The New York­er has post­ed a very neat split-screen tour of the same streets in New York City, let­ting you see the Big Apple in the 1930s and today. Times Square, Cen­tral Park, the Brook­lyn Bridge–they’re all on dis­play. What a dif­fer­ence 80 years make.

Below you can find oth­er his­tor­i­cal videos and pho­tos of NYC … and Lon­don and Berlin too. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breath­tak­ing Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

1905 Video Shows New York City Sub­way Trav­el­ing From 14th St. to 42nd Street

Ear­ly Films of New York City

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

From pro­duc­er and edi­tor Harun Mehmedi­novic comes a pret­ty breath­tak­ing time­lapse film of a rare phe­nom­e­non at the Grand Canyon. Writes Mehmedi­novic:

Mil­lions of vis­i­tors a year come to Ari­zon­a’s Grand Canyon Nation­al Park, one of the sev­en nat­ur­al won­ders of the world and the most vis­it­ed nation­al park in the west­ern Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, on extreme­ly rare days when cold air is trapped in the canyon and topped by a lay­er of warm air, which in com­bi­na­tion with mois­ture and con­den­sa­tion, form the phe­nom­e­non referred to as the full cloud inver­sion. In what resem­bles some­thing between ocean waves and fast clouds, Grand Canyon is com­plete­ly obscured by fog, mak­ing the vis­i­tors feel as if they are walk­ing on clouds.

This video was filmed as part of SKYGLOW (skyglowproject.com), an ongo­ing crowd­fund­ed quest to explore the effects and dan­gers of urban light pol­lu­tion in con­trast with some of the most incred­i­ble dark sky areas in North Amer­i­ca. This project is being pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Inter­na­tion­al Dark-Sky Asso­ci­a­tion (darksky.org), a non-prof­it fight­ing for the preser­va­tion of night skies around the globe.

The film was shot on Canon 5DSR & 5DIII cam­eras and lens­es. You can down­load high res­o­lu­tion stills via this zip file. Enjoy.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing Time­lapse Film Cap­tures the Won­der of Bees Being Born

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Albert Ein­stein Sports a Native Amer­i­can Head­dress and a Peace Pipe at the Grand Canyon, 1931

Eng­lish play­wright, lyri­cist, actor and racon­teur Noel Cow­ard (1899 –1973) is still remem­bered for his plays such as the wife-after-death com­e­dy Blithe Spir­it and Pri­vate Lives; his playlet Still Life, which became the clas­sic David Lean film Brief Encounter, and his script­ing and co-direc­tion of the WW2 morale-boost­er In Which We Serve, also direct­ed by Lean, for which Cow­ard won an Hon­orary Acad­e­my Award. How­ev­er, he’s per­haps bet­ter known now more as an image of arche­typ­al mid-20^th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­ness, replete with dress­ing-gown and cig­a­rette-hold­er, and the hun­dreds of wit­ty songs and poems he wrote, such as Mad Dogs and Eng­lish­man and Mrs Wor­thing­ton, which he per­formed in cabaret in his dis­tinc­tive­ly clipped Eng­lish man­ner to much acclaim in Lon­don and, lat­ter­ly, in Las Vegas.

His 1946 song Alice (Is At It Again), writ­ten and then cut from his flop musi­cal Pacif­ic 1860, became a stan­dard of his cabaret act and, with its sug­ges­tive lyrics, risqué sub­ject mat­ter and sly wit, is typ­i­cal of his oeu­vre. It’s thus a sur­pris­ing choice per­haps by ris­ing Aus­tralian actress Sarah Snook for the sub­ject of her new short film Alice, co-devised with direc­tor Lau­ra Scrivano, and the sec­ond film of The Pas­sion, a new online series of per­formed poet­ry films com­ing out of Aus­tralia. The first film in the series, A Lovesong, star­ring Daniel Hen­shall (from AMC’s Turn: Wash­ing­ton Spies), fea­tured T.S. Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (watch it below), so Alice is a change both in style and tone for the series, but con­tin­ues the project’s exper­i­men­ta­tion in ren­der­ing poet­ry on film for a dig­i­tal audi­ence.

Sarah, who won crit­i­cal acclaim for her gen­der­switch­ing role in the 2015 sci­ence-fic­tion thriller Pre­des­ti­na­tion, found the Cow­ard text in a book­shop in San Fran­cis­co, while sourc­ing a text for her film for the series.

Says Sarah:

(Direc­tor) Lau­ra and I were inter­est­ed in the ideas of fem­i­nin­i­ty and how that is expressed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sex­u­al or sen­su­al terms. When I read the poem, I was charmed by it and excit­ed by the poten­tial and chal­lenge of con­tem­po­riz­ing it for The Pas­sion. Coward’s themes are very much of the time and place of the orig­i­nal lyrics’ writ­ing, as is his take on them, while our adap­ta­tion is an updat­ing, an explo­ration of female sex­u­al­i­ty and empow­er­ment that Cow­ard plays with, and the wild­ness and free­dom of dis­cov­er­ing that. Our Alice, who I think nods to Coward’s, is break­ing out of the stric­tures of her back­ground, and being free and true to her­self.

