This is a beautifully conducted and thoughtfully staged performance of the first opera (the prologue) in Wagner's Ring Cycle. As soon as the clouds of mist have dissipated, while the daring, long-held opening chord is still reverberating, the screen clears to show not only the River Rhine and the three maidens (dressed like prostitutes in this production) assigned to guard the gold hidden there. It also shows an enormous dam (not mentioned in Wagner's text). This is the underwater base of a hydroelectric plant, and its presence tells us two things immediately: that this production takes the story out of the vaguely medieval fantasy world in which Wagner had placed it, and that a basic theme of the four-opera cycle would be power. Alberich, the Nibelung, is willing to renounce the love of women, after stealing the gold from the Rhine, to become the ruler of the world. Another basic theme is greed.
Donner
Froh
Mime
Wellgunde
Fafner
Geierwally is a musical comedy and a parody of traditional movies with regional background, especially the classic story of Geierwally.
An experience of breaking into buildings and creating new homes for homeless families in Rio de Janeiro in opposition to a series of forced evictions by the State. These evictions initiate a major intervention project in the city intensified since 2007. In the documentary, the project called “revitalization” is questioned by the residents of various occupations.
A semi-trailer found dumped and full of dead people leads Kurt Wallander and his team to a convent where the nuns have been assisting illegal refugees into Sweden via Poland.
A lucid view on an extraordinary character, recognized and loved or reviled by the crowd of wrestling fans. Cassandro, the exotic gay lucha libre fighter.
A young Gallic heiress Christine is looking for her long-lost brother in Algeria. She's not looking for danger, but that's what comes in her way from every nook and cranny.
The experimental work consists of several fragments, demonstrating the use of color in film: showing paintings of Soviet art, photography parade on first of May on Red Square in 1934-1935, recording a working amateur and sketch of Soviet Georgia.
From pre-production to release, we are given an exclusive look into the making of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Interviews with the cast and crew members take up the bulk of this film, but are accompanied by plenty of on-set footage. We are also given a glimpse at a lot of the deleted material, much of which will be in the director's cut.
With all of the problems facing the world today war, poverty, weapons, environmental degradation, starvation, overpopulation and severe desperation among millions people are longing for meaning. Many find answers in religion or spirituality, but as a result faith and religion are often hijacked by those seeking to enhance their own power at the expense of others, often all in the name of God. With this dichotomy in mind, "Beyond Our Differences" calls upon key religious leaders, politicians, and luminaries in their fields to tackle the toughest and most complex issues in the modern age, and it asks what it is that inspires them to affect positive change...
Both in 2006 and 2007, the Gay Pride Parade attempts in Moscow are violently beaten down. For many observers, the attitude towards the sexual minorities seems to be the litmus test of the state of democracy in Russia. In January 2007, for the first time in Russian history, a Russian leader, president Vladimir Putin mentions the situation of the LGBT community: He won't criticize the politics of Moscow mayor Yuri Lushkov, who forbid the event, but he is concerned about the demographic future of the country. And Putins opinion seems to be repeated by the right wing contra demonstrators on the streets. The film shows both the organizers of the Pride events and also the survival strategies of the majority Russian lesbians and gays, to whom the fight for democracy on the streets doesn't seem to be an attractive alternative.
Minks, 16, is living with her Nan who has dementia. Unaware of what Dementia really is, Minks is trying to understand the severity of her Nan’s forgetfulness. The two women share a unique bond, despite their generational gap, which is highlighted by Nan’s good sense of humour. However it’s only a matter of time till Minks is forced to realise she can no longer care for her Nan on her own.
Tom is a small-time drifter without a care in the world until he finds himself trapped on a dangerous, remote island and infatuated with a mysterious young woman who seems part beautiful innocent, part not-so-innocent.
In a small town, a nomad cuts down a tree he needs to use. However, he accidentally chops down the wrong tree, felling the tree that sustains life itself. When the latter tree falls, all life disappears. The nomad then finds himself in the middle of a desert that he does not recognize, and he tries to work his way out of it. During this particular quest, he comes across a small tree that is in the process of dying and opts instead to save this one.
Turn Your TV Into A Window To The World! Set the mood by turning any room in your home into a showcase of living art! Enjoy the glow of this Radiant Fireplace DVD with its life-like flames and real crackling sounds, as you sit back and relax. Turn your TV into a living fireplace without the expense and headache of tedious preparations and messy clean-up. Whether you are relaxing alone, entertaining one other person, or an entire party, your Living Art Radiant Fireplace is perfect for all occasions. All DVD videos are looped for continuous play and digitally mastered for your optimal viewing pleasure. Living Art is a proven method used to promote deep relaxation therapy and positive mood enhancement. Shot in high definition. Audio Options: Choose the Natural Sounds of the scene; many cuts of relaxing music, or both!
Mimi isn't a star, she's just someone. A close-up of the singularity of a real life. An encounter of someone's particular story, romance, fantasy and territories.
