New videos have just been added to Bloom’s Literature, including a three-part performance video and fascinating biographical discussions/interviews. The videos added include:
- Alice Walker: Everyday Use—This is a dramatization of Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” a study in class differences and the reclamation of black history.
- Dalloway—Award-winning writer Alexandra Harris shows how Virginia Woolf’s classic work Mrs. Dalloway completely re-imagined what a novel might be.
- Reading Ireland: Contemporary Irish Writers in the Context of Place—Dr. Matthew Ryan discusses the lives and works of Irish authors John McGahern, Colm Tóibín, and Anne Enright.
- Alice Walker: In Black and White—Alice Walker explains what she calls the “womanist” perspective of The Color Purple and other novels. Part of the series In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors.
- James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket—This film biography of Baldwin’s life captures the passion of his beliefs with stirring excerpts from his novels and striking archival footage dating from the Harlem Renaissance through to the author’s commentary on civil rights to his writing retreats in Istanbul and Europe.
- Gore Vidal: My Life—This program, shot on location in his Italian villa, presents Vidal at his provocative best. Along with comments on the 9/11 terror attacks, the Kennedys, the Waco siege, and his correspondence with Timothy McVeigh, Vidal also discusses the early grounding in history and politics that influenced his work.
- Walt Whitman: A Concise Biography—This introduction to the life and poetry of Walt Whitman from the Famous Authors series begins by contextualizing the writer’s early life in 19th-century Brooklyn and Long Island, NY, and ends with him settling in Camden, NJ, where he reconnected with nature at Timber Creek.
- Marcel Proust: A Concise Biography—This program from the Famous Authors series introduces the audience to the high society and cultural advancements of Paris in which Proust lived from childhood on.
- The Glass Menagerie: Character Studies Conversations—In this program hosted by Eli Wallach, former cast members and directors of The Glass Menagerie discuss plot and thematic elements, the characterization of some of theater’s most memorable and enduring dramatic figures, and the era in which the play was written.
- Juan Goytisolo—in Spanish with English Subtitles—This program presents an overview of Spanish-born author Juan Goytisolo’s outlook on past and present social dilemmas and their connection with his self-exile from his home country.
- Susan Sontag—In this program, Susan Sontag, discoverer of camp and diagnostician of the intellectual and artistic ills of late-20th-century America, tells us of the difficulties of being a woman, a writer, and a sentient human being in this place and at this time—in the process describing her view of herself and the standards she has set for herself.
- Walt Whitman (from Films for Humanities & Sciences)—This program presents a unique literary biography, tracing Whitman’s childhood, various careers, and the evolution of the masterpiece that proved his lifelong work, Leaves of Grass.
- Alice Walker: A Stitch in Time—What were Alice Walker’s motivations in writing “Everyday Use”? In this program, the author discusses her short story with her official biographer, Evelyn C. White.
- Walt Whitman (from Annenberg Learner)—Brilliant readings of Whitman’s poems demonstrate his American vision and style and vividly convey their poignancy and sheer power. Whitman’s sources, including Emerson, the King James Bible, opera, and political oratory, are revealed.
- Hart Crane—Diverse locations and dramatizations of his life illustrate Crane’s poetry and his greatest work, The Bridge.
- Elizabeth Bishop—From childhood in Nova Scotia to travels in Brazil, this program illustrates the geographic spirit of Bishop’s life and works with scenes from her poems.
- The Line of Beauty—This three-part BBC miniseries is Andrew Davies’ adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning novel set in London in the 1980s.
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