The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 5 Comments
Dear Daniel B., Thank you for bringing the 2000 Michaël Dudok De Wit short, Father and Daughter, to our attention. We always appreciate reader suggestions. We must take issue, however, with your warning: “Be advised, it will indeed break your heart.” At Open Culture we  approach the arts with a discerning, engaged and unsentimental eye — [...]
≡ Category: Science, Video - Science | ≅ 4 Comments
On March 11th, Japan suffered a 9.0 earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami. Just weeks later, NOVA has produced a 47 minute documentary that does an impressive job of explaining the science behind these twin geologic catastrophes. The program follows Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, who arrived in Japan two days after the [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
D.A. Pennebaker’s classic 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back will be re-released on Blu-Ray on April 24. As a featured extra, it will include this terrific reminiscence between Pennebaker and music journalist/cultural critic Greil Marcus, who wrote two of our favorite Dylan books: The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and Like a Rolling Stone: [...]
≡ Category: Video - Science | ≅ 3 Comments
When you look up in the sky, what do you see besides the blue sky, clouds, the occasional bird and plane, the Sun, and the Moon? In this whimsical animated video from NPR, we learn about the various insects – the wasps, aphids, beetles, etc. – that inhabit the upper levels of the troposphere. What’s incredible [...]
≡ Category: Art | ≅ Leave a Comment
Since 1990, Dutch artist Theo Jansen has given life to Strandbeests. They’re made of nothing more than a mass of yellow plastic tubes. But these kinetic sculptures feed off of the wind. They roam the beaches on their own. And they evolve. Soon enough, Jansen says, you will see Strandbeests living in herds, and who [...]
≡ Category: Film, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Would the 1963 horror film Dementia 13 be remembered today without the subsequent achievements of its young director, Francis Ford Coppola? It’s hard to say. Contemporaries seem to have thought otherwise: The New York Times reviewer described the film’s direction as “stolid” and its cast as “unlucky,” and the producer, B-Movie king Roger Corman, furiously [...]
≡ Category: Science, Technology, Video - Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Scifoo is an annual “unconference” c0-hosted in Mountain View, California by Google, O’Reilly Media and Nature publishing. It’s participant-driven, cross-pollinating, and highly unstructured, relying more on brainstorms and erasable white boards than PowerPoint presentations and lecture halls. According to Nature’s page for Scifoo 2011: 200 leading scientists, technologists, writers and other thought-leaders will gather once [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Poetry | ≅ Leave a Comment
Not long after taking office, President Obama hosted the first White House poetry jam – an evening dedicated to the spoken word and bringing verses to life. Esperanza Spalding’s performance was a high point. And later came James Earl Jones, arguably the best special effect in Star Wars, who recited lines from Shakespeare instead of Dr. [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Due to its stylistic and linguistic complexity, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake ranks among the most difficult works of fiction. And that is why virtually no filmmaker has ever tried to adapt Joyce’s final work for the screen. But after Mary Manning Howe adapted passages from the book for the stage (listen to her reading from [...]
≡ Category: Music, Religion | ≅ Leave a Comment
Brilliant comedian. Playwright. Contributor to The New Yorker. And now songwriter for hymn-deprived atheists. Steve Martin – who comes into focus within 10 seconds – performs here with the Steep Canyon Rangers at Merlefest 2010… You can find an alternate/more polished version recorded on the David Letterman Show here…
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