1.
Cannes
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Cannes is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune of France located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, the city is known for its association with the rich and famous, its luxury hotels and restaurants, and for several conferences. On 3 November 2011 it also played host to the G20 organisation of industrialised nations, by the 2nd century BC, the Ligurian Oxybii established a settlement here known as Aegitna. Historians are unsure what the name means, the area was a fishing village used as a port of call between the Lérins Islands. In 69 AD, it became the scene of violent conflict between the troops of Otho and Vitellius, in the 10th century, the town was known as Canua. The name may derive from canna, a reed, Canua was probably the site of a small Ligurian port, and later a Roman outpost on Le Suquet hill, suggested by Roman tombs discovered here. Le Suquet housed an 11th-century tower which overlooked swamps where the city now stands, most of the ancient activity, especially protection, was on the Lérins Islands and the history of Cannes is closely tied to the history of the islands. An attack by the Saracens in 891, who remained until the end of the 10th century, the insecurity of the Lérins islands forced the monks to settle on the mainland, at the Suquet. Construction of a castle in 1035 fortified the city by then known as Cannes, one took a century to build. Around 1530, Cannes detached from the monks who had controlled the city for hundreds of years, during the 18th century, both the Spanish and British tried to gain control of the Lérins Islands but were chased away by the French. The islands were controlled by many, such as Jean-Honoré Alziary. They had many different purposes, at the end of the 19th century, henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux bought land at the Croix des Gardes and constructed the villa Eleonore-Louise. His work to improve living conditions attracted the English aristocracy, who built winter residences. At the end of the 19th century, several railways were completed, in Cannes, projects such as the Boulevard Carnot and the rue dAntibes were carried out. After the closure of the Casino des Fleurs, an establishment was built for the rich winter clientele. This casino was demolished and replaced by the new Palace in 1979, in the 20th century, new luxury hotels such as the Carlton, Majestic, Martinez, and JW Marriott Cannes were built. The city was modernised with a centre, a post office. There were fewer British and German tourists after the First World War, winter tourism gave way to summer tourism and the summer casino at the Palm Beach was constructed
2.
Cannes Film Festival
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Founded in 1946, the invitation-only festival is held annually at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. On 1 July 2014, co-founder and former head of French pay-TV operator Canal+ Pierre Lescure took over as President of the festival, the Board of Directors also appointed Gilles Jacob as Honorary President of the festival. The 2016 Cannes Film Festival took place between 11 and 22 May 2016, australian film director George Miller was the President of the Jury. I, Daniel Blake, directed by British director Ken Loach, in 2017, The Festival de Cannes will celebrate its 70th anniversary edition from May 17 to 28. In 1947, the festival was held as the Festival du film de Cannes, at that time the principle of equality was introduced, with a jury made up of only one representative per country. The festival is now held at the Palais des Festivals, expressly constructed for the occasion, although for its 1949 inaugural the roof was unfinished, the festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 on account of budgetary problems. Although its origins may be attributed in part to the French desire to compete with Autumns Venice Film Festival, in 1955, the Palme dOr was created, replacing the Grand Prix du Festival which had been given until that year. In 1957, Dolores del Rio was the first female member of the jury as a Sélection officielle – Member, in 1959, the Marché du Film was founded, giving the festival a commercial character and facilitating exchanges between sellers and buyers in the film industry. Today it has become the first international platform for film commerce, in 1962, the International Critics Week was born, created by the French Union of Film Critics as the first parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival. Its goal was to showcase first and second works by directors all over the world. In 1965, an hommage was paid to Jean Cocteau after his death, the next year, Olivia de Havilland was named the first female president of the festival. The 1968 festival was halted on 19 May, some directors, such as Carlos Saura and Miloš Forman, had withdrawn their films from the competition. The filmmakers achieved the reinstatement of the President, and they founded the Film Directors Society that same year, during the 1970s, important changes occurred in the Festival. In 1972, Robert Favre Le Bret was named the new President and he immediately introduced an important change in the selection of the participating films. Until that date, the different countries chose which films would represent them in the festival, Bessy created one committee to select French films, and another for foreign films. In 1978, Gilles Jacob assumed the President position, introducing the Caméra dOr award, in 1983, a new, much bigger Palais des Festivals et des Congrès was built to host the Festival. It was nicknamed The Bunker and provoked many reactions against it, in 1984, Pierre Viot replaced Robert Favre Le Bret as President of the Festival. It was not until 1995 that Gilles Jacob created the last section of the Official Selection and its aim was to support the creation of works of cinema in the world and to contribute to the entry of the new scenario writers in the circle of the celebrities
3.
