The story of Farewell to My Concubine is itself very dramatic. Lillian Lee is rumoured to have written the original screenplay in the late 1970s, which was made into a two-part television series on RTHK by Alex Law under the name King Chau and Lady Yu. Lee then adapted the story into a novel in 1985, which later inspired a feature film, scripted again by Lee and directed by Fifth Generation mainstay Chen Kaige, going on to become an international sensation that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globe Awards among other accolades. What's more, the Peking opera of the same title featured prominently in the novel, the TV programme and the film was itself adapted from a Kun opera, which was in turn based on the historical chronicle Basic Annals of Xiang Yu, from Records of the Grand Historian.
This film depicts every noteworthy event (in the eyes of the film-makers) in Sweden from the death of King Oscar II, in 1907, to the celebration of the 80th birthday of King Gustave V in Stockholm in June of 1938. This film is comprised largely of newsreel clips intermixed with the fictional story of the family lives of a working man and a well-to-do newspaper editor through two generations, with a special significance in the showing of the development of the social-democratic form of government in Sweden.
Tsukitaro, a young man who comes to Edo, meets a blind girl named Ochiyo. Ochiyo 's father, the grinder Yasujiro, was asked to sharpen a sword called Kongomaru, which was planned to be presented to the shogun Iemitsu, but he died due to a yakuza attack. In addition, the sword was stolen, and Ochiyo 's sister was also kidnapped... A humorous historical drama directed by Eiichi Kudo, starring Hibari Misora and Kotaro Satomi. Hibari Misora plays a male princess and shows off her charming appearance with stylish songs and dances.
"Óscar. The Color of Destiny" is a revealing portrayal of a forgotten icon of French Surrealism: Spanish painter Óscar Domínguez, contemporary of Picasso. The film rediscovers the life of a talented artist who was ignored after he committed suicide, fifty years ago, victim of a serious illness which had disfigured his body: the Elephant Man's disease. The film is stirring and touching and compels admiration for the bohemian painter whose fate was self-destruction, after a wild crazy life. Lucas Fernández turns the life of a debauchee, who regarded himself a monster because of his disfiguring disease, into a universal story where art is the product of love and loneliness, of sex and violence before, during and after the Nazi invasion of Paris.
Documentary examining one of the most notorious incidents in college basketball history, when seven members of the City College of New York (CCNY) basketball team conspired with gamblers to fix games over two seasons (1949-51). Includes archival television footage, home movies, and interviews with p
Explore the stories of women caught up in World War II, from the American Home Front to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. Included in this hour-long film are also the personal stories of the incredible women who served in a war that proved women were equal to men when it came to patriotism, service, or in some cases, self-preservation during watershed moments which called for steadfastness.
Fighting for Respect captures the plight of African American soldiers who fought in WWI, receiving the Croix de Guerre military decoration from France, while still fighting discrimination and hatred at home in America.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx formed one of the most famous duos in world history. In contrast to Marx, however, Engels seems to have fallen into oblivion today. Unjustly so. Moving archive images, documentary footage and graphic novels lead us back to the time of Friedrich Engels, who shaped the Communist movement like no other.
Tokugawa Ieyasu is killed at the Battle of Sekigahara. Jirosaburo Serada, who travels all over the country, becomes Tokugawa Ieyasu's shadow warrior and runs country….
The coronation of Elizabeth II as queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey in London. She acceded to the throne at the age of 25 upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952, being proclaimed queen by her privy and executive councils shortly afterwards. The coronation was held more than one year later because of the tradition of allowing an appropriate length of time to pass after a monarch dies. It also gave the planning committees adequate time to make preparations for the ceremony.
Forty years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, more than 80% of Americans still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. This documentary attempts to separate fact from conspiracy theories to get to the truth, employing stunning forensic technology that makes it possible for the first time to be an eyewitness to this crime of the century – to see precisely what happened that November day in Dallas.
Jerzy Szajnowicz-Ivanov, the son of Polish mother and Russian father, raised in Greece, reports to the Carpathian Brigade in the spring of 1941. Poles are wary at first. English recommend him to arrange the intelligence grid and sabotage in the Athens area. Soon the grid starts to work: intelligence flows, transports fly into the air, ships sink...
In 1918, when New York City hired its first scientifically trained medical examiner Charles Norris. Over the course of a decade and a half, Norris and his extraordinarily driven and talented chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, would turn forensic chemistry into a formidable science, sending many a murderer to the electric chair and setting the standards that the rest of the country would ultimately adopt.
