KINGDOM OF ITALY AUTHOR · DRAMA · MOTION PICTURE PLAYS
Luchino Visconti
Death in Venice (Italian: Morte a Venezia) is a 1971 historical drama film directed and produced by Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, and adapted by Visconti and Nicola Badalucco from the 1912 novella of the same name by German author Thomas Mann. It stars Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andrésen as Tadzio, with supporting roles played by Mark Burns, Marisa Berenson, and Silvana Mangano, and was filmed in Technicolor by Pasqualino De Santis. The soundtrack consists of selections from Gustav Mahler's third and fifth symphonies, but characters in the film also perform pieces by Franz Lehár, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Modest Mussorgsky. Preceded by The Damned (1969) and followed by Ludwig (1973), the film is the second part of Visconti's thematic "German Trilogy". The film premiered in London on 1 March 1971, and was entered into the 24th Cannes Film Festival.
Perhaps we should not pride ourselves too much on our modern, tolerant outlook toward the practitioners of, and believers in, witchcraft.
— from Witches, 2007
Most acclaimed
Three Screenplays
Award-winning filmmaker Edward Burns is hardly an overnight success story. For four years, Burns wrote his own screenplays while he made a meager living working as a production assistant for a television show in New York City. Then on an extremely low budget - and shot mostly in his parents' Long Island home - Burns wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his brilliant first film, The Brothers McMullen, about three Irish-American brothers coping with life and love in the 1990s. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, and Burn's career took off, bolstered the next year by the instant success of his second romantic comedy, She's the One. Now, to coincide with the release of his biggest film yet, No Looking Back, Burns presents a complete collection of his three screenplays, along with numerous photo stills and an original autobiographical Introduction.
Witches
2007
"September 1613. In Belvoir Castle, the heir of one of England's great noble families falls suddenly and dangerously ill. His body is 'tormented' with violent convulsions. Within a few short weeks he will suffer an excruciating death. Soon the whole family will be stricken with the same terrifying symptoms. The second son, the last male of the line, will not survive. It is said witches are to blame. And so the Earl of Rutland's sons will not be the last to die. Witches traces the dramatic events which unfolded at one of England's oldest and most spectacular castles four hundred years ago. The case is among those which constitute the European witch craze of the 15th-18th centuries, when suspected witches were burned, hanged, or tortured by the thousand. Like those other cases, it is a tale of superstition, the darkest limits of the human imagination and, ultimately, injustice - a reminder of how paranoia and hysteria can create an environment in which nonconformism spells death. But as Tracy Borman reveals here, it is not quite typical. The most powerful and Machiavellian figure of the Jacobean court had a vested interest in events at Belvoir.He would mastermind a conspiracy that has remained hidden for centuries."--Publisher's description.