Celebrating its 89th year, the lighting of the National Christmas Tree signals the start of the holiday season across the country. Taped at President’s Park in Washington, D.C., this special features performances and readings by top musical artists and actors. The evening’s festivities end with the ceremonial lighting of the National Christmas Tree– by a very special guest!
Watch Tuesday, December 20 at 8pm.
From 1941 to 1978, the husband-and-wife team of Ray and Charles Eames brought unique talents to their partnership. He was an architect by training; she was a painter and sculptor. Together, they are considered America’s most important and influential designers, whose work helped shape, literally, the second half of the 20th century and remains culturally vital and commercially popular today. The Eames are, perhaps, best remembered for their mid-century modern furniture, built from novel materials like molded plywood, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, bent metal wire and aluminum — offering consumers beautiful, functional, yet inexpensive products. Revered for their designs and fascinating as individuals, the Eames have risen to iconic status in American culture, but their influence on significant events and movements in American life — from the development of modernism to the rise of the computer age — has been less widely understood.
Watch Monday, December 19 at 9pm.
More Americans have been lost to AIDS than in all the U.S. wars since 1900. And the pandemic has killed 22 million people worldwide. But few know about the existence of the National AIDS Memorial, a seven-acre grove hidden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. THE GROVE chronicles this garden’s transformation from a neglected eyesore to landscaped sanctuary to national memorial. The film shows how a community in crisis found healing and remembrance, and how the seeds of a few visionary environmentalists blossomed into something larger than they could have imagined. But as the Grove’s stakeholders seek broader public recognition through an international design competition, a battle erupts over what constitutes an appropriate memorial for the AIDS pandemic. What does it mean to be a national memorial? And how do we mark a time of unimaginable loss?
Watch Thursday, December 15 at 8pm.
In the late summer of 2010, Dick Proenneke’s brother, Jake, discovered a closetful of unseen 8mm and 16mm film shot during Dick’s 30-year adventure living ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS. The thousands of feet of film was turned over to Bob Swerer Sr. & Jr., producers of the original “ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS and longtime friends of the Proenneke brothers to see if it would be possible to create another documentary for public television.
The end result is “ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS PART 2” The Swerers carefully matched up footage with Dick’s hand written journals to recreate Dick’s second year in the Alaskan wild.
Initially, the task of filming himself in the wilderness was a challenge for Dick. He began with a simple used wind-up Bolex camera that was given to him by his brother, Jake. Dick would give the exposed film with a passing bush pilot who would mail it to his brother . Jake would have the film developed, review it through a projector, and send Dick letters reporting how the footage looked, whether it was over or underexposed, out-of- focus, too far away, etc. As it could take several months for these messages to reach Dick in Alaska, not all of the film he shot was of sufficient quality to be included in the documentaries.
Watch Friday, December 2, 2011 at 9pm.
