The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Math, Politics | ≅ 5 Comments
This week the British Government once again refused to pardon Alan Turing. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, Turing laid the foundations for computer science and played a key role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. In 1952 he was convicted of homosexuality. He killed himself two years later, after [...]
≡ Category: Film, History | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Graduate came out in 1967 and astounded audiences with its now famous storyline. The young college graduate Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) finds himself seduced by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), a family friend, only to then fall in love with her daughter, Elaine. Pretty shocking material for many in 1967. A financial and critical [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Film, Random | ≅ 3 Comments
It’s part of the beauty of Werner Herzog. His films engross us, and the director provides the entertainment on the side. You have seen him take a bullet during an interview in LA. You’ve heard him read “Go the F**k to Sleep” in New York City. And, of course, you’ve watched him eat his shoe (literally!) [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, e-books, Film, Literature | ≅ 1 Comment
Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. He was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. When he was 12 years old his father was sent to debtors’ prison, along with most of his family, and Charles went to live with a friend of the family, an impoverished [...]
≡ Category: Film, Technology | ≅ 5 Comments
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance — Godfrey Reggio directed the 1982 film, and Philip Glass composed the music. Later, Reggio said that the film is wide open to interpretation, that “the viewer can take for herself what the film means.” “For some people it’s an environmental film, for some people it’s an ode to technology, [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ Leave a Comment
The great French filmmaker François Truffaut would have turned 80 today, and to celebrate, we’re bringing back a wonderful series of audio recordings — Truffaut’s lengthy interview with another legendary director, Alfred Hitchcock. Back in 1962, François Truffaut, the inspiration behind French New Wave cinema, met with Hitchcock. And, assisted by a helpful translator, the two [...]
≡ Category: Film, Television | ≅ 1 Comment
The films of David Lynch seem anything but “commercial.” Disturbing, incomprehensible, they shine a flashlight into the darkest regions of the subconscious mind. When you walk out of a theater after watching a David Lynch film you feel like you just woke up from a vivid and unsettling dream. But Lynch has been leading a [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature | ≅ 2 Comments
“We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth,” says the narrator Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive [...]
≡ Category: Animation, Books, Film | ≅ 6 Comments
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore offers a modern tribute to an old world. Made with an animation style that blends stop motion with computer animation and traditional hand-drawing, the silent film pays homage to a bygone era when elegantly printed books inhabited our world. The 15-minute short is the first made by Moonbot Studios, a [...]
≡ Category: Film | ≅ 4 Comments
BrainPickings recently highlighted the first kiss in cinema history. That takes you back to 1896, to a film brought to you by Thomas Edison. Now we rewind the videotape and present the first same-sex kiss in film history (or at least one of the earliest known ones). This Brokeback-before-Brokeback moment took place in the 1927 [...]
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