Western Civilisation: a Prophetic Warning? The Skin of Our Teeth

Background

"Civilisation" - in full, "Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark" - is a 1969 British television documentary series written and presented by the art historian Kenneth Clark.

The thirteen programmes in the series outline the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. The series was produced by the BBC and aired from February to May 1969 on BBC2. Then, and in later transmissions in Britain, the US and other countries it reached an unprecedented number of viewers for an art series. Clark's book of the same title, based on the series, was published in 1969. Its production standards were generally praised and set the pattern for subsequent television documentary series. The New Yorker magazine described it as revelatory for the general viewer.

The Skin of Our Teeth

Here, in "The Skin of our Teeth," Kenneth Clark examines Western Civilization in the six centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. From the Byzantine world's Ravenna to Iona, the Holy Isle of the Celtic Hebrides, and Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen. Lord Cark unravels the extraordinary story of how European thought and art were saved by 'the skin of our teeth'.

2022

This program is timeless, and its insights prescient and wholly relevant today. Clark saw civilization threatened by a new barbarism in 1969. That threat is more imminent now; the barbarians are inside the walls and live among us. Christianity can and will endure in civilizations other than our own, but this brilliant and beautiful documentary distills the essence of all that is worth preserving in the civilization of the Christian West.

Видео Western Civilisation: a Prophetic Warning? The Skin of Our Teeth канала AntPDC