A ten-year-old boy, son of a soldier who stayed in England after the war, cannot count on a peaceful childhood in Stalinist Poland. So his mother sends him to be raised by a friend as a war orphan. The company of his aunt, a horse-riding enthusiast and woman of unflagging spirit, becomes a unique school of life for the boy.
Tag: 1990s
Monologuist Spalding Gray talks about the great difficulties he experienced while attempting to write his first novel, a nearly 2,000-page autobiographical tome concerning the death of his mother. Among his many asides, Gray discusses his problems in dealing with the Hollywood film industry, recounts the trips he took around the world in order to avoid dealing with his writer’s block and describes his ambivalence about acting as stage manager for a Broadway production of “Our Town.”
In late-1970s suburban London, Chris and Marion have settled into a comfortable yet all-too-predictable middle-class existence. Chris receives an unexpected visit from his free-spirited friend Toni, a reunion that reminds him of a more carefree time in 1960s Paris. Now, with lingering doubts about his marriage bubbling up, Chris must make the choice between revisiting his youthful abandon with Toni or facing the here and now with Marion.
Il Ladro di Bambini begins in Milan, where Sicilian siblings Rosetta, 11, and Luciano, 9, live with their destitute mother. The woman regularly prostitutes Rosetta and is arrested; her children are immediately made wards of the court. Carabiniere Antonio Criaco is assigned to escort them to a foster home in a mission that appears to be simple. Yet, years of abuse forbid the siblings to trust, obey, or even like Antonio. Rosetta is hostile and demanding; Luciano is sullen and remote. When the Catholic foster home will not accept the children on the grounds of Rosetta’s past, Antonio independently decides to bring them south to a home in Sicily.
A newspaper sends a young reporter into the Russian countryside to make a nice, sensationalist yarn out of some strange stories going around. Once in the countryside, Igor is accommodated by a peasant family living in the middle of nowhere close to a ruined church. The family is convinced that their dead patriarch will return from the dead as a blood-drinking fiend exactly nine and a half days after his demise.
In post-Soviet Russia, detective Andrey is sent to investigate the bizarre suicide of a young mother. As he delves into the case, he becomes entwined with the woman’s sister Marina and the dark legacy of her family’s past. What begins as a routine investigation evolves into an encounter with unseen forces that prey on grief and guilt. The atmosphere grows oppressive, and Andrey finds himself drawn into a realm where the boundary between the living and the dead is dangerously thin.
A film of Eric Serra’s audio recording session of Doudou N’Diaye Rose and his drumming ensemble outdoors on the island of Gorée, off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. The film concentrates on two performances — one shot in daytime, and one at night. Two performances are filmed, punctuated by images of the island.
A train from Paris to Moscow arrives at Brest-Litovsk, a border crossing between Poland and the former Soviet Union. Since Soviet rails are 89 mm wider than European ones, Belarusian railway workers must lift the cars and change the wheels so the train can continue eastward. Nominated for an Oscar in 1995 and winner of numerous awards worldwide, 89 mm od Europy shows the gap that still exists between the countries of the East and the West.