film
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Dancing in the Dark: Lars von Trier *IV 30 1956 / The Life You Give
Lars von Trier, born April 30, 1956, in Copenhagen, Denmark, is the film director and cofounder of the Dogme 95 movement, whose films were known for their bleak worldview and controversial subject matter. Von Trier attended the National Film School of Denmark, graduating in 1983. He was born Lars Trier, but while in school he…
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Charlie Chaplin *IV 16 1889 / The Life You Give
Charlie Chaplin, byname of Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, (born April 16, 1889, London, England, is the comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history. Early life and career Chaplin was named after his father, a…
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Days with Nagisa Ōshima
Nagisa Oshima’s interest in politics began at a young age. His father, a government official (reportedly of samurai lineage) (1) who died when Oshima was six, left behind an extensive library of Socialist and Communist texts, which the young man read through as he came to maturity. He attended Kyoto University, studying law while dabbling…
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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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Days with Luis Buñuel *II 22 1900 / The Life You Give — La Vida Que Das
Luis Buñuel, born Luis Buñuel Portolés on February 22, 1900, Calanda, Aragón, Spain, is the filmmaker who was a leading figure in Surrealism, the tenets of which suffused both his life and his work. An unregenerate atheist and communist sympathizer who was preoccupied with themes of gratuitous cruelty, eroticism, and religious mania, he won early…
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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…
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Takeshi Kitano *I 18 1947 / The Life You Give
Kitano Takeshi, born January 18, 1947, in Tokyo, Japan, is the actor, director, writer, and television personality known for his dexterity with both comedic and dramatic material. Kitano was born into a working-class family in Tokyo. He planned to become an engineer but dropped out of college to enter show business in 1972. With his…
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Days with David Bowie — film: Baal
David Bowie in Alan Clarke’s ‘Baal’ (1982) Alan Clarke’s films generally go straight into the ‘once seen, never forgotten’ file – including David Bowie’s remarkable turn as Baal, Bertolt Brecht’s anti-hero, adapted by Clarke and John Willett from the 1918 play. Though it wasn’t exactly a frequently-performed work, British theatre audiences were treated to a…
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Days with David Bowie: “The Man Who Fell To Earth”
Celebrating the life of David Bowie (*January 8 1947), we are spending a few days considering his life and work in music, art, and cinema. The focus of this Clubhouse celebration is on three works for the screen which display most of the key performances he gave as an actor, next to his musical mind…
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Meredith Monk *XI 20 1942 — The Life You Give
Meredith Monk, born Meredith Jane Monk, November 20, 1942, New York City, New York, U.S.A., is the performance artist, a pioneer in the avant-garde, whose work skillfully integrated diverse performance disciplines and media. Monk studied piano and eurythmics from an early age. She earned a B.A. in 1964 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York.…
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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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