The English novelist, John Le Carré discusses his life as a secret agent and writer in this documentary about spies in fact and fiction, produced for British television.
The English novelist, John Le Carré discusses his life as a secret agent and writer in this documentary about spies in fact and fiction, produced for British television.
2000-12-26
6
Paulette Van Der Beck and her husband have been running the housekeeping school of Bitche in Alsace for many years. Their mission is to train teenage girls to become the perfect housewives at a time when women were expected to be subservient to their husband. After the sudden death of her husband, Paulette discovers that the school is on the verge of bankruptcy and has to take her responsibilities. But while preparations are underway for the best housekeeping competition TV show, she and her lively students start questioning their beliefs as the nation-wide protests of May 1968 transform society around them. Reunited with her first love, André, and with the help of her eccentric stepsister Gilberte and strict nun Marie-Therese, Paulette joins forces with the schoolgirls to overcome their suppressed status and become liberated women.
A high school coach, whose teenage daughter was murdered, takes matters into his own hands by going after the men who kidnap his students for their sex trafficking operation.
A murder victim is brought back to life by a mysterious crow. With the help of a beautiful woman, he exacts revenge on his killers – only to realize his enemy has discovered the one weakness that can destroy him forever.
Angèle, a thirty-something from Ivory Coast, always cope thanks to the gift of gab and audacity. To escape from a bunch of dangerous criminals, she becomes a nanny in the uptown Paris, hired by Hélène, the single mom of eight years old Arthur. Discovering the work conditions of her colleagues, she decides to stand up for their rights, thanks to a young lawyer who will quickly fall for her.
The twelve-year-old schoolboy Max escapes from the house and hides under the bridge. There he finds a spray can of nano-paints, and draw a graffiti of a dog. Unexpectedly painted graffiti comes alive and turns into dog-nanorobot with super powers. And now both of them are hunted by a dangerous criminal who will not stop at anything in order to seize this powerful technology. Guy Max falls into a whirlpool of adventure, through which he finds true friends.
Pil-ju, an Alzheimer's patient in his 80s, who lost all his family during the Japanese colonial era, and devotes his lifelong revenge before his memories disappear, and a young man in his 20s who helps him.
With the unwavering love and support of his devoted mother Judy and the encouragement of his coaches, Anthony Robles fights through adversity to earn a spot on the Arizona State Wrestling team. But it will demand everything he has, physically and mentally, to achieve his ultimate quest to become an NCAA Champion.
Inspired by events in A.D. 60, Boudica follows the eponymous Celtic warrior who rules the Iceni people alongside her husband Prasutagus. When he dies at the hands of Roman soldiers, Boudica’s kingdom is left without a male heir and the Romans seize her land and property. Driven to the edge of madness and determined to avenge her husband’s death, Boudica rallies the various tribes from the region and wages an epic war against the mighty Roman empire.
Someone is blackmailing the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it look like the agency is responsible. As the world begins to unite against the U.S., the CIA must lure its most brilliant – and rebellious – operative out of retirement, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy.
Eight contestants compete in eight deadly, classic children's games. They seek fame beyond their wildest dreams, competing for the chance to take over the YouTube channel of the famous yet elusive masked content creator known only as "JaxPro".
Fitter Hu Jianlin was transferred to the headquarters by accident when the group was laying off employees. He is full of jokes because he is incompatible with the environment of the big factory. Human resources manager Ma Jie, who was caught up in the "wrong adjustment" incident, was forced to go around hiding it in order to keep his job. Is he able to keep his job after this mistake?
When he and his pregnant wife are attacked in their home, a former elite agent becomes trapped in a deadly manhunt tied to his own painful past.
Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.
Mavka, a Soul of the Forest, faces an impossible choice between love and her duty as Guardian of the Heart of the Forest when she falls for a human, a talented young musician named Lukas.
1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.
Alain and Diane have been together for 30 years. In his mind, Alain is still 30 years old. But the equation 30 years of routine feelings, empty nest (and incidentally a job where being 50 is like an incurable disease) creates a much less euphoric effect for Diane. She oscillates between depression and free fall - and the first one who says "hormonal" she smokes. Alain loves Diane like crazy and love is proof. He's going to do something crazy for her, something to make her feel vital again, to make her heart beat and youthfulness pulsate. The crazy thing? Leave her. The risk with electroshock ? Unknown: either it wakes up or it burns. They will take it, with their eyes closed.
After the unexpected death of the Pope, Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with managing the covert and ancient ritual of electing a new one. Sequestered in the Vatican with the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders until the process is complete, Lawrence finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could lead to its downfall.
Four best friends take their book club to Italy for the fun girls' trip they never had. When things go off the rails and secrets are revealed, their relaxing vacation turns into a once-in-a-lifetime cross-country adventure.
A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally's conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl.
A family's vacation to a remote getaway takes an unexpected turn when they discover the island they're on is inhabited by a serial killer.
