Jean Daskalidès
Documentary on Belgian director of greek descent Jean Daskalidès.
This revealing documentary from director Philippe Kohly examines the storied life of renowned soprano Maria Callas, from her troubled childhood in New York City to her scandal-laden but triumphant international career in opera. Featuring archival interviews with Callas herself and footage of contemporaries such as her lover Aristotle Onassis, this celebration of "La Divina" pays tribute to her enduring legacy some three decades after her death.
Documentary on Belgian director of greek descent Jean Daskalidès.
The true story of the influential and controversial columnist, Walter Winchell.
France, 1897. Colonel Georges Picquart challenges the French government when he discovers the obscure political maneuvers that led to the imprisonment of the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus after being convicted of espionage in 1894.
The life story of an unassuming, modest, yet extremely principled woman is also a dramatic portrait of a time when criticism of the regime and defense of the unjustly prosecuted was punished by imprisonment and constant surveillance from the secret state security. The story also reflects the turning point after the Velvet Revolution, when Dana Němcová briefly entered politics as an active member of the Federal Assembly, or when, in response to the war in the former Yugoslavia, she founded a counselling center for refugees and refugee women in the Czech Republic. In the film, she also meets some of those she helped again after many years.
A succulent account of the life of French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) who made the simple act of cooking food a true art by creating the modern concept of haute cuisine, and who also became the main reference point for many generations of future chefs.
This is a very old Bengali movie which shows Sri Ramakrishna's innocent and pure devotion to the divine mother. India, with her wealth of spiritual tradition, has produced many spiritual giants. One of the greatest was Ramakrishna (1836-1886). His life was a testament to truth, universality, love and purity. Born in a rural village outside Calcutta, Ramakrishna even as a boy naturally gravitated toward leading a spiritual life. This tendency only intensified as he grew older. When as a young man he became a temple priest, he was seized by an unquenchable thirst for union with God, and he immersed himself in intense meditation and other spiritual practices.
An emblematic figure in the defense of Berber culture, Mouloud Mammeri (1917-1989) experienced numerous confrontations with the authorities in Algeria, including the suspension in 1973 of the teaching of Berber at university and the ban of the conference he was to deliver on March 10, 1980 at the University of Tizi Ouzou on ancient Kabyle poetry... which will be the detonator of the powerful and harshly repressed cultural demands movement of April 1980, also called the Berber Spring. Mouloud Mammeri is one of the "historians" of French-speaking Algerian literature from the middle of the last century who, through his pen, gave back the soul to a country by giving it back its voice.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonia Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A portrait of Swedish troubadour Cornelis Vreeswijk.
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
Yallah! Underground follows some of today’s most influential and progressive artists in Arab underground culture from 2009 to 2013 and documents their work, dreams and fears in a time of great change for Arab societies. In a region full of tension, young Arab artists in the Middle East have struggled for years to express themselves freely and to promote more liberal attitudes within their societies. During the Arab Spring, like many others of this new generation, local artists had high hopes for the future and took part in the protests. However, after years of turmoil and instability, young Arabs now have to challenge both old and new problems, being torn between feelings of disillusion and a vague hope for a better future.
Systematically overturning accepted morals, Elagabalus dresses men as women, and names women to the Senate, favours sinning servants and humiliates generals. Baroque and carnivalesque, Eliogabalo is not, however, an opera that advocates a return to order. Leonardo García Alarcón, a finder of baroque gems, and Thomas Jolly are careful not to transform Eliogabalo into a sublime icon who would abase virtue. On the contrary, the conductor and young director, who are presenting their first production for the Paris Opera, accept the character’s contradictions and ambiguities
Sam Elliot stars as Sam Houston, the visionary who nearly single-handedly forged the state of Texas into a powerful entity in its own right. Refusing to forget the Alamo (as if anyone could), Houston led the military in Texas' rebellion against Mexico. G.D. Spradlin co-stars as President Andrew Jackson, with Michael Beck appearing as Jim Bowie, James Stephens as Stephen Austin, and Richard Yniguez as Mexican General Santa Anna. Lensed on location in the Lone Star state, this sweeping made-for-TV film originally occupied three hours' screen time on November 22, 1986. Its title at that time was Houston: The Legend of Texas. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Britney Spears has said that her conservatorship had become “an oppressive and controlling tool against her”. This New York Times investigation reveals much of how it worked, including an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move she made.
The Florentine sculptor and silversmith Benvenuto Cellini rapidly attained a degree of renown that went beyond the confines of Italy. Invariably embroiled in conspiracies, intrigues and quarrels, Cellini is commissioned by the Pope to cast a large sculpture of Perseus. He is loved by Teresa, but she is promised to Fieramosca, an academic artist who has not been favoured with a papal commission. Terry Gilliam’s exuberant production draws the protagonists into a delirious and joyful yet claustrophobic and megalomaniac world: a flaring up of contagious madness.
There are elements of Macbeth in this political fable, in which the ghost of the child that Boris has had killed in order to seize the throne appears as an impostor. Adapting Pushkin's epic poem, Mussorgsky composed a meditation on the solitude of power, a populist drama in which the real protagonist is the Russian people with its burden of eternal suffering. Ivo Van Hove is no stranger to grand political frescos. This is his first production for the Paris Opera.
Titus and Berenice love each other; under the watchful eye of Antiochus, the hopeless lover, they try yet refuse to understand each other. Taking up the “majestic sadness” of these alexandrines, among the greatest verses in the French language, Michael Jarrell amplifies the power of words, making them a vehicle for spaces and identities that, from Rome to Jerusalem, are unceasingly questioned.
Les Huguenots is a monumental fresco featuring various impossible loves in the context of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre. Andreas Kriegenburg places these timeless conflicts of love and religion in an immaculate setting in which the costumes appear yet more flamboyant and the victims’ blood more violently red.
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