1991-2000

Starring Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright, Cher, Lily Tomlin, Paolo Seganti.

From IMDB:
Semi-autobiographical tale from the early life of director Franco Zeffirelli looks at the illegitimate son (Charlie Lucas as a child, Baird Wallace as the teen) of an Italian businessman. The boy’s mother has died, and he is raised by an Englishwoman (Joan Plowright) in pre-WWII Fascist Italy. Living to each other in Florence, and presided over by an ambassador’s widow (Maggie Smith), a group of Englishwomen live a sheltered existence which they believe is guaranteed personal protection in a tea reception given by Il Duce. However, as war breaks out, the women are interned. Occasionally in this English colony is a wealthy American (Cher), who visits among her travels and marriages to wealthy older men.Read More »

Synopsis:
A modern version of Orpheus and Eurydice. A romance in extremes set at a dystopian future by the acclaimed Greek director Dimitri Athanitis. Provocative, already a cult film.

After being released from prison, Eurydice gets a job as a waitress but also as a naked model for a mysterious photographer who blackmails her. Orpheus, a cashier at a super market meets her by chance and falls for her at once. When he loses her, he shall travel all the way to hell, to get her back.

Dimitri Athanitis’s take on the “Orpheus and Eurydice” myth is stylish and sexy. Lena Kitsipoulou is totally magnetic for her fellow characters and the viewer.Read More »

Imdb wrote:
When some shrimp from Colombia, tainted with cholera, is served to some people on a plane bound for L.A., an outbreak ensues. And a doctor sets out to find the source and contain it before it turns into a epidemic. And if things weren’t bad enough, a drug smuggler who was carrying some drugs on him contaminates the drugs and are sold on the street. And to top things off, the doctor’s husband who is on a camping trip with their two children is sick but did not show any symptoms until they were isolated from the rest of the world. Can she get to them in time?Read More »

Quote:
In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec set the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness. Pathbreaking filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin – at times with a small crew, at times alone – spent 78 days behind Kanien’kéhaka lines filming the armed standoff between protesters, the Quebec police, and the Canadian army. The result is a uniquely harrowing, unsettling, and impactful cinematic experience.Read More »

From the Notebook of … was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and Paul Valéry’s essay on da Vinci’s process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The filmmarks a critical development in the artist’s work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city’s buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers’ presence and suggest his investigating gaze. (Henriette Huldisch, Whitney Museum of American Art)Read More »

A fascinating chronicle of an unprecedented cross-cultural collaboration. In 1997 renowned conductor Zubin Mehta and celebrated Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) joined forces on a production of Puccini’s opera Turandot in the Forbidden City of Beijing. The production was an undertaking on an epic scale with enormous sets, breathtaking hand-sewn Ming Dynasty costumes and hundreds of soldiers posing as extras. A fascinating chronicle of an unprecedented cross-cultural collaboration, The Turandot Project combines the pageantry of this opulent opera production with a spectacular cinematic portrait of the struggles and triumphs of Zubin Mehta and Zhang Yimou to mount their production in this most historic venue of China.Read More »

The main character, which is a prototype of Kafka, is on his way to achieving true self-cognition. The impetus for this was vague childhood memories associated with emotions, as well as the identification of his identity with certain images at that period. He is facing an internal conflict, tearing him apart, between creativity and reality that are not compatible with each other.Read More »

Eurydice is a singer in a group that plays in country fairs. The group is not successful and Eurydice gets convinced by a rich farmer to follow him to Athens, where he promises her that he will make her a famous singer. Things do not turn out as promised, and Eurydice returns to the band, which is very successful now, due to Orpheus, a mute clarinet player, who has joined them. The farmer comes to reclaim her by force and Eurydice gets killed in a car accident. Orpheus tries to give her life with his clarinet.Read More »

A Palestinian boy becomes entranced with a beautiful Gypsy girl and a fairy tale world she weaves amidst conflict in Gaza. The children explore nature, mysticism and what their future holds, while learning to live with the surrounding brutality c. 1990. Yusef’s family scrapes by in a seaside camp while his father’s in prison and his heavily-armed brother’s on the run, parrying with Israeli troops. Salah, Yusef’s schoolmate from a well-off Arab family strives faithfully to assist them, while Yusef helps an elderly, blind neighbor escape from his lonely abandonment into the North American dreamworld he’s waited so long for.Read More »