Sunday 31 January 2010, 11.30

Good Ol' Charles Schulz,David Van Taylor, USA 2007, 90 min. Digital Betacam, colour and b&w, English, screened in BetacamSP.

An unexpected portrait of the man behind Peanuts, the most popular comic strip in history. 

The story of Charles Schulz (1922–2000) is a quintessentially Midwestern tale of the unassuming, self-doubting man who, in expressing his unique view of the world, redefined the comic art form. His genius lay in depicting the daily collisions of insiders and outsiders, of mundane cruelties and transcendent hopes. 

For 50 years, Schulz trained his realist viewpoint on 20th-century America, portraying a cast of beloved characters with whimsy, finesse and profundity. Good ol' Charlie Brown and his gang – Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Snoopy and even Woodstock – represented different facets of Schulz's personality.

Featuring cartoons, home movies, archival television sequences and original animations, Good Ol' Charles Schulz reveals Charlie Brown's creator through interviews with Schulz himself, family members, cartoonists Jules Feiffer and Lynn Johnson, and Peanuts specialist David Michaelis.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
Free, no bookings taken
Seated on a first-come, first-served basis

  

David Van Taylor

A Harvard graduate with a degree in Sociology and Afro-American Studies, David Van Taylor is Vice-President of Lumiere Productions. He has written and directed films for PBS, HBO, Discovery, Court TV, Logo and MTV, and has identified with Charlie Brown since childhood.

Dream Deceivers (1992); A Perfect Candidate (1996); series With God on Our Side (1996) and Ghosts of Attica (2001), producer.