Cotton Mary

In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.

Adrienne Mark (Jeanne Moreau) is the most acclaimed French novelist of her generation, whose best known work, Je M'Appelle France, was an international best-seller made into an award-winning French film (and a disastrous Americanized remake). Adrienne is living in New York City when she learns that the flat in Paris where she grew up (as Adrienne Markowsky) is up for sale. Looking for a key to her past, she buys the apartment and discovers a cache of letters written by her late mother. Adrienne's mother died in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, but while she's been led to believe that her mother was betrayed while working with the resistance, the letters suggest that the truth was far more troubling. Along the way, Adrienne is romantically pursued by a young fan, William O'Hara (Josh Hamilton), though he instead finds love with Virginia Kelly (Sean Young), an American film producer eager to work with the great writer.

Ismail Merchant's feature directorial debut addresses a subject close to his heart: the expressive Urdu language of Northern India, in danger of extinction as political trends and modernization obscure its contributions to Indian culture. Merchant 's treatment is wry and good humored , as his characters - an aging Urdu poet (Shashi Kapoor) and a worshipful young college lecturer - clash despite their shared passion for the beauty of words.

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

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes. The results run the gamut from Zhang Yimou's convention-thwarting joke to David Lynch's bizarre miniature epic.

In the time frame of a single day (from dawn to dust), the film records the wanderings of an Indian youth who sleeps on the beach, holds conversations with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, and scavenges for food with his monkey. By afternoon, a little ceremony is held by well-to-do Gandhi-ites, at which a speaker delivers a sermon on "godly love"; but when the boy comes too close, he is told to move on by a guard, one of a series of exclusions of this onlooker-outcast.