Journey into "Hamlet"-the play and the man-through the experiences of some of the major actors and directors who have brought Shakespeare's great tragedy to life. Christopher Plummer, David Tennant, John Nettles, John Simm, Sir Trevor Nunn, Franco Zeffirelli, Philip Saville, and others explore the enduring appeal of the Prince of Denmark more than 400 years after his stage debut.
Gregory DoranSelf
Jonathan MillerSelf
John NettlesSelf
Trevor NunnSelf
Christopher PlummerSelf
Michael RadfordSelf
John SimmSelf
David TennantSelf
Franco ZeffirelliSelf
Kenneth BranaghHamlet (archive footage)This documentary celebrates one of Britain’s greatest actors, Dame Judi Dench, and looks back over her remarkable 60-year career.
Joanne Williams' documentary captures an experiment of sorts. In 1966, amid the Civil Rights era, students from Milwaukee's Rufus King High School and students from Kaukauna High School participated in an exchange program that culminated in a production of Martin Duberman's play IN WHITE AMERICA. Now, over fifty years later, the original participants come together with a new generation, reprising this play with reflection and new energy amid our own racial reckoning.
In 1972, Carlos Mathus's provocative play 'La lección de anatomía' opened in Buenos Aires. He thus became a renowned author and director, and the play had an international uninterrupted run of thirty years. More than forty years later the author asks himself about the current relevance of the play and embarks on the adventure of a revival, an odyssey that will take a definite toll on his spirit, his health, and the work itself.
As their bodies give way to Parkinson's disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final Off-Broadway production of Beckett's "Endgame," the play that posits, "there's nothing funnier than unhappiness."
On 18th of December 2017, the Filarmonica Teatro Regio Torino, directed by Timothy Brock, presented "The Gold Rush" by Charles Chaplin, with live performance of the soundtrack. But let's go back a few days: this short film takes us in the backstage of the concert!
On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant, a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.
A young black artist leaves his Los Angeles digs and travels to Europe to find himself. A theatrical stage production of the original Broadway musical.
Mel Gibson teaches Hamlet to a group of high school drama students.
The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.
This documentary short is a cinematic recording of Tales from a Prairie Drifter, a stage comedy about the North-West Resistance during the opening of the Canadian West. Highlighting the roles of Louis Riel, the Resistance leader, prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald and General Middleton, who was sent to quell the uprising, the play defines the First nations and Métis cause more succinctly than many history books. Here, the play is performed by the Regina Globe Theatre before and Indigineous audience of First Nations and Métis, whose reactions are recorded.
Sir Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine talking about making the film.
A look back at "La Cage aux Folles", which ran non-stop for five years, from February 1973, on the stage of the Théâtre du Palais Royal in Paris. At a time when homosexuality was considered a crime by the law, Poiret and Serrault achieved great success in boulevard theater. Their success continued on the silver screen, with three Oscar nominations and a Broadway musical. Combining never-before-seen archives from the play, extracts from the film, confessions by Poiret and Serrault, and interviews with witnesses, this is the story of a wild epic.
Five young Ukrainians discuss life following the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Not all fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but it, regardless, shattered their life plans. Representing 'Generation Maidan', they face the question of how to cope with experiences of violence, how to go on. A local theatre director produces Hamlet, wherein they can use Shakespeare’s tragic character as a mirror and face their traumas onstage. For them, 'to be or not to be' is not simply text but an existential dilemma with no clear answer.
In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.
Described in the 70’s as "A Chorus Line for gay people," Crimes Against Nature remains vital today as a communal disclosure of roles that gay people adopt in order to survive in a world that devalues homosexual feelings. It features individual actors delivering revealing monologues, during which the other members of the collective play background roles (parents, schoolmates, etc.). One by one, the actors detail the ways in which they have buried their true selves in order to survive and be accepted in the world: repression, drug use, shyness, being agreeable, putting experiences into "little boxes," acting "butch," and so on.