Late for his interview. Stuck in a time loop. Not ideal. It's enough to drive Derw Derw mad.
Tom and Dick are brothers and are being educated at the same college. Tom is a studious fellow and graduates with honors, while Dick is expelled from college through misbehavior. Dick is ashamed to go home, but before leaving Tom gives him a locket containing a picture of their mother. Ten years later Tom, who is a successful lawyer, is married and has two little children. Dick, who has now been reduced through personal neglect to a derelict, overhears a plan to rob his brother's house. Making up his mind to prevent it, Dick climbs through the nursery window, catches the burglars, but effects their escape. His two little nieces, who have been watching him, kiss and hug him before he makes his exit. When their parents return from the reception they attended, the children relate to them what had happened. Dick gets into a scrape with a gambler a month or two later, who laughs at the miniature of his mother that Dick puts up in lieu of cash.
13-year old Bruce Lee plays San, a child up for adoption. Finally accepted by his surrogate parents, he is faced with a dilemma when his real parents show up and want him back.
Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Based on a revolutionary play supposedly written by the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic, Kim Il-sung, and rumored to have been co-directed by Kim Jong-il. This revolutionary work is also popular among the Chinese, especially those who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and have fond memories of revolutionary antics.
Christmas is now more beautiful and cosy than ever! Experience Christmas in London, together with André Rieu. Decorated Christmas trees everywhere you look, beautifully lit streets, tempting Christmas window displays... Combine the unique London Christmas atmosphere with a magnificent Christmas concert by André Rieu, and you have all the ingredients for a lovely party in the dark December days. Together with fantastic soloists and his always joyful Johann Strauss orchestra, André Rieu provides a fabulous evening with the most beautiful and moving Christmas carols, but also with emotional songs such as Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, The Holy City and the classic Concierto de Aranjuez. Christmas in London means an evening enjoying lovely music, beautiful costumes and plenty of London cosiness.
Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical China - is one of the most popular in the Met repertory. In this Live in HD production, Maria Guleghina takes on the title role and Marcello Giordani is Calaf, the unknown prince. Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey co-star, and Andris Nelsons conducts in his Met debut.
A collaboration between award-winning American filmmaker Sofia Coppola and Italia haute couture king Valentino comes in the form of a revival of Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera, La Traviata. Captured live from the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.
The gorgeous and evocative Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production continues with this second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle. Hildegard Behrens brings deep empathy to Brünnhilde, the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (James Morris) who nevertheless defies him. Morris’s portrayal of Wotan is deservedly legendary, as is Christa Ludwig, as Fricka. Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes are Sieglinde and Siegmund, and Kurt Moll is the threatening Hunding. James Levine and the Met orchestra provide astonishing color and drama. (Performed April 8, 1989)
Director Carrie Cracknell makes her Met debut, reinvigorating the classic story with a staging that moves the action to the modern day, in a contemporary American industrial town.
A film version of the famous Bizet opera, where a soldier (Don Jose) falls in love with a beautiful factory worker (Carmen), but she does not reciprocate his feelings.
Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.
Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.
Extraordinary soprano Lise Davidsen stars as the volatile diva Floria Tosca for the first time at the Met. David McVicar’s thrilling production also features tenor Freddie De Tommaso in his eagerly anticipated company debut as Tosca’s revolutionary lover, Cavaradossi, and powerhouse baritone Quinn Kelsey as the sadistic chief of police Scarpia. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.
A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic opera manager end in abrupt firing in spite of a mutual attraction. He's quickly engaged by another theatre and becomes famous for his lavish stage productions and fine acting, which begins their golden age with Suppé and Strauss.
The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.
Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, wrestles with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st-century warfare.
This film traces the life of Jan Kapr, a prominent Czech composer of the 20th century. A documentary opera with an ambitious libretto and playful and refined editing work, Kapr Code is an unexpected celebration of creativity that shakes up our ideas of biography and pays tribute to the importance of resisting homologation and censorship through art and creation.
U-CARMEN is a feature film based on Georges Bizet's 19th-century opera that was filmed on location in a modern South African township setting. The energy, compassion, and heat of township life in all its elements create a constantly visually interesting and dynamic background for the unfolding of the story, which owes part of its huge popularity to the thrilling combination of a violent gangster tale with a passionate, almost supernatural love story. As it unfolds, it explores issues of fame and wealth, the position of a strong and independently minded woman in a very masculine society and, perhaps most importantly, the incomprehensible attraction between abuser and victim. Bizet's opera, based on Prosper Merimée's novel, premiered in Paris on March 3, 1875. Set in a poor area of Seville, the story of the magnetic woman who seduces, loves, and ultimately destroys her lover and herself...
A young poet named Hoffman broods over his failed romances. First, his affair with the beautiful Olympia is shattered when he realizes that she is really a mechanical woman designed by a scientist. Next, he believes that a striking prostitute loves him, only to find out she was hired to fake her affections by the dastardly Dapertutto. Lastly, a magic spell claims the life of his final lover.