BILLY THE KID

SATURDAY,  FEBRUARY 15 @ 11:00PM

On April 28,1881, 21-year-old Henry McCarty, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, just days from being hanged for murder, outfoxed his jailors and electrified the nation with the latest in a long line of miraculous escapes. An outlaw with a deadly reputation, the young man was finally gunned down by the ambitious sheriff Pat Garrett just a few weeks later. The felling of one of the most notorious criminals of the age made front-page news and marked the end of Henry — but it was the beginning of one of the West’s most enduring legends. Demonized by the lawman that killed him, the Kid was soon mythologized by a stream of dime store novels and big-screen dramas, portrayed by everyone from Paul Newman to Roy Rogers to Emilio Estevez. But in all the tellings, Billy the Kid’s real story has been obscured.

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LET ME DOWN EASY

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Anna Deavere Smith’s latest production, Let Me Down Easy airs on Great Performances tonight. Originally presented at Long Wharf Theatre, the play received its New York premiere at Second Stage Theatre. The Great Performancesproduction was recorded in February 2011 in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, DC, launching a national tour that concluded in September.

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HERBIE HANCOCK, GUSTAVO DUDAMEL

& THE LA PHILHARMONIC CELEBRATE GERSHWIN

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel and Creative Chair for Jazz Herbie Hancock launched the LA Phil’s 2011/12 season with a sparkling George Gershwin gala at Walt Disney Concert Hall in September. “This is the first time as a professional musician that I’ll be playing a piece that’s essentially classical music with jazz overtones with a symphony orchestra, and what a symphony orchestra it is!” marvels Hancock just before the concert, referring to his keyboard work in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

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TAKING ROOT: THE VISION OF WANGARI MAATHAI

THURSDAY, JANUARY 5 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

TAKING ROOT: The Vision of Wangari Maathai tells the story of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization encouraging rural women and families to plant trees in community groups, and follows Maathai, the movement’s founder and the first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were walking long distances for firewood, and that clean water was scarce. The soil was disappearing from their fields and their children were suffering from malnutrition. “Well, why not plant trees?” she suggested.

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BIRDS OF THE GODS

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 @ 6:00PM

On the island of New Guinea in the South Pacific lives the most striking and diverse group of birds on the planet. Birds of paradise defy imagination. Covered in spectacular plumage, each species within the Paradisaeidae family is distinct. Some birds are patterned with feathers of bright yellow and green, some have flashy iridescent plumes that catch the light, while others have tails that extend three times the length of their body. Bizarre courtship displays by the male birds show off their exquisite assets, as they dance, puff out, vibrate, hang upside down, stretch their wings, and even contort their bodies into completely different shapes in order to impress a nearby female.

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OPIUM BRIDES

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

In Opium Brides, award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi takes viewers deep into the remote Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farm families have been forced to make with drug smugglers in order to survive.

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THESE AMAZING SHADOWS

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

These Amazing Shadows weaves clips from America’s most-beloved films (and many rarer treasures) with moving personal tales of how specific films have reflected our culture and changed lives. The film includes interviews with the Librarian of Congress (Dr. James Billington), famous directors (including Christopher Nolan, John Lasseter, Rob Reiner, John Singleton, Barbara Kopple, and John Waters), producers (Gale Anne Hurd and James Schamus), archivists, admired actors (Tim Roth, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Coyote), and members of the National Film Preservation Board.

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