Virgil Thomson
Sound
Biography
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".
Known For
The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture.
The Kennedy Center Honors
A woman adored by the people around her ultimately struggles to be happy with herself.
The Goddess
This TV documentary shows some of the colourful residents of and people connected with the New York Chelsea Hotel. Some highlights include Andy Warhol and William Burroughs having dinner; Quentin Crisp pontificating in a blue rinse hairdo on his balcony and Nico forgetting what she is talking about halfway through a dour rendition of "Chelsea Girls". A number of lesser-known characters also appear, linked together by a tour guide walking around the building and some sub-Shining sequences of a child cycling round the landings on a rickety tricycle.
Chelsea Hotel
A documentary about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled farming destroyed the soil and led to the Dust Bowl.
The Plow That Broke the Plains
The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.
Louisiana Story
In this abridged television production, Lear vows revenge against his conniving daughters after they try to take swift control of his power.
King Lear
Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.
The Spanish Earth
This short Depression-era documentary describes the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States and laments the environmental destruction committed in the name of progress, particularly farming and timber practices and their impact on impoverished farmers.
The River
The life and work of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), an American writer who lived in France for more than half of her life ("... not the half that made me, but the half when I did what I did..."), presented in a montage of her autobiographical texts, with pictures from today mixed with archives from the past.
Is Dead - Portrait incomplet de Gertrude Stein
... with real-life portraits of Jayne Mansfield, Frak O'Hara, Ruth Ford, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Rudy Gernreich, Jonas Mekas and others.
Poem Posters
Four episodes on the theme of human hope and survival set in Santambrogio, Italy; Fermathe, Haiti; British Columbia and Kjeller in Norway.
Power Among Men
A propaganda short about the 1944 United States presidential election, produced by the Office of War information, for overseas distribution. It is meant to explain how the democratic process in America works. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Tuesday in November
A romantic pair leaves their flat for a desultory burlesque show and two workmen take advantage of the empty house to pilfer a wallet.