Civilisations Series Bbc

[Novella Poinsett]

Fromthe landscape scrolls of classical China and the sculpture of the Olmecs to African bronzes, Japanese prints and French Impressionist paintings, Civilizations explores the wealth of treasures created through the entirety of the human experience.

Acclaimed film, theater and television actor Liev Schreiber narrates the series. The principal contributors to the films are Simon Schama, art historian and Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University New York; Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge; and British-Nigerian historian and writer David Olusoga.

Artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Michal Rovner and Anselm Kiefer, Kara Walker, Richard Misrach, Antony Gormley, Bill Viola, Kira Perov, Cai Guo-Qiang and Damien Hirst add additional commentary and context to this creative exploration.

*Requires an internet connection, and a 2K Account linked to the account of the same platform used to play Sid Meier's Civilization VI. 2K Accounts are free. One per account. Void where prohibited. Terms apply.

Since 1991, the award-winning Civilization series of turn-based strategy games has challenged players to guide a civilization through history and build an empire to stand the test of time. Players assume the role of a famous historical leader, making all the crucial economic, political, and military decisions as they pursue one of multiple paths to victory.

2010: City-States, ranged bombardment, and hexagonal map tiles are just a few of the game-changing and persistent features that were introduced in Civilization V. Unique units, buildings, and leader abilities make each civilization more distinct than ever.

2005: Heralded as one of the best games of its time, Civilization IV was the first entry to feature Religions that can spread across the map and Great People with abilities unique to their class. Civilization IV also empowered players to choose different leaders for some of the featured civilizations.

2001: The introduction of Culture and Diplomacy victories in Civilization III afforded leaders compelling new ways to play. Strategically important resources, powerful civilization-specific units, and additional forms of government also debuted in Civilization III.

1996: Building on the foundations laid by the first game, Civilization II introduced new strategic considerations and an expanded arsenal of combat units. Civilization II was also the first game in the series to employ the now-familiar isometric perspective.

1991: Designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley, the original Civilization is widely considered one of the most influential turn-based strategy games ever made. Civilization launched with many innovative features and a sweeping strategic framework that persist in the series to this day.

Civilisations is a 2018 British art history television documentary series produced by the BBC in association with PBS as a follow-up to the original 1969 landmark series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. Individual episodes are presented by Simon Schama, Mary Beard, and David Olusoga,[1] with music composed by Tandis Jenhudson.[2] The PBS release differs in several respects, including series narration by Liev Schreiber.[3]

On 25 March 2014, Tony Hall, Director-General of the BBC, announced a commitment to a new version of Lord Clark's original Civilisation.[4] The new Civilisations series was officially announced by the BBC on 20 December 2015.[5]

While Clark's original Civilisation focused on the influence of western European art, Civilisations presents a global perspective on the role that art has played in shaping civilisations across the world, filming across 6 continents, and in 31 countries.

As a companion to the series, the BBC released Civilisations AR, an augmented reality smartphone app that enabled users to view and explore art and historical artefacts from around the world. It was developed internally by a BBC Research and Development team based in London, in collaboration with Nexus Studios.[7]

The Civilisations Festival was a season of events organised by the BBC in partnership with museums, galleries, libraries and archives across the UK, created to coincide with the airing of the Civilisations programme.[8] It runs from 2 to 11 March 2018 and the trailer for the festival was released on 8 February 2018.[9]

The series was launched at a preview event at the National Gallery in London on 6 February 2018.[10] Sir David Attenborough, who commissioned the original series with Kenneth Clark, made a special guest appearance, saying he "cannot wait to see the series". He also stated that the BBC could not simply have reproduced the approach of the original series, stating "Society has changed. We have an international society, a multi-ethnic society. You can't just do it in the way we did it."[11] The first trailer was released on 7 February 2018.[12]

The List gave the series 4 of out 5 stars, based on viewings of the first two episodes: "it's a visual feast as the cameras sweep across ruined cities and townships or focuses in for tight close-ups to emphasise the exquisite details of relics, pottery and sculpture. Even more inspiring is the breadth of knowledge, beautiful nuggets of information and insights into ancient worlds. Accessible and intelligent, Civilisations conveys a message of globalism, revelling in the variety of our species' ingenuity on an international scale."[15]

The Daily Telegraph in its review of the ninth and final episode concluded: "as nine discrete lectures, delivered by three of our most captivating cultural commentators, interrogating how we view art and what it means to us today, this has been a fascinating project that was undoubtedly worth the effort."[16]

Mark Lawson approved of the series but noted that the "format of TV as lecture theatre" had not changed since the 1969 original. He wrote: "the BBC has spectacularly and intelligently remade its 1969 hit in a way that reflects shifts in cultural and art historical thinking. Less apparent is any sense of fresh reflection about how and why art should be put on TV."[17]

BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz described the series as "patchwork programmes with rambling narratives that promise much but deliver little in way of fresh insight or surprising connections." He commented that although the scripts were "far from being literary masterpieces, the camerawork is of the highest quality throughout [with] plenty of delicious visual treats". He concluded: "a well-intentioned, well-funded series that has top TV talent in all departments but which ended up being less than the sum of its parts."[18]

Former BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Tandis Jenhudson[22] composed the original music for the series, as well as the main title theme (which features soprano Caroline Kennedy). A digital soundtrack will be released on 23 September 2018 and his score will also form the soundtrack of the BBC Civilisations AR augmented-reality app on both iOS and Android.[2]

Released as Civilizations by PBS in the United States, the individual programmes have distinct treatments and narrative arc, with Liev Schreiber as the series narrator.[3] While maintaining the principal contributions of Schama, Beard, and Olusoga, joining them are international artists and experts including religious studies scholar Jamal J. Elias, INAH anthropologist Rebecca Gonzalez-Lauck, art critic Jonathan Jones, Egyptology professor Salima Ikram, Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu, and history professor Maya Jasanoff.[23]

Near where I work in central London, on the site of a former hospital, a new garden square has recently come into existence. The grass may be astroturf and the design of the flats and offices that loom over the space less than inspiring. But this is still something of an oasis in a hectic area and one that, being tucked away, never becomes too crowded.

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To show how dark this forest is, as well as to suggest a way out of it using the light offered by traditional wisdom, I now want to take a closer look at where this potentially promising series went wrong.

Civilisations that view time in this way have no need to conquer it, as Schama supposes, because they know how to escape its endless flow by returning to how things were in the beginning, before time. In other words, they are in touch with the eternal.

Civilisations Series 1 consisted of nine episodes broadcast on BBC2 between 8 March and 12 May 2019. Click here [/] for information and a series of clips.

The full series is still available on BBC i-player, see

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Based on the podcast with over 100 million downloads, the Fall of Civilizations book brilliantly explores how a range of ancient societies rose to power and sophistication, and how they tipped over into collapse.

Across the centuries, we journey from the great empires of Mesopotamia to those of Khmer and Vijayanagara in Asia and Songhai in West Africa; from Byzantium to the Maya, Inca and Aztecs of Central America; from Roman Britain to Rapa Nui. With meticulous research, breathtaking insight and dazzling, empathic storytelling, historian and novelist Paul Cooper evokes the majesty and jeopardy of these ancient civilizations, and asks what it might have felt like for a person alive at the time to witness the end of their world.

In this episode, we look at one of the most dramatic stories to come down to us from the ancient world: the rise and fall of the empire of Carthage. Find out how this city rose out of the Phoenician states of the Eastern Mediterranean, and set out on voyages of discovery and settlement that put them at the centre of the ancient world. And hear how the city of Carthage was destroyed, and its memory nearly wiped from the earth.

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