In the most personal and unflinching film of his career, historian Simon Schama confronts the enormity of the Holocaust and the catastrophe experienced by its victims. In a journey that ends with his first visit to Auschwitz, Simon travels across the Continent to explore how the Holocaust was far more than a Nazi obsession that played out in gas chambers, but a European-wide crime of complicity. From bullets in the Lithuanian lands of his ancestors to bureaucracy in the Netherlands, he reveals how deep-rooted prejudice was weaponised to turn people against their Jewish neighbours. As a moving interview with a survivor reveals, the story of how ‘evil comes step by step’ remains powerfully relevant today.
Art and culture define us - but in an age of change, who are we now? In divided times, Simon Schama asks whether art, music and words can be the threads that bind us together.
While making Simon Schama’s History of Now, Simon met several of the most influential contemporary artists working in the world today. In this series of extended interviews, Simon meets Ai Weiwei, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Margaret Atwood, to uncover the personal motivations behind their work and activism, their sense of why art matters, and their unique perspectives on the state of the world today.
In his most personal project to date, Simon Schama looks back at the dramatic history that has played out in his lifetime. Best known for writing history, he has lived a fair bit of it too. Born in 1945, on the night of the bombing of Dresden, Simon grew up as part of a generation determined to rebuild the world from the ashes of war. In this film, he reveals the stories of artists and writers who have been at the forefront of the fight for truth and democracy, often at great personal cost.
From popular revolt to the obsession with the self, even to modern nationalism, Simon Schama explores the enduring and powerful legacy the Romantics have left on our modern world.
The story of art from the dawn of human history to the present day—for the first time on a global scale. Inspired by Civilisation, Kenneth Clark’s acclaimed landmark 1969 series about Western art, this series broadens the canvas to reveal the role art and the creative imagination have played across multiple cultures and civilizations.
Simon Schama explores the history of British portraiture, revealing the stories behind the most compelling images in British art and examining the ways portraiture is used to make a statement.
Simon Schama explains the style, theme and concept of Rembrandt's late masterpieces.
Simon Schama explores the story of the Jewish experience from ancient times to the present day.
A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.
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