Actress (2014)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 26M
Director : Robert Greene
Synopsis
Brandy Burre had a recurring role on HBO’s The Wire when she gave up her career to start a family. When she decides to reclaim her life as an actor, the domestic world she’s carefully created crumbles around her.
Griffith intercuts between the lives of two couples married on the same day. One couple is rich, the other poor. Time passes, and in desperation over joblessness, the poor husband attempts to burgle a home, only to be captured at gunpoint by the mistress of the house. It is the home of the rich couple. While holding the poor intruder at gunpoint, the rich wife accidentally discovers evidence implicating her own husband in a bribery scheme.
LA TARE is about Anna, a woman who is rescued from a Parisian dance hall to work in a charitable hospital. Over the years, she rises to become the head of the institution, but when an old habitué of the dance hall recognizes her picture, he attempts to blackmail her.
Joey and Sissel are two misfits spending most of their time together talking or having sex. Gradually and slowly their relationships are becoming boring for them.
Three men go out on the ocean in a row boat. There, they see dancing fairies. Then manage to catch one and take her aboard the boat--taking her back to the castle with them. Then, one of the men asks the fairy to marry him and they do so--though something strange occurs right after the ceremony.
A man leaves his wife and two daughters for work in a carpentry shop. At work, he initially refuses a beer with lunch, then gives in. After work, two friends take a little while to convince him to go for a refreshing malt beverage, then to have another and another....
The Yosemite Valley Railroad, which runs through the breathtaking scenery and stunning vistas of Yosemite National Park, is on the brink of failure. The grandson of a Chinese railroad laborer embarks on a romantic, but ultimately doomed, quest to save this railroad from being sold for scrap. His love of trains finds him working as a railroad-man, instead of at his father's profitable business. He manages to locate a wealthy eccentric investor to help him acquire the railroad, but its financial inviability makes this a quixotic reprieve, at best. The film also portrays the anti-Asian racism present in America at the conclusion of World War II.
Set in a tenement, a lonely confirmed bachelor occupies a room across the hall from a dour spinster. Children run amok in the hallways playing pranks on the two. A little girl from the floor above, now alone in the world, brings the pair together and brightens their lives.
It's evening, and she is standing happily at a work table in her kitchen, perhaps making a cake, while the radio finishes a song for young lovers. Then, the 7 o'clock news begins with a report on an arrest in Israel. As she proceeds through a couple of kitchen accidents - dropping a bowl, pulling a smoking pan from the oven, and waving the smoke out the window of her fourth-floor flat - she realizes that the newscaster is informing listeners of her cooking disasters.
Filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev follows two Czech Holocaust survivors, Jan Weiner and Arnost Lustig, as they revisit Terezin, a labor camp where Arnost was interned for five years and Jan's mother was murdered.
A wealthy, callous moneylender finds a terrifying way to learn about money's limitations.
Daniel is approaching forty. Laura is almost sixteen. From what they say about him he must be a poet or a comic-strip illustrator, or both. He has just overcome a long addiction and, once back home, is trying to recongnize his life based on a strategy which consists basically in DOING EXACTLY WHAT A "NORMAL" PERSON DOES. Everything that happens to Daniel is, more or less, foreseeable because that's what it's all about: he should look after his personal grooming, take care of the small things, immerse himself in the real world... and so on until he has completed the ten small achievements in his manual, a set of COMMANDMENTS devised by an insipid public health system psychiatrist. And, in the midst of all this, an unexpected happening: Laura arrives in the city searching for her brother Andres, Daniel's neighbor. But the brother is not home and she decides to wait for him, while organizing around Daniel what could be his "perfect world".
A poor girl, a rich stud, a university student and a model -- nothing in common, except the desire to experience true intimacy. Their stories unfold and overlap as each becomes victim to their own sexual dependencies, self-perceptions and illusions. Thematically structured around issues of femininity, masculinity, virginity, rape and sexuality, each teen struggles to make sense of their own identity, reaching for ideals that represent everything they feel they are supposed to be, but are not.
Reggie, a wealthy young man about town, is eager for excitement, so he takes to visiting the rougher sections of the city in search of thrills. He meets and falls for a cabaret singer, but she turns out to be the inamorata of the local gang boss. The gangster sends his men after Reggie, but eventually it comes down to a duel between the two men themselves.
When he goes to Paris an aristocrat steps into a cinema and is shocked by something he sees on screen.
Gretchen Van Houck is just arriving in the USA, on a ship from Holland. She joins her father, who has already spent several years in America, where he owns an engraving business. In the tenement community where the Van Houcks live, there are residents of many nationalities. Gretchen soon becomes close friends with Pietro, a popular resident, and she also takes an interest in the widow Garrity and her children. Another resident, Rogers, is more mysterious. One day Rogers tells Mr. Van Houck that he could help him get a job printing money for the government. Van Houck eagerly agrees to try, but when he finds out what Rogers is really doing, he is placed in a painful dilemma.
Circa 1940 in Trinidad, still a British Colony, lives Ganesh Ramseyor, of East Indian origin, along with his wife, Leela. He longs to reach out to people, especially to Hindus, in order to promote the Hindu Faith, and be known as a writer. He does get considerable success, so much so that he becomes famous as a miracle worker, having cured a man of sharing intimacy with his bicycle; prevented a man from believing that he can fly; and convincing a young woman to end her fast. His fame spreads all over the island and thousands throng to seek his blessings, which he does dole out quite benevolently, without charging any fees from the poor and the needy. He then decides to spread his wings by challenging the local politician Pandit Narayan Chandrashekhar alias Cyrus T., and takes over The Hindu Organization, thence opening his way to a seat in the prestigious Member of the Legislative Assembly
A young inventor is kidnapped to force him to tell the secret of his invention, but he foils his captors thanks to a pen with invisible ink.
The orphan Dora is courted by two different gold miners.
Winter. Brainerd, Minnesota. Despite arctic temperatures sheathing hundreds of surrounding lakes in three feet of solid ice, a massive stretch of water opens up on the surface of North Long Lake. With repeated scientific investigations yielding no answers, the Black Hole captures the heart of the nearby community while attracting national, even international attention. Convinced this charming story would be perfect for the small town mystery show hes been fervently pitching to cable executives for years, Alex decides to cash in his savings from editing karaoke videos, hire a small crew, and make the pilot episode himself. Upon arrival however, this black hole mystery reveals itself to be much more disturbing and personal than expected, slowly engulfing Alex in an existential search that consumes not only his cherished pilot, but with it the very underpinnings of his sanity.
ELEANOR'S CATCH is a delightful short, directed by and starring Cleo Madison. A successful actress, Madison was one of many women who directed films at Universal, particularly in the mid 1910s. In this two-reeler, she stars as a young city girl dragged into a life of crime by a ne’er-do-well suitor. A terrific surprise ending gives Eleanor and Cleo an early claim to promoting women’s equality in the workforce.