The Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS

New York, 1937. A teenager hired to star in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.

This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' performance space to national cultural institution.

The actor Gøril Mauseth goes on a 11.000 kilometer travel with the Trans-Siberian to play Anna Karenina in a new language in Leo Tolstoj's Russia, discovering the language, and the reasons Tolstoj wrote what he wrote, changing her forever.

The life and work of stage designer ADOLPHE APPIA, originator of the most profound agitations in contemporary theatre. Through the dynamic alternation of animated drawings and choreographies specially conceived for the film, we discover the steps of his artistic evolution.

The work of legendary actor François Simon, son of Michel Simon.

A look at the entire process of creating and developing Patrice Chéreau’s third staging of "In the Solitude of Cotton Fields" by Bernard Marie Koltès with Pascal Greggory and Chéreau himself. From the first reading around the table through the first contact with the performance space, rehearsals and lighting to opening night, the entire creative process unfurls in front of our eyes. The film shows us the evolving and ongoing dialogue between Greggory and Chéreau, a dialogue full of crises and magical moments of harmony and insight via which the truth, intensity, complexity, mystery and depth of Koltès’ text gradually emerge to form an implicit bond between these two men. The film also shows Chéreau directing rehearsals for Mozart’s "Don Giovanni" in Salzburg, revealing both the unity of and profound differences between his opera and theater work.

The golden age of the annual Tony Awards ceremony lasted from 1967 to 1986 — the period during which Alexander H. Cohen and his wife, Hildy Parks, were the producers of the show. This film offers a compilation of performances from Tony Award broadcasts during those years. They are presented with color-corrected footage and digitally re-mastered sound.

A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?

Divadlo v Řeznické

Documentary looking at the culture of three motels and their owners who remain untouched by homogenization and corporatism, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Florence, Arizona; and the semi-ghost town of Death Valley Junction, California. Everyone has an unusual story to tell.

Màscares

Kevin Spacey, Sam Mendes and the Bridge Project Company go on the road in NOW: in the Wings on a World Stage. In over 200 performances, and across 3 continents, Kevin and the troupe reveal some of the most intimate moments behind the scenes of their staging of Shakespeare's classic tragedy, "Richard III." Their story and experiences weave around, and reflect on, excerpts from the play from their various locations, from Epidaurus to Doha, and provides a great opportunity for those who have never experienced Spacey on stage to witness his immerse and captivating interpretation of Richard III. NOW chronicles the first collaboration between Spacey and Mendes since both won Academy Awards® for their work on American Beauty.

Previously a central part of communal life, the movie palaces of New York’s Chinatown are now extinct. This documentary short takes us inside the title theater located on the Bowery, as it’s about to close its doors, with its caretakers ruefully looking back at the life that once was. Eric Lin’s poignant first film serves as a glimpse into the usually private—and, according to the Music Palace’s projectionist, “lonely”—operations of a theater, and mourns the loss of a once-vital movie-going locale.

The work of actors on a stage makes a dreamlike parallelism between artistic immagination and the concreteness of everyday life. Tribute to Prague's Divadlo na zàbradlì, theater that has been a point of reference for Theater of the Absurd in Czechoslovakia in Sixties

Robin ownes a beautiful old theatre in Norrköping, Sweden. There he lives with his husband. To solve a critical financial situation for the theatre, Robin puts up an equivoque burlesque show. In the middle of rehearsals he gets a phone call from Christian, the owner of a swingers club, who is in desperate need of new facilities because of a terrible fire that ruined his club. Renting out the cellar is a very interesting option for Robin and soon the two new friends start to cooperate while the town of Norrköping is in rage. The dream of Cristian is to make a big swingers party in the whole theatre and sometimes dreams come true.

On the eve of her 70th birthday, Canadian writer Margaret Atwood set out on an international tour criss-crossing the British Isles and North America to celebrate the publication of her new dystopian novel, The Year of the Flood. Rather than mount a traditional tour to promote a book's publication, Atwood conceived and executed something far more ambitious and revelatory--a theatrical version of her novel. Along the way she reinvented what a book tour could (and maybe should) be. But Atwood wasn't selling books as much as advocating an idea: how humanity must respond to the consequences of an environmentally compromised planet before her work of speculative fiction transforms into prophesy.

First film of Juan José Ponce’s trilogy about Federico García Lorca. Lunas de Nueva York looks back on Federico’s trip to New York in 1929, an essential journey for his life and career.

A documentary about the 1978 stage production of The Taming of the Shrew by the New York City Shakespeare company at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. Includes scenes from the production, interviews with Meryl Streep (Kate) and Raul Julia (Petruchio) as well as an introduction by producer Joseph Papp and audience commentary.

What we tend to identify with the acting profession has little to do with what is really this profession. Thirty-six Spanish actors reflect on their work and contrasted their experiences. As thread, the contrast between the voices of veterans and images of young theater students , for whom everything is still possible. Among the many actors are interviewed Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Carmen Maura, Fernando Fernán Gómez, José Luis López Vázquez, José Coronado, Emma Suarez, Alberto San Juan, Ariadna Gil, Ana Belén, Pilar Lopez de Ayala and many other.

Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 1992-2017. The end of the GDR gave rise to new artistic freedoms in reunited Berlin. Shortly after the fall of the Wall, rebel director Frank Castorf was appointed artistic director of the Volksbühne. His way of working altered the public’s perception of this theater. The chronological history of the Castorf era between 1992 and 2017 is told here in excerpts from the productions and in a series of conversations conducted on the long sofa in the theater's foyer.