1990 TV adaptation of a 1979 biographical play by Ned Sherrin & Caryl Brahms, based on the life of conductor and impresario Sir Thomas Beecham. With Timothy West as Beecham.
A poetic look at the life and legacy of legendary author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), who wrote over over a hundred short stories and 44 novels of mind-bending sci-fi, exploring themes of authority, drugs, theology, mental illness and much more.
Patricia Routledge, as patron of the Beatrix Potter Society, presents a documentary on the author's life and work.
It is late 2004, and 34-year-old Englishman Alistair Appleton is about to fly from London to the Brazilian coast, where he will drink ayahuasca for the first time. With wit, insight, and sensitivity, Alistair shares this experience with us, and chats with some fellow participants before and after the ayahuasca ceremonies. For the past few years, Alistair had been working as a television presenter. In 2000, he started making trips to the Centre for World Peace and Health in Scotland to learn how to meditate. When clinical psychologist Silvia Polivoy opened an ayahuasca healing center in Bahia in 2004, Alistair faced his fears and seized the opportunity to attend.
Surpassed only by the Bible and Shakespeare, Agatha Christie is the most successful writer of all time. We all know her characters and incredible plot twists, but what do we know about Agatha herself? Combining rare access to Agatha's family, her personal archive and speaking to those who know her work best, discover what made the world's most successful crime writer tick.
Ralph Ellison was an African-American writer and essayist, who's only novel Invisible Man (1953) gained a wide critical success. Ellison's ambitious journey from a childhood of hardship and poverty to celebrated African American writer is chronicled in this inspiring program through exclusive interviews and personal recollection.
Jack Kerouac's life is examined through interviews with his contemporaries and friends including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William S. Burroughs. The film also employs dramatic recreations of Kerouac's life beginning with his early childhood.
On an overcast morning in 1999, William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of the cult-classic novel Neuromancer, stepped into a limousine and set off on a road trip around North America. The limo was rigged with digital cameras, a computer, a television, a stereo, and a cell phone. Generated entirely by this four-wheeled media machine, No Maps for These Territories is both an account of Gibson’s life and work and a commentary on the world outside the car windows. Here, the man who coined the word "cyberspace" offers a unique perspective on Western culture at the edge of the new millennium, and in the throes of convulsive, tech-driven change.
A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
The Mindscape of Alan Moore is a psychedelic journey into one of the world's most powerful minds; chronicling the life and work of Alan Moore, author of several acclaimed graphic novels, including "From Hell," "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta." It is the only feature film production on which Alan Moore has collaborated, with permission to use his work. Alan Moore presents the story of his development as an artist, starting with his childhood and working through to his comics career and impact on that medium, and his emerging interest in magic.
Documentary about author Roald Dahl, produced for the British television series Imagine.
A touching documentary about a literary star who died at the age of 33, leaving a permanent mark in Finnish literature, and people close to him.
Hosted by Keeley Hawes, star of the popular television series The Durrells, this documentary reveals the adventures of the eccentric Durrell family once they left Corfu, Greece.
Armando Iannucci presents a personal argument in praise of the genius of Charles Dickens. Through the prism of the author's most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, Armando looks beyond Dickens - the national institution - and instead explores the qualities of Dickens's work that still make him one of the best British writers. While Dickens is often celebrated for his powerful depictions of Victorian England and his role as a social reformer, this programme foregrounds the elements of his writing which make him worth reading, as much for what he tells us about ourselves in the twenty-first century as our ancestors in the nineteenth. Armando argues that Dickens's remarkable use of language and his extraordinary gift for creating characters make him a startlingly experimental and psychologically penetrating writer who demands not just to be adapted for television but to be read and read again.
Following the success of her debut novel, All This Could Be Different, author Sarah Thankam Mathews embarks on her second novel, drawing from her adolescence between India and Oman. As Sarah excavates lost place and time, she must contend with the weight of truthful representation and the contradictions within her childhood memories.
Legendary short story writer Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) captured moments of grace in the cafeterias and laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.
A documentary 33 years in the making. A director and friend of Kurt Vonnegut seeks through his archives to create the first film featuring the revolutionary late writer.
The making of Jerzy Kosinski. The BBC documentary on the life and art of enigmatic novelist Jerzy Kosinski. Through interviews with his second wife Kiki von Fraunhofer-Kosinski, friends and fellow authors, and Polish villagers who knew Kosinski when he was a child hiding from the scourge of Nazism, this program attempts to assess the verity of Kosinski's "autobiographical" fiction, the need for him to maintain a nebulous mystique about his early life, and to understand his obsession with S&M sex clubs in Manhattan during the 1970s and 1980s.
An examination of the life of great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who penned the 1877 novel Anna Karenina.
Travel back to Victorian Britain and wander the cobbled streets of Haworth to the sites that inspired the great Brontë sisters’ classic novels.