Orig­i­nal­ly Alice, as read by Cow­ard, would have been per­formed with a pat­ter, a rhythm of its own, with a sense of irony and a lot of wit, and cer­tain­ly in his very par­tic­u­lar RP accent. It’s hard to escape that as it’s writ­ten so well and embed­ded so deeply into the lines, with a par­tic­u­lar scan­sion, but I want­ed to go against that some­what, while retain­ing and respect­ing Coward’s sparkle and play­ful­ness.

Alice is the sec­ond film of The Pas­sion series, in which actors select a text which has a per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance for them or strikes a par­tic­u­lar chord, and then work close­ly in col­lab­o­ra­tion with direc­tor Lau­ra Scrivano to devel­op it as a new per­for­mance piece for film. A third film is cur­rent­ly in devel­op­ment. More infor­ma­tion about the series can be found at this web­site.

Dan Prichard is an online film and web­series pro­duc­er, based in Syd­ney, whose work explores iden­ti­ty, place, and the space between film and per­for­mance in the dig­i­tal are­na. Vis­it his web­site and fol­low him on twit­ter ‪@georgekaplan81

Image by Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing now offers stu­dents the chance to enroll in a new Mas­ter’s degree pro­gram focus­ing on the work of the avant-garde nov­el­ist, play­wright, the­ater direc­tor & poet Samuel Beck­ett. He’s been the sub­ject of many past posts here on Open Cul­ture.

Here’s what the pro­gram has to offer:

This inno­v­a­tive new taught MA pro­gramme on the work of Samuel Beck­ett is taught by world lead­ing experts on his work: Pro­fes­sor Jonathan Bignell, Pro­fes­sor Anna McMul­lan, The­atre & Tele­vi­sion and Pro­fes­sor Steven Matthews, Dr Mark Nixon and Dr Conor Carville in Eng­lish. Here you will engage in advanced archival research tech­niques using the exten­sive hold­ings of the uni­ver­si­ty’s world lead­ing Samuel Beck­ett Col­lec­tion, apply­ing these skills to the analy­sis of Beck­et­t’s writ­ing and per­for­mance work. The MA will also pro­vide the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary rela­tion­ship Beck­ett demon­strat­ed in his life­time through his work in a vari­ety of mul­ti­me­dia includ­ing film, the­atre, tele­vi­sion and radio.

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the pro­gram here, includ­ing details on appli­ca­tion process and the schol­ar­ship that’s being offered for the 206‑2017 aca­d­e­m­ic year. If you’re look­ing to get bet­ter acquaint­ed with Beck­et­t’s work, don’t miss the items in the Relat­eds below.

via Rhys Tran­ter

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Star­ring Alan Rick­man & Kristin Scott Thomas

Take a “Breath” and Watch Samuel Beckett’s One-Minute Play

Hear Samuel Beckett’s Avant-Garde Radio Plays: All That Fall, Embers, and More

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Before Fri­day, we had nev­er man­aged to cov­er NASCAR, but we crossed that off the list when we fea­tured Ter­ry Gilliam’s mock­u­men­tary The Leg­end of Hal­lowde­ga. And now today we have anoth­er Open Cul­ture first: yes, an archive of free, enter­tain­ing videos for cats and dogs.

Over the past 6 years, Paul Din­ning has cre­at­ed a YouTube chan­nel packed with over 400 videos fea­tur­ing the wildlife of Corn­wall, Eng­land. And, from that footage, he has cob­bled togeth­er playlists designed to delight all cats and dogs with access to the inter­net. And, appar­ent­ly cats and dogs are watch­ing. The first video above, called “Squir­rel and Bird Fun,” has clocked some 863,000 views over the past year. And the next video, “The Ulti­mate Videos of Birds for Cats To Watch,” has 946,000 views since Jan­u­ary. I showed the videos to my cat Coc­co [sic] and, I kid you not, he was trans­fixed.

A longer playlist of videos for cats and dogs can be viewed here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

The Tim­my Broth­ers, based in Brook­lyn, cre­ate hand­craft­ed water. It’s not just any water. It’s water that lets you trav­el to dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al times and places. Want to drink water that evokes mem­o­ries of Mark Twain’s Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er? Or the great jazz that came out of New Orleans? Well, the Tim­my Broth­ers have just the prod­uct for you.

If you’re in Brook­lyn, also con­sid­er mak­ing a side trip to Bea­con, NY where David Rees lov­ing­ly cre­ates arti­sanal hand­craft­ed pen­cils. You’ll nev­er look at pen­cils the same way again. :-)

via Digg

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Read­ers often ask us, “What’s the best way to make sure that I don’t miss any of your posts?” First and fore­most we rec­om­mend sign­ing up for our dai­ly email. Each day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od. Faith­ful­ly it will appear in your inbox each day. Sign up for the free email here. And, to ini­ti­ate the email sub­scrip­tion, please make sure that you click the ver­i­fi­ca­tion link in the email you will receive upon reg­is­tra­tion.

You can always fol­low us on Twit­ter (@openculture) where we high­light our dai­ly posts, plus many oth­er cul­tur­al curiosi­ties found on the web. Def­i­nite­ly give that a shot.

You can also like our Face­book page, and then Face­book will decide whether you get to see our posts. They just do the think­ing for you. Lucky you.

Final­ly, con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing to our RSS feed, espe­cial­ly if you use feed read­ers like Feed­ly. That will let you keep tabs on each and every post. The RSS address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenCulture