People's Century
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People's Century is a television documentary series examining the 20th century. It was a joint production of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom and Public Broadcasting Service member station WGBH Boston in the United States. First shown on BBC in 1995, the series comprises 26 parts, each spanning one hour dealing with the major socio-economic, political, and cultural movements that shaped the 20th century. The documentary won the International Emmy Award among many other awards.
A departure from other documentaries that observes history as the actions of great men, Peoples Century storytells the twentieth century through vivid interviews with people from all walks of life. It documents people during significant times with footage of landmark events, combined with personal photographs.
One memorable aspect of the series is its title clip and title music, which form a finely edited depiction of moments of significance from the 20th century. It begins with images from World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, World War II, the Space Age, the May 1968 student revolution, the Iranian Revolution, the Cold War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. These images are projected on a tracking shot of a miniature landscape which resembles the political events pictured, for example destroyed ruins for both world-wars, streets for the urban Jazz Age, palm trees for the Vietnam War, and ends on a miniature model of the Berlin Wall partly wrecked down. The tracking shot piece was done in the city of Prague, in the Czech Republic. The series was given its expressive theme music by composer Zbigniew Preisner.
The British version was narrated by Sean Barrett and Veronika Hyks, and the American edition by actors John Forsythe and Alfre Woodard. The titles were also different in both countries with pictures of the Romanovs and a family on a scooter, replace with an American World war I march and a family in a 1950's car.
People's Century was coproduced by the BBC and WGBH with executive producers Peter Pagnamenta and Zvi Dor-Ner, respectively; along with producer David Espar.
Contents |
[edit] The series
| Episode | Title | Year | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Age of Hope | 1900 | The start of the 20th Century, a stable, unequal yet optimistic era where people were beginning to be introduced to new technologies and ideas. |
| 2 | Killing Fields | 1916 | World War I |
| 3 | Red Flag | 1917 | The Russian Revolution |
| 4 | Lost Peace | 1919 | The emergence and failure of the League of Nations in the inter-war years. |
| 5 | On the Line | 1926 | Economic growth and the redivision of labour caused by mass production |
| 6 | Great Escape | 1927 | Cinema |
| 7 | Breadline | 1929 | The Great Depression and its effects (and government counter-measures) in Britain, the United States, Sweden, Germany and Chile. |
| 8 | Sporting Fever | 1930 | The rise of sport as a form of mass entertainment. |
| 9 | Master Race | 1933 | Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, from the election of Adolf Hitler to the 'Final Solution' |
| 10 | Total War | 1939 | World War II |
| 11 | Fallout | 1945 | Nuclear power and weapons, from El Alamogordo to Chernobyl |
| 12 | Brave New World | 1945 | The Cold War, up to the erection of the Berlin Wall |
| 13 | Freedom Now | 1947 | Decolonisation in India and Africa |
| 14 | Boomtime | 1948 | The rebuilding of Europe and the economic boom in the West, up to the 1973 Oil Shock |
| 15 | Asia Rising | 1951 | Japan and South Korea's economic development |
| 16 | Living Longer | 1952 | The Growth in medicine, including the irradication of smallpox and polio, the third world population boom, AIDS and the return of tuberculosis |
| 17 | Skin Deep | 1957 | Racism and the civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa |
| 18 | Endangered Planet | 1959 | Environmentalism, from the Minamata disaster and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm |
| 19 | Picture Power | 1963 | Television, from its introduction in pre-war Britain to its use as a news-gathering medium in the Gulf War |
| 20 | Great Leap | 1965 | China, from the revolution in 1949 to the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao Zedong |
| 21 | New Release(UK)/Young Blood(US) | 1968 | The Baby Boomer generation, from the post-war baby boom to student radicalism in the West in the 1960s |
| 22 | Half the People | 1970 | The emancipation of women, from the suffragettes to the 1996 Beijing conference on the status of women |
| 23 | War of the Flea | 1973 | The revolution in Cuba, Vietnam War and the Afghan War |
| 24 | God Fights Back | 1979 | The emergence of Islamism from the 1970s in the previously secularised Middle East, marked by Islamic revolutions in Iran and Afghanistan; also the rise of Christian evangelism in the United States |
| 25 | People Power | 1989 | The end of socialism in Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union |
| 26 | Back to The Future(US)/Fast Forward(UK) | 1997 | The spread of globalisation in the United States, Russia, China and India; also the Bosnian War |
[edit] International versions
Apart from winning a number of famed awards, People's Century was also broadcast in several non-English-speaking countries. In Germany, the series was shown dubbed, under its original English title, on VOX as a weekly night-time feature on a 4-to-6-hours time slot called DCTP Nachtclub with several episodes filling each slot, as part of the channel's SPIEGEL TV high-quality documentaries program co-operation with Der Spiegel, and subsequently a limited-edition VHS box set was released of the German-dubbed version under the title Chronik des 20. Jahrhunderts. The German dub also ran on Austrian and Swiss television.
[edit] VHS and DVD editions
In 1997 and 1998, VHS box sets were produced of the series in PAL and NTSC. As of 2007, most of People's Century original episodes remain unavailable on DVD, however in late 2006 DVD editions were released in the US of the two world-war episodes Killing Fields and Total War exclusively in NTSC, along with a few cut-down post-war episodes (on a DVD called Young Blood, drawing from the previously released Baby Boomers Boxed Set on VHS that had contained 5 complete episodes), by WGBH Boston.
