Self
Designed by Thomas Jefferson to represent the “authority of nature and the power of reason,” the Rotunda is the physical and symbolic center of the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson in 1824 as the first secular Liberal Arts university in America. Composer Judith Shatin and filmmaker Robert Arnold have created a portrait of the Rotunda that combines its timeless majesty with the ever-changing hum of daily life. Sounds and images recorded over the course of an entire year from season to season, are presented as a single day, from dawn to sunset.
Director
No other place in the world has a romance with American bluegrass like the Czech Republic. Banjo Romantika introduces the musicians who play this unique bluegrass hybrid. Czechs first heard bluegrass during World War II when the Armed Forces Network broadcast American music for soldiers. The music represented freedom to dissatisfied Czechs living in a communist state. Czechs' love for the music was solidified when Pete Seeger visited and performed in 1964. Inspired by classic American bluegrass sounds, an assortment of musicians from across the formerly communist Czech Republic have melded the past, the political and the present into a lively musical tradition entirely its own.
