Cinema
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Pedro Almodóvar *IX 25 1949 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Pedro Almodóvar, born Pedro Mercedes Almodóvar Caballero, September 25, 1949, in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, is the filmmaker known for colourful melodramatic films that often feature sexual themes. As a young man, Almodóvar moved to Madrid with the hopes of attending the Spanish national film school, but it had recently been closed under dictator Francisco…
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Days with Pedro Almodóvar: Carne Trémula (1997)
Carne Trémula (Live Flesh)February 1, 1998By James Bowman Live Flesh by Pedro Almodovar begins with a scene, set on a lonely night in 1970, in which a baby is born on a bus on the way to the hospital. There is a comic bus driver and a comic older woman helping the baby be born.…
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Days with Pedro Almodóvar: Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (1988)
Almodovar’s First MasterpieceFebruary 23, 2010 by Emanuel Levy With the exception of “Talk to Her,” the 2003 feature in which the two protagonists are men (and straight men at that), and “Bad Education,” there are not many men in Almodovar’s films. At times, there are no men at all, and if there are, the men…
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“Autumn Sonata” / Happy Birthday, Ingmar Bergman!
Eva (Liv Ullmann) lives in Norway with her clergyman husband. She has not seen her mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman), a world-renowned concert pianist, for seven years. Their reunion at Eva’s home is an uneasy time for both women. The repressed daughter has hopes of growing closer to her mother; Charlotte is mourning the death of…
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“Scenes from a Marriage” — Days with Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 / The Life You Give
Scenes from a MarriageTelevision miniseries about the breakdown of a marriage that sent Sweden’s divorce rate soaring. “It took two and a half months to write these scenes; it took a whole adult life to live.”Ingmar Bergman On 27 March 1972 Ingmar Bergman wrote in his workbook: ‘Here’s something we can do for the fun…
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“Through a Glass Darkly” — Days with Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 / The Life You Give
The great subject of the cinema, Ingmar Bergman believed, is the human face. He’d been watching Antonioni on television, he told me during an interview, and realized it wasn’t what Antonioni said that absorbed him, but the man’s face. Bergman was not thinking about anything as simple as a closeup, I believe. He was thinking…
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“Cries and Whispers” — Days with Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 / The Life You Give
‘Cries and Whispers” envelops us in a tomb of dread, pain and hate, and to counter these powerful feelings it summons selfless love. It is, I think, Ingmar Bergman’s way of treating his own self-disgust, and his envy of those who have faith. His story, which takes place inside a Swedish manor house on the…
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“The Silence” — Days with Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 / The Life You Give
Two women, Anna and Ester, accompanied by Johan, Anna’s ten-year-old-son, travel slowly through the night by train into a foreign country that seems to be at war. They are sisters, it will turn out, perhaps lovers. We will never discover the reason for their journey, to a place where the inhabitants, the culture, and the…
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Ingmar Bergman — Preliminares a su cumpleaños
Biografía Hijo de Karin y Erik Bergman, Ingmar nació el 14 de julio 1918 en Uppsala, Suecia.Segundo hijo de la joven pareja, sufrió desde sus primeros días graves problemas de salud. Ante el temor por la frágil supervivencia del pequeño, su abuela lo acogió en su casa de Dalecarlia, donde poco a poco Ingmar recuperó…
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Ingmar Bergman *VII 14 1918 / The Life You Give (Preliminaries)
Please, bear with me as I repeat something I must repeat. While living in the lively and artistic city of Liège, Belgium, (1995-2000) swimming, soaring and diving into questions and thoughts on what it means to be a human, and furthering artistic concepts around the topic of the process of dying, one conclusion appeared with…
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Orson Welles *V 6 1915 — The Life You Give
Orson Welles, born George Orson Welles, May 6, 1915, Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.A., is the motion-picture actor, director, producer, and write who’s innovative narrative techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music to further the dramatic line and to create mood made his Citizen Kane (1941)—which he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in—one of the…
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Akira Kurosawa *III 23 1910 — The Life You Give
Kurosawa Akira, born March 23, 1910, in Tokyo, Japan, was the first Japanese film director to win international acclaim, with such films as Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), Kagemusha (1980), and Ran (1985). Kurosawa’s father, who had once been an army officer, was a teacher who contributed to the…
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Have we missed something important?
– Johan? Have we missed something important? – All of us? – No, you and I. – What would that be? – At times I can read your mind, and I feel such tenderness that I forget myself. Without having to efface myself. It’s a new sensation. Do you understand. – I understand. – Johan?…
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Luis Buñuel *II 22 1900 — La vida que das
Luis Buñuel, nacido en febrero 22, 1900, fue director de cine, y una de las grandes figuras de la historia del cine. Su padre, Leonardo Manuel Buñuel, fue un indiano fantasioso que regresó de Cuba enriquecido y se instaló en Calanda; solía relatar numerosas aventuras ilusorias a los lugareños y afirmaba con bravuconería que sería…
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David Lynch *I 20 1946 — The Life You Give
David Lynch, born David Keith Lynch, January 20, 1946, Missoula, Montana, U.S.A., is the filmmaker and screenwriter known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and the family moved…
Sila Blume 