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Simon Schama's History of Now

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Simon Schama reflects on a life in culture - and its enduring power in shaping our world.

Simon Schama reflects on a life in culture - and its enduring power in shaping our world. From The Handmaid's Tale to The Thick of It, how has art defined what matters to us all?

Series 1

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Simon Schama

Hugo Macgregor

Nicolas Kent

Charlotte Sacher

Oxford Film and Television

Simon Schama's History of Now: Series 1: Truth and Democracy

Episode 1

Truth and Democracy

BBC Two - Simon Schama's History of Now, Series 1, Truth and Democracy

Simon Schama explores the artists who have fought for truth and democracy in his lifetime.

Simon Schama explores how artists and writers have led the fight for truth and democracy in his lifetime, often at great personal cost. Featuring Ai Weiwei and Nadya Tolokonnikova.

In his most personal project to date, Simon Schama looks back at the dramatic history that has played out in his lifetime. Best known for writing history, he has lived a fair bit of it too. Born in 1945, on the night of the bombing of Dresden, Simon grew up as part of a generation determined to rebuild the world from the ashes of war. In this film, he reveals the stories of artists and writers who have been at the forefront of the fight for truth and democracy, often at great personal cost.

Simon opens the film with Picasso’s Guernica. Painted in 1937, in response to the bombing of a small town by the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War, no work of art has so powerfully captured the true horror of civilian bombings. Ever since, Picasso’s masterpiece has stood as a testament to the power of art to preserve the historical record and to speak truth to power. 

Picasso wasn’t the only artist drawn into the conflict. In December 1936, a tall young Englishman headed to Spain to join those risking their lives for freedom. His name as Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell. We join his son Richard Blair in Barcelona, to tell the story of how a campaign of misinformation waged on the Spanish left by Stalin, cost the lives of many of Orwell’s friends and comrades. The sense of betrayal never left him and fed into the creation of his literary masterpiece 1984. 

As the Cold War confrontation between freedom and totalitarian oppression intensified, Simon shows how the most powerful plea for the necessity of a free life came from inside the Soviet Union, in Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Dr Zhivago. 

With free and independent thought in Russia under assault once again, Simon meets Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the punk collective Pussy Riot.

Travelling to Prague, Simon explores how artists and writers in Czechoslovakia provided a powerful blueprint for cultural resistance 1960s and 70s.  

The film ends with an encounter with artist Ai Weiwei, who reveals his deeply personal journey towards becoming one of the world’s most famous dissident artists,.

Simon Schama's History of Now: Series 1

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Simon Schama looks back over his lifetime at the power of culture in shaping the present.

Simon Schama looks back over his lifetime at the vital power of culture in shaping the defining issues of the present: democracy, equality, and the promise of prosperity for all.

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