Portrait of Lester Horton, a Los Angeles-based dancer, choreographer and teacher who trained many world-reknowned dancers and built the first American theater devoted permanently to dance. Former students and friends, including Bella Lewitzky, Alvin Ailey, and Carmen de Lavallade, help create a picture of Horton through interviews. Includes numerous dance excerpts.
A journey through the preparation and hardworking process of ballet dancers and musicians for a unique spectacle in Tokio that Béjart choreographed with the Ninth symphony of Beethoven. Béjart ballet dances with Tokio ballet and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Israel. A marvellous combination of dancers movements and expression of different feelings along the four movements of the symphony with absolute elegance and strength.
Released on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection's "Martha Graham: Dance on Film" collection.
RHYTHM IS IT! records the first big educational project of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle. The orchestra ventured out of the ivory tower of high culture into boroughs of low life for the sake of 250 youngsters. They had been strangers to classical music, but after arduous but thrilling preparation they danced to Stravinsky's 'Le Sacre du Printemps' ('The Rite of Spring'). Recorded with a breathtaking fidelity of sound, this film from Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez Lansch documents the stages of the Sacre project and offers deep insights into the rehearsals of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
A filmed version of Aaron Copland's most famous ballet, with its original star, who also choreographed.
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.
Habiter le mouvement (un récit en 10 chapitres)
A love story, portraying the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. It is a film about a woman's fight for independence, a woman trying to succeed with her own art in the extremely competitive world of dance.
Рудольф Нуреев. Остров его мечты
Back To Africa
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.
Narrated by Terence Stamp, this TV program documents the life and career of famed ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, through interviews with friends and colleagues and archive footage.
This Christmas, step into the magical world of The Nutcracker. For the first time in many years, the Royal Ballet has given full access behind the scenes for a landmark 90-minute documentary as they prepare for this season's yuletide production.
After Awesome Tapes From Africa's Brian Shimkovitz found the energetic, ecstatic music of Ghanaian musician Ata Kak, the tunes became beloved around the world. It was all unbeknownst to the artist himself -- his music was even unknown to those living in his hometown in Ghana. Years of tireless searching ensued, and eventually the Los Angeles-based label owner found a lead. Ata Kak - Time Bomb follows the search that Shimkovitz undertook as well as the visit to Ghana that took place once he found him. It is a celebration of great tunes and how, when it hits the right audience at the right time, music can touch people in a way that you never imagined.
When a daughter becomes concerned about her mother's well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires Sergio, an 83-year-old man who becomes a new resident—and a mole inside the home, who struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives of several residents.
The former principal ballerina tells her story, with historic performances from the BBC archives and candid interviews from throughout her career. Showing how she grew up in front of the camera and mastered television.
Dance educator LIN Ssu-tuan is the first professional nude model in Taiwan in the 1950s and the 1960s, the muse for painters and sculptors in the art world, and the face for photographers’ salons around the world; in the end, she reversed the dynamics of the subject vs. the object and went on to perform her first solo modern dance in 1975, turning herself from the state of passiveness to an active educator of the art of dance. LIN is over 80 years old, but she still fervently pursues her ideals and passions with her body; her path of life is indeed a book of female art history that communicates with the society in Taiwan.
Ballet Boys takes you through disappointments, victories, forging of friendship, first loves, doubt, faith, growing apart from each other, finding your own way and own ambitions, all mixed with the beautiful expression of ballet.