Sponsors: Champlain College and Vermont Council on World Affairs
We are delighted to welcome from England renowned film historian and television producer Taylor Downing who will present the penultimate episode of Cold War, Turner Broadcasting System’s landmark 24-part TV series. Downing was a producer on the series, and has selected to show The Wall Comes Down (25 years ago, almost to the day of the presentation, the Berlin Wall came down) and talk about the specific challenges of making that program.
Taylor Downing has produced more than 300 historical documentaries, many of which have been shown on television in the US. He produced two episodes of the series Cold War with Sir Jeremy Isaacs for Ted Turner in the mid 1990s and went on to write the book of the series. His documentary Soviet War Scare 1983 (Discovery US/Channel 4 UK) won the Grierson Award for the Best Historical Documentary on British television in 2008. Taylor also writes on the film and television media. His book on Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia was republished as a British Film Institute Classic in 2012 and his book on the famous television history series The World at War was published as a BFI Television Classic in 2013. He also writes regularly for magazines on classic films. His books on World War One and Two have also been well received in the UK and the US including Churchill’s War Lab on Winston Churchill and wartime scientists, and Spies in the Sky on aerial photo intelligence. His most recent book is Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code Breakers and Propagandists of the Great War.