People's Century

"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.

The series

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.

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.

External links

* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/about/index.html People's Century (PBS-WGBH)]
* [http://www.bbcfactual.co.uk/peoples_century.htm People's Century (BBC)]