Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Combining vertical strips of video of Central Park on a single sunny Sunday, Green Play is ‘a joyful orchestration of one of the great meeting places in New York City’, in the words of film’s director Yuge Zhou, who was born in China but is now based in Chicago. Small human figures recline and move across the green grass that fills most of the screen – an artificial and carefully manicured space in the middle of one of the world’s most massive population centres. Recorded from a distance, the people moving in and out of view all seem to be participating in a shared ritual as they toss frisbees and kick balls, chat with friends, family and significant others, or simply lie out in the sun. Green Play is part of Zhou’s video collage series The Humors, which sets out to explore ‘urban behaviours and relationships, those of people and of the built environment itself’.
Director: Yuge Zhou
video
History of technology
Master cartography and mythical creatures – the world according to the Catalan Atlas
8 minutes
video
Mood and emotion
A century of letters captures the emotions of life in a new city, far from home
21 minutes
video
The environment
Photographs of rainforests dissolving in acid strike a beautiful note of warning
10 minutes
video
Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Experience the dazzling displays that fireflies create when humans are far away
5 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
7 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
6 minutes
video
Music
Before the Beatles dropped acid, a BBC workshop was creating far-out sounds
6 minutes
video
Art
Is paying with hand-drawn banknotes artistry or forgery? The knotty case of J S G Boggs
10 minutes