A LETTER TO ELIA

FRIDAY, JULY 12 @ 10:00PM

For Martin Scorsese, growing up in Little Italy, seeing On the Waterfront and East of Eden as a young man was a life-changing experience. Scorsese appears on and off camera throughout A Letter to Elia, taking us through Kazan’s life and through his own as well, and through his growing realization that there was an artist behind the camera, someone “who knew me, maybe better than I knew myself.” The film is about being exposed to the right movies at the right moment in your adolescent life, when you’re wide open and ready to connect, to be spurred on by the work up there on the screen, and then, maybe, to chart a course toward making your own movies.

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with GWEN IFILL

FRIDAY, JULY 12 @ 6:00PM & 11:00PM

This Week: Immigration Reform, Egypt, Revisiting Abortion Laws, Political Sex Scandals and Redemption.

The Senate-passed comprehensive immigration reform bill is facing significant hurdles in the House. Republican leaders want a smaller “bite-sized” approach according to House Speaker John Boehner. The biggest sticking point is over a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Alan Gomez of USA Today will report on the competing priorities to reform including border security and will also explain President Obama’s role in promoting immigration overhaul.

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ALASKA’S WILD PENINSULA

THURSDAY, JULY 11 @ 12:30 AM

A narrow frontier between warm and cold latitudes extends 500 miles from the Alaskan mainland, separating the tempestuous Bering Sea from the Pacific: the Alaska Peninsula, a cloud-cloaked land of active volcanoes, rolling tundra and the greatest concentration of the largest bears on earth.

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ULTIMATE TUT

TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 3 @ 6:00PM & 11:00PM

More than 90 years ago, in 1922, in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter made the greatest archaeological find in history: the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and its golden treasures worth nearly a billion dollar. Carter’s find made Tutankhamun the most famous pharaoh in ancient Egyptian history. But the real story of King Tut has become shrouded in myth, with many mysteries around his tomb unsolved to this day.

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TWO AMERICAN FAMILIES

THURSDAY, JULY 11 @ 7:00PM

Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of two ordinary, hard-working families in Milwaukee — one black, one white — as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. A remarkable portrait of perseverance, Two American Families raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the U.S. economy and the fate of a declining middle class.

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THE JOURNEY OF THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY

TUESDAY, JULY 9 @ 6:00PM & 11:00PM

On February 28, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson won approval from Congress for a visionary project, an endeavor that would become one of America’s greatest stories of adventure.

Twenty-five hundred dollars were appropriated to fund a small expeditionary group, whose mission was to explore the uncharted West. Jefferson called the group the Corps of Discovery. It would be led by Jefferson’s secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis’ friend,William Clark.

Over the next four years, the Corps of Discovery would travel thousands of miles, experiencing lands, rivers and peoples that no Americans ever had before. (2 hours)

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THE SPENCERS

MONDAY, MARCH 4 @ 10:00PM

Althorp, childhood home and final resting place of Princess Diana, is currently the home of Diana’s brother, Charles, the 9th Earl Spencer. Nineteen generations of Spencers have presided over this grand estate for more than 500 years. The Spencer dynasty has produced politicians, military heroes, dukes and duchesses and will one day furnish Britain with a king: Diana’s son, Prince William. Noted for their generosity, the Spencers once came to the rescue of a distant cousin fallen on hard times: the great-great-great-grandfather of George Washington.

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ENDEAVOUR, SERIES I

HOME

SUNDAY, JULY 14 @ 7:00PM & 11:30PM

As Endeavour crams for his Sergeant’s exam and Oxford lies in the grip of winter, a hit and run accident claims the life of an eminent classics professor, and Endeavour is drawn home to Lincolnshire to visit his ailing father. But Thursday – and a seemingly connected murder – draw him back and force him to question the concepts of father and home.

Shaun Evans (The Take, The Last Weekend, Silk) stars as the solitary and cerebral young Inspector Morse, conducting his dogged, incorruptible pursuit of justice from the shadows of Oxford and the fringes of the police force. Roger Allum costars as Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, and Abigail Thaw, daughter of Inspector Morse star John Thaw, makes special guest appearances as Dorothea Frazil, in this new mystery written by Inspector Lewis creator and Inspector Morsewriter, Russell Lewis.

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CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

THE BOULEZ CONDUCTS MAHLER

FRIDAY, JULY 5 @ 10:00PM

Gustav Mahler composed portions of his Symphony No. 10 in the summer of 1910, while faced with his wife’s infidelity. The following year, he passed away from an infection of the heart at the age of 50. The composer’s intent was for the incomplete score to be burned, but his wife (who eventually married her lover, the famous architect Walter Gropius) managed to have the sketch orchestrated and posthumously premiered.

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