Allan King
A vintage interview captures the artist reflecting on Citizen Kane and expounding on directing, acting and writing and his desire to bestow a valuable legacy upon his profession. The scene is a hotel room in Paris. The year 1960. The star, Orson Welles. This is a pearl of cinematic memorabilia.
At Baycrest, an old-age home in Toronto, we follow a social worker as she talks to residents, particularly Max, Claire, Ida, and Rachel. The film opens on Claire's birthday, she's 89; Max, a tiny cheerful man, is her close friend. Rachel is lonesome, missing her son, complaining he rarely visits. Ida relies on memory for her solace. Helen has no memory and doesn't recognize her daughter; her moods swing. Murray keeps his cap on and likes women. Staff members bring medication, provide care, and offer small talk. Memory is fleeting: Claire re-experiences the death of a close companion several times, each time without remembering her previous grieving. Lives are circumscribed
This film is about the experience of dying. Five terminal patients in a Palliative Care Unit share the last days of their lives and deaths with a film crew.
A third of Estonia's people are Russian, most of them put there by Stalin. For Estonians it is like having a dragon's egg laid in your nest: you wait in fear for it to hatch. The Russians in Klooga, an abandoned Soviet Army base, are struggling to build a community with their new Estonian neighbours. Estonians would rather not give Russians citizenship, residence or jobs: they wish they would go home. But for Russians, Klooga is home. A group of American scholars exploring ethnic reconciliation and democratic practice, led by Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Vamik Volkan, has $50,000 to offer any group of Estonians and Russians who can work together for a common goal. Twenty Russians and Estonians in Klooga form a committee and seize the challenge to build a better life for their children.
Leonardo da Vinci finds it difficult to pursue his own dreams while serving as the Duke's court artist, but young Roberto takes risks to convince the Master not to give up on his dreams. In this moving story of friendship, the Renaissance genius invents a flying machine and helps Roberto reach new heights.
A young boy's search for his father takes him from 19th century Prussia to the wilds of the American West.
Termini Station is a Canadian made drama, released in 1989 and directed by Allan King. The film stars Colleen Dewhurst and Megan Follows as Molly and Micheline Dushane, a mother and daughter living in a small Northern Ontario town. Molly is an alcoholic, which creates tension between her and Micheline and inspires Micheline's fantasies of escaping her stifling small-town life. The cast also includes Gordon Clapp and Debra McGrath as Molly's son and daughter-in-law. Termini Station was the only film besides the Anne of Green Gables movies in which Follows and Dewhurst worked together. The film was nominated for six awards at the 11th Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress nods for both Dewhurst and Follows. Filmed on location in Kirkland Lake Ontario.
Director Allan King's 1981 drama, based on true events, stars Ellen Burstyn as a strong-willed woman struggling to survive with her family in the Canadian wilderness.
Carol Bolt's adaptation of her stage play locks its audience in a claustrophobic bachelor flat for a night of black comedy, lust and terror. Jilted on her birthday by her boyfriend, Daisy picks up night club singer Rafe and takes him home. Is he a lover, liar or psychotic serial killer?
The coming-of-age of adolescent Brian O'Connal in small town Depression-era Saskatchewan is told. The son of the local pharmacist Gerald O'Connal, Brian is in many ways a typical boy, who dislikes school if only because of his run-ins with the nervous schoolteacher, Miss MacDonald, and who tries to catch gophers with his friends, Artie and Forbsie. His best friend and protector is slightly older Jonathan Ben, better known as The Young Ben (as his father is referred to as The Ben), who is highly regarded as a problem by those in town who see themselves as the moral authority if only because of The Young Ben's association to The Ben, the town still keeper and drunk. Brian's life takes a turn when his parents have to leave town temporarily, while Brian stays on his Uncle Sean's farm. That stint leads to a series of events which make Brian see life around him through slightly older and wiser eyes.
Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.
In this classic exploration of marriage in conflict, Billy and Antoinette Edwards, their son Bogart and dog, Merton spontaneously live out their lives and laughter, tears, wit, tenderness, fierce anger, patience, pain and sorrow ensue. Hoping to discover the heart of the trouble in their marriage in order to save it, BIlly and Antoniette offer up their day to day lives with antonishing bravery. Audiences project themselves into the couple, judging, loving or hating either or both. Many thought the marriage was doomed but it continued for another decade, producing a daughter, Amadea. All have had successful, normal lives.
This ground-breaking cinema véritè classic documents five weeks in the lives of twelve children in a home for emotionally disturbed children. It is the first in the form that King later described as actuality drama. All the action is spontaneous and undirected, with neither interviews nor narration. The theme is the outrage of life. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out. What is so awful about us that we cant be seen? They wanted to be filmed so that they could be seen.
Focusing on the pressures people feel moving from the security and nurture of village life to the isolate chaos of big city life, Joshua: A Nigerian Portrait tells the story of Joshua Sobitan, a rent-collector living in Lagos.
