Tightrope walking, also called funambulism, is the skill of walking along a thin wire or rope. It has a long tradition in various countries and is commonly associated with the circus. Other skills similar to tightrope walking include slack rope walking and slacklining.
A street game or street sport is a sport or game that is played on city streets rather than a prepared field. Street games are usually simply play time activities for children in the most convenient venue. Some street games have risen to the level of organized tournaments, such as stickball.
The year 2004 in art involved some significant events and new art works.
Philippe Petit is a French highwire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized highwire walks between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in August 1974.
Slacklining is walking, running or balancing along a suspended length of flat webbing that is tensioned between two anchors. Slacklining is similar to slack rope walking and tightrope walking. Slacklines differ from tightwires and tightropes in the type of material used and the amount of tension applied during use. Slacklines are tensioned significantly less than tightropes or tightwires in order to create a dynamic line which will stretch and bounce like a long and narrow trampoline. Tension can be adjusted to suit the user, and different webbing may be used in various circumstances.
Mordicai Gerstein was an American artist, writer, and film director, best known for illustrating and writing children's books. He illustrated the comic mystery fiction series Something Queer is Going On.
Castle is a Caldecott Honor award-winning book written and illustrated by David Macaulay published in 1977. The book offers a detailed illustrated description of Aberwyvern castle, a fictional castle built between 1283 and 1288. Like many of Macaulay's other works, it consists of a written description of the construction process accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings. A great deal of detail is put into the descriptions, and he describes the workers and tools that would have been needed for the construction of a medieval castle.
James Marsh is a British film and documentary director best known for his work on Man on Wire, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and The Theory of Everything, the multi-award-winning biopic of physicist Stephen Hawking released in 2014.
Tuesday, written and illustrated by David Wiesner, is a 1991 wordless picture book published by Clarion Books. Tuesday received the 1992 Caldecott Medal for illustrations and was Wiesner's first of three Caldecott Medals that he has won during his career. Wiesner subsequently won the Caldecott Medal in 2002 for The Three Pigs, and the 2007 medal for Flotsam.
Mark Lewis is an Australian documentary film and television producer, director and writer. He is famous for his film Cane Toads: An Unnatural History and for his body of work on animals. Unlike many other producers of nature films, his films do not attempt to document the animals in question or their behaviors but rather the complex relationships between people and society and the animals they interact with.
CinéMagique was a theatre show at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris mixing the live performance of an actor with synchronized movie scenes on a big screen. The attraction opened with the park on March 16, 2002, starring Martin Short and Julie Delpy. The last show was on March 29, 2017, and was replaced by the Marvel Super Heroes United stunt show. The show temporarily returned from December 1, 2018, to February 3, 2019. This "revisited" version of the show featured additional special effects.
Michael Victor Sporn was an American animator who founded his New York City-based company, Michael Sporn Animation, in 1980, and produced and directed numerous animated TV specials and short spots.
Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance lasted for almost an hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
Something Queer is Going On is a children's mystery book series written by Elizabeth Levy and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein.
Didier Pasquette is a noted French tightrope walker.
Nikolas Wallenda is an American acrobat, aerialist, daredevil, high wire artist, and author. He is known for his high-wire performances without a safety net. He holds 11 Guinness World Records for various acrobatic feats, and is best known as the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls. Wallenda walked 1,800 feet (550 m) on a steel cable over Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua, his longest walk, on March 4, 2020.
James Staniforth Ricketson is an Australian film director, known for the feature film Blackfellas. He became more widely known when he was charged with espionage for flying a drone in Cambodia in 2017.
TriStar Productions, Inc. (TSP) is an American film and television production company, a division of TriStar Pictures and a joint venture between Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and former 20th Century Fox chairman Tom Rothman.
Jim Moore is an American photographer who has documented the variety arts since the 1970s. His photographs helped Philippe Petit plan his tightrope-walking stunt between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 and were prominently featured in the Oscar-winning film Man on Wire.
The Walk is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher Browne. It is based on the story of French high-wire artist Philippe Petit's walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, alongside Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, and Steve Valentine.
