Episode list

A montage of images of the first moon landing makes the central statement in Scott Bartlett's experimental film "Moon" in the first of two parts presenting the filmmaker.

Part 1 of a two part documentary focusing on the making of the BBC 12-part show "The Family" which followed the daily lives of a British working class family, the Wilkins.

Part 2 of the documentary on the 12-part program "The Family" includes producer Paul Watson discussing the public outcry directed at the Wilkins; TV critic Dennis Potter speaking of the exploitation of "The Family;" and Watson reporting on what has happened to the family since the broadcasts.

An experimental theater group, Otrabanda, travels down the Mississippi River stopping at various towns to perform their improvisational and vaudeville style of theater.

Katushiro Oida (known as Yoshi to his friends) is a Japanese-born actor-mime-musician who has been invited to improvise with a group of young people from the New York School of the Death.

Rosamond Bernier interviews Joseph H. Hirshhorn, private art collector, and tours the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., which houses his collection of 19th and 20th century art and sculpture.

Sir Michael Tippett discusses his life and work as a composer-conductor in Great Britain.

A day in the life of the most powerful Zen priest in Japan, Tachibana Taiki, called the "great turtle priest."

After chemicals were dumped by a factory into the ocean, mysterious diseases and birth deformities were reported in the coastal Japanese towns where villagers ate the fish caught in local waters. Photographer W. Eugene Smith and his wife documented the facts and brought it to world attention. They appear in conversation with photographer-writer William Pierce and James Hughes.

A filmed exploration of the thousand year old Buddhist shrine Borobudur in Java, Indonesia.

Hollywood special effects are discussed by Linwood Dunn and Robert Abel. Dunn, from the glory days, created the ape in "King Kong." Abel presents the next generation and presents special effects from a recent 7-Up commercial he created.

A documentary on John Whitney Sr., an early innovator of films made by computer-driven cameras. Excerpts from his films are presented.

Author M.F.K. Fisher, often considered the dean of American food writers, in a casual monologue about her life and work with illustrations from her own photo archives. She talks in her house in Sonoma, CA., where she has lived for many years. Author of many books, including "With Bold Knife and Fork", "Consider the Oyster" and "How to Cook a Wolf", Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was also a screen writer, a novelist and short story writer (often published in "The New Yorker" magazine) and lived for long periods abroad. It was to food that she returned again and again, and it is through writing about food that she conveyed her view of the life of her times. "When I write about food and hunger I am really writing about love, and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it - it is all one."

Northwestern University Professor Samuel Schoenbaum, an Elizabethan scholar, and Columbia University's Dean of the School of Arts, Bernard Beckerman, join author-critic Margaret Croyden in a discussion of William Shakespeare and his plays. This is part 1 of 2.

In part 2: actor John Houseman joins critic Margaret Croyden and her guests Bernard Beckman and Prof. Samuel Schoenbaum for a continued discussion about William Shakespeare and his plays.