Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985. Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to "Black Power" in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions...
An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., power and profit)--ad infinitum.
A series of three documentaries about the use of fear for political gain. In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life, but now they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand...
This series features David Attenborough’s original 1975 Tribal Art: The Complete Series and includes all seven programmes commissioned for the BBC. Through the series, Attenborough gives viewers a fascinating guide to the world’s tribal art traveling to intriguing places and tribal communities. Attenborough’s love of tribal art grew out of his early programme-making days at the BBC and took him to all corners of the world. From his first trips he accumulated souvenirs and eventually became a serious collector of tribal art. This series was commissioned shortly after he resigned from his job as Director of Programmes. He believed there was room on television for totem poles and masks as well as old master paintings. The resulting lavish series examined sculpture, weaving, metal casting and other artistic activities in tribal societies around the world.