Roman Polanski
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Rajmund Roman Thierry Polański is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer, and actor. Born in Paris, his Polish-Jewish parents moved the back to Poland in 1937. Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany a few later, in 1939. Polanskis first feature-length film, Knife in the Water, made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two BAFTAs, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme dOr of the Cannes Film Festival in France, in the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion. In 1968 he moved to the United States and cemented his status by directing the horror film Rosemarys Baby. A turning point in his life took place in 1969, when his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, following her death, Polanski returned to Europe and eventually continued directing. He made Macbeth in England and back in Hollywood, Chinatown, in 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with the rape of a 13-year-old model during a photo session. He subsequently pled guilty to the charge of statutory rape and he was released from prison after serving 42 days, and as part of an apparent plea bargain, was to be put on probation. When he learned that the judge changed his mind and planned to reject the plea bargain, in Europe, Polanski continued to make films, including Tess, starring aspiring actress, Nastassja Kinski. It won Frances César Awards for Best Picture and Best Director and he later produced and directed The Pianist, starring Adrien Brody, in a World War II true story drama about a Jewish-Polish musician. The film won three Academy Awards including Best Director, along with numerous international awards and he also directed Oliver Twist, a story which parallels his own life as a young boy attempting to triumph over adversity. Polanski was born in Paris, the son of Bula and Ryszard Polański, a painter and manufacturer of sculptures and his mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette managed to survive Auschwitz, where her mother died, Polańskis father was Jewish and originally from Poland, Polańskis mother, born in Russia, had been raised Roman Catholic and was of half-Jewish ancestry. Polański, influenced by his education in the Peoples Republic of Poland, said Im an atheist in an interview about his film, Rosemarys Baby. The Polański family moved back to the Polish city of Kraków in 1936, Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces, and Nazi racial purity laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution, forcing them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the citys Jews. Around the age of six, he attended school for only a few weeks, until all the Jewish children were abruptly expelled. That initiative was followed by requiring all Jewish children over the age of twelve to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David imprinted for visual identification
4.
Woody Allen
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Heywood Woody Allen is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. He worked as a writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, as a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians and he is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup, some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In 2007 he said Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, critic Roger Ebert described Allen as a treasure of the cinema. Allen won four Academy Awards, three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director and he also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays, in 2011, PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen, A Documentary on the American Masters TV series. Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York and he and his sister, Letty, were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her familys delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg and his family was Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His childhood was not particularly happy, his parents did not get along, Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School, at that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street. Unlike his comic persona, he was interested in baseball than school. He impressed students with his talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money, he wrote jokes for agent David O. Alber, at the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and later began to call himself Woody Allen. According to Allen, his first published joke read, Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O. P. S and he was then earning more than both parents combined
5.
David Lynch
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David Keith Lynch is an American director, screenwriter, producer, painter, musician, and photographer. He has been described by The Guardian as the most important director of this era, allMovie called him the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking, while the success of his films has led to him being labelled the first popular Surrealist. He moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, meanwhile, Lynch embraced the Internet as a medium, producing several web-based shows, such as the animated DumbLand and the surreal sitcom Rabbits. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director and a nomination for best screenplay. He has won Frances César Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival, the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, the countrys top civilian honor, as a Chevalier in 2002 and then an Officier in 2007. Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive are widely considered by critics to be among the greatest films of their respective decades, Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20,1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch, was a research scientist working for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Lynchs maternal great-grandparents were Finnish, and had immigrated to the United States from Finland in the 19th century. The Lynch family often moved around according to where the USDA assigned Donald and it was here that Lynchs sister Martha was born. The family then moved to Durham, North Carolina, then Boise, Idaho, Lynch found this transitory early life relatively easy to adjust to, noting that he found it fairly easy to meