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Laurie Simmons in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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    LAURIE SIMMONS: I was interested in 
    work that I saw in New York,in the ‘70s,
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    that used photography in a 
    completely unique way for me,
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    more ephemeral, works of art, 
    things that could disappear,
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    only existed for a minute, that 
    needed to be documented with a camera.
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    The most important thing to me when I 
    started to shoot my first photographs
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    which would be the late ‘70s,
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    was that I was an artist using photography 
    as a tool and not a photographer.
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    (MUSIC)
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    I was making these setups in my studio 
    juxtaposing pieces of furniture,
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    walls, wallpaper, tops of books, just 
    everything was a crazy, chaotic mess and yet,
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    in the end I had a very still, 
    quiet moment where I’d frozen time.
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    I was conscious of creating another 
    kind of reality that was pristine
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    and still and quiet and beautiful,
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    and lots of times devoid of people 
    because life felt very chaotic to me.
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    I expected the viewer to believe that they 
    were entering a real place that really existed,
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    a place where time stood still.
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    (MUSIC)
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    In making this movie I did 
    something that I always wanted to do
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    which is to literally bring my work to life.
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    (MOVIE CLIP)
    TED: Hey, listen Todd, I’m so sorry.
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    TODD: No Ted, it’s...it’s all right, honestly. 
    The best man got the promotion. End of story.
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    TED: Thanks. Nice tie.
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    TODD: Thanks. I should have 
    worn a red tie to the interview.
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    TED: No. No, no.
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    TODD: Green? With white spots. 
    What the hell was I thinking?
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    SIMMONS: I cast these puppets because 
    I thought they were great looking
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    and I really believed that 
    they could carry a narrative.
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    (MOVIE CLIP)
    DANNY: Donny?
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    DONNY: Yeah?
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    DANNY: Remember last Father’s 
    Day when we went downtown and
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    bought ties for our dads with our lawn money?
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    DONNY: Sure.
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    DANNY: And we both liked that red striped tie?
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    DONNY: Uh, I don’t remember…
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    DANNY: And you said how dumb it would look if 
    our dads walked into work wearing that same tie?
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    DONNY: Uh-huh. Yeah…
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    SIMMONS: I got a chance to revisit my work 
    and figure out what would happen if suddenly
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    I was looking at the photograph and characters 
    started to talk to me or sing or dance.
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    (MUSIC)
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    The hand puppets were designed to be 
    contributing members of a community
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    so they are businessmen and housewives 
    and doctors and nurses and grandfathers.
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    (MUSIC)
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    The challenge of making a movie 
    was really making a movie.
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    The initial image is like one of my 
    photographs but everything’s moving.
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    Everything’s talking.
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    Everything’s in color.
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    PUPPETEER: She is gorgeous.
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    SIMMONS: I had to think about things in a 
    way that I’d never thought about them before,
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    with a kind of depth and breadth that was 
    unimaginable to me before I actually did it.
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    JUNE: What is it you’re trying to say, May?
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    MAY: I just never thought you 
    were capable of being so divisive.
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    JUNE: Divisive?
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    MAY: It means sneaky.
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    JUNE: I know what it means.
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    MAY: You ought to. You live it.
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    LARRY: We never saw it coming.
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    JERRY: Well how are Danny and May handling it?
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    LARRY: Good as can be expected, Jerry.
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    JERRY: I guess that that promotion meant 
    more to Todd than anybody thought it did.
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    LARRY: Jane and I thought he was a shoo-in.
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    But your boy got it.
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    We were all pretty surprised.
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    SIMMONS: My inner life about my own work 
    was very theatrical and very narrative
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    but that’s something I was 
    always afraid to express.
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    Because I came of age in a time 
    when cool distance in the work
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    and a more conceptual turn 
    of mind was very important.
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    It was very important to me.
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    So I had a very secret inner life 
    about the pictures that I was making.
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    I had music in my head that was sort 
    of playing while I was shooting.
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    The opportunity to have my interest in 
    music and my interest in these visual images
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    kind of converge in this 
    movie is very important to me.
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    It was very emotional for me.
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    (SONG)
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    (MUSIC)
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    Act Two is a different story
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    because those dummies are dummies that I had made
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    for a series of works that 
    I made in the early ‘90s.
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    The dummy is such a metaphor 
    for lying and telling the truth
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    the way the ventriloquist is able to 
    say whatever he or she wants to say
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    through this other character.
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    They’re absolutely identical except 
    for different suits of clothing.
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    The series was called CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN
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    and it was about these kind of minute differences
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    in the way we look or the way we act
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    that make us feel like we’re 
    so profoundly different.
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    The original idea was to use the girl 
    dummy all the way through Act Two.
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    As the music became more complex,
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    as the emotions and the 
    thoughts became more complex,
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    I wasn’t sure that a puppet could carry act two
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    and that was when I decided that the 
    puppet would become a real woman.
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    (SONG)
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    It would have been too uncomfortable to think 
    about Meryl Streep portraying me in the movie.
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    The first time I saw her it was very unsettling.
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    We met at the wig shop and I walked in
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    and Meryl had her back to me
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    and she stood up and turned around
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    and I saw her in the dark wig and 
    there was one moment where whoa,
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    this is very eerie, this is very odd.
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    She became the character.
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    It wasn’t about me anymore.
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    Act One really did give me a chance to explore 
    love within a family and love among neighbors
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    and problems in a family 
    and problems with neighbors.
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    —SIMMONS: Then I just need another 
    little signal to give for playback
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    —and then we go right into the song,
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    —so you may not know what that signal is,
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    —or I may just feel it and 
    tell him to hit playback.
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    Act Two has an element of romance.
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    The action between the girl and the dummy and the sad love songs and the wistful, regretful mood.
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    Maybe because I was thinking so much about the
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    American Songbook and musicals 
    and moving a narrative forward.
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    Maybe that’s why romance 
    finally came into my work.
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    (SONG)
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    MERYL STREEP: It’s a very interesting mix of 
    being in a love song and standing outside of it
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    and seeing the mechanics of how it works.
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    All the layering of the…
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    the backgrounds and the laid in rain or snow
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    and all the things that conspire to 
    make us believe in these romantic ideas.
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    (SONG)
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    STREEP: I was really impressed by her 
    in how she was able to make a lyric.
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    I think of her as a visual artist.
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    It’s a hard thing to do to 
    match a lyric to a melody
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    and she did it beautifully and 
    made it easy to kind of, uh,
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    have an emotional flow through the music.
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    (SONG)
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    SPEAKER: Number two please.
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    (SONG)
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    SIMMONS: I remember when I first thought 
    about shooting the objects on legs.
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    I was thinking I need to do something different.
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    So the first one that I shot was the camera and 
    I placed it on a friend of mine, Jimmy Desanto,
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    he taught me everything I know about photography.
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    It seemed so fitting to put 
    this camera on top of him,
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    put a pair of white tights on him and 
    photograph him as Jimmy the Camera.
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    (SONG)
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    I always saw the walking objects as being 
    a more physical expression of my work.
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    So ending on the note of the dance 
    seemed completely appropriate to me.
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    I chose the Pocket Watch to 
    be the star of Act Three,
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    the character that would elicit the 
    most sympathy and the most compassion.
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    I knew the Birthday Cake with her 
    pink toe shoes would get the part,
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    and the Pocket Watch longed to get the part,
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    never had a chance to show his/her stuff...
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    WOMAN: Thank you...lovely work.
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    SIMMONS: And really maybe was the best 
    for the part, but nobody really noticed.
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    WOMAN: Okay everybody thanks 
    so much for coming. Good night.
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    SIMMONS: Perfect.
    MAN: How about(?) that?
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    SIMMONS: Then we wonder what would 
    have happened if the Pocket Watch
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    got to actually dance in front of 
    the producer/choreographer/director?
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    WOMAN: Great.
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    MAN:…dead center
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    WOMAN: Let’s just go through this. Yeah?
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    MAN: Great.
    SIMMONS: The whole thing with her is as much as…
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    which is what you’re doing as much of the 
    stage as she can take because it’s her stage,
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    her moment, and I think it’s...
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    WOMAN: That’s what. Yeah…
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    SIMMONS: Yeah, I think it’s happening.
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    WOMAN: Okay
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    (MUSIC)
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    SIMMONS: I’m very interested in stopping time.
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    And starting time.
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    (MUSIC)
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    There is that aspect of 
    time that I’m playing with,
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    that it’s elusive and unnoticed yet really 
    in the end the most important thing.
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    (MUSIC)
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    Regret is the prevailing emotion,
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    the prevailing thought that 
    brings the three acts together.
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    It’s very much about the different 
    guises of regret, the notion of regret.
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    (MUSIC)
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    So it ends on a note of really what 
    might have been, if I just had a chance.
Title:
Laurie Simmons in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" broadcast series
Duration:
14:45

English (United States) subtitles

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