This movie tells the story of the early life and rise to fame and fortune of French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, beginning with her upbringing in an orphanage and training as a milliner, but concentrating on her relationship with Etienne de Balsan and her tempestuous love affair with his friend Boy Capel, and the role the two men played in setting her up as an independent business woman.
Category: Biography
A biography of renowned escape artist Harry Houdini, examining his fascination with the occult and his promise to his wife on his deathbed that he would contact her from the great beyond, if it were at all possible.
Budd Boetticher’s final release is an independently produced documentary about legendary bullfighter Carlos Arruza, narrated by Anthony Quinn. A film he spent much time, effort and money on and was to be his masterpiece, perhaps his most personal. Boetticher himself had been a bullfighter before going into movies. Tragically, a car accident on May 20th, 1966 took the lives of Carlos Arruza and some of Boetticher’s filming crew.
Dolly Parton discusses her life, career, music and movies. Punctuated by rare footage, it also includes comments from Jane Fonda, Dolly’s siblings Stella and Randy Parton, and others.
A one-hour public television (PBS) biography of Dashiell Hammett, creator of the “hardboiled” modern detective novel and author of “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Thin Man.” It follows Hammett’s life from Pinkerton detective in San Francisco to his career as fiction and screen writer, companion of playwright Lillian Hellman, and leftwing political activist. The biography investigates why Hammett stopped writing at the height of his fame.
Biography of the legendary musician Huddie Leadbetter “Leadbelly” that deals with the problems he had in his youth due to racial segregation including his time and prison and his efforts to conquer a position in the world of music.
This fictional biography of Sigmund Freud features the pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst’s days as a young man. Squeamish at the sight of blood, Freud opts out of medical school, and eventually develops his theories of psychoanalysis, even finding an “ultimate patient” to test his innovative ideas on. Later, Freud develops a relationship with nurse Martha Bernays, who is not shy about her feelings for the renowned thinker.
An insightful illumination of author Paul Bowles’ original and lesser-known career as an avant-garde composer, Owsley Brown’s Night Waltz is an elegant and soulful document of discovery. Interviewed in Morocco during the last months of his life, Bowles journeys back to his early years as a contemporary and occasional collaborator of other such iconic figures as Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Orson Welles. Bowles’ uncut compositions–performed by the Eos Orchestra–are punctuated with stunning visual essays by filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Rudy Burckhardt. Long after retiring from his more well-known profession, Bowles kept music as a vital part of his life, tapping out fresh rhythms on his Tangier table tops until the end of his days.