float? How do CDs and DVDs work? Why don't your legs break when you jump off a chair? What keeps a moving bicycle from falling over? These questions involve physical principles that relate not only to interesting aspects of our daily lives, but also explain fundamental features of reality. In this DVD-only course, filled with hands-on demonstrations, you explore the physics of everyday events and end up with a deeper understanding of the universe.

Shot in and around a South London youth club during the summer of 1958 ‘We Are The Lambeth Boys’ is a sympathetic depiction of a group of teenagers found at work and during their own leisure time. By giving them space to express their frustrations and aspirations the film attempts to deliver a positive portrait of the lives of ordinary teenagers, departing from the usually violent ‘teddy boy’ stereotype, which is portrayed elsewhere.

The poetic travelogue A Sixth Part of the World and the "visual symphony" The Eleventh Year mark the beginning of Dziga Vertov's most creative period, which peaked in the canonical film Man with the Movie Camera. This 2-disc set presents the two rare masterpieces in a new transfer and with new soundtracks by British composer Michael Nyman. The bonus features offer materials on the methods of the filmmaker, as well as an introduction to the Vienna research project on Vertov, "Digital Formalism."

Almost in breadth and depth of a documentary, this movie depicts an auto race during the 70s on the world's hardest endurance course: Le Mans in France. The race goes over 24 hours on 14.5 kilometers of cordoned country road. Every few hours the two drivers per car alternate - but it's still a challenge for concentration and material. In the focus is the duel between the German Stahler in Ferrari 512LM and the American Delaney in Gulf Team Porsche 917.

Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.

In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. The camera follows the protagonists in the village over a period of a year. The natives, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, keep living their lives according to their own cultural traditions. The expressive pictures are accompanied by original sound bites quoting the villagers.