Lotte Lenya

From Russia with Love

Agent 007 is back in the second installment of the James Bond series, this time battling a secret crime organization known as SPECTRE. Russians Rosa Klebb and Kronsteen are out to snatch a decoding device known as the Lektor, using the ravishing Tatiana to lure Bond into helping them. Bond willingly travels to meet Tatiana in Istanbul, where he must rely on his wits to escape with his life in a series of deadly encounters with the enemy.

Semi-Tough

A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

Critics and the public say Karen Stone is too old -- as she approaches 50 -- for her role in a play she is about to take to Broadway. Her businessman husband, 20 years her senior, has been the angel for the play and gives her a way out: They are off to a holiday in Rome for his health. He suffers a fatal heart attack on the plane. Mrs. Stone stays in Rome. She leases a magnificent apartment with a view of the seven hills from the terrace. Then the contessa comes calling to introduce a young man named Paolo to her. The contessa knows many presentable young men and lonely American widows.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill in America

The story of Kurt Weill 's relationship with the American popular theatre. During his years in exile on Broadway, the composer of Mack the Knife and The Alabama Song, who personified decadent Berlin, found a new life in New York, creating such standards as September Song and Speak Low. Director Barrie Gavin describes the film as "the history of an artist ... struggling to write music which could have real meaning for the society he had just joined." Weill is remembered by the conductor Maurice Abravanel and the actor Burgess Meredith and there are extracts from several of his works.

The 3 Penny Opera

In London at the turn of the century, underworld kingpin Mack the Knife marries Polly Peachum without the knowledge of her father, the equally enterprising 'king of the beggars'.

September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill

Filmmaker Larry Weinstein stages a wide range of performances in tribute to the compositions of Kurt Weill.

Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill

Ken Russell directed a short document of German actress (and widow of famed composer Kurt Weill) Lotte Lenya performing many of Weill's best known compositions for BBC TV series "Monitor."

The Incredible World of James Bond

This promotional film was aired on American television on 26 November 1965, one month before the release of Thunderball (1965). Narrated by Alexander Scourby, the 48 minute documentary aired as a one hour special. It included footage of the filming at Silverstone Racetrack, Northamptonshire and of the fight aboard the Disco Volante at Pinewood Studios; media coverage of Martine Beswick, Luciana Paluzzi and Claudine Auger; and archive footage of Ian Fleming at 'Goldeneye', Jamaica.

Mother Courage and Her Children - A chronicle from the Thirty Years' War

A recording of the 1939 play "Mother Courage and Her Children" for German TV.

The Appointment

Lawyer Federico Fendi has reasons to suspect that his fashion model wife Carla is secretly one of Rome's highest paid call-girls.

No. 18: Mahagonny

Harry Smith’s final film; an epic four-screen projection. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.

George Grosz' Interregnum

An indelible portrait of Nazi brutality told through the powerful images of George Grosz' drawings. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Ten Blocks on the Camino Real

A collection of ten vignettes by Tennessee Williams offering various viewpoints on life, love, and death.

The Exiles

A chronicle of the rescue of oppressed intellectuals and artists from Europe before the outbreak of World War II. It studies the cultural and intellectual impact of this emigre population on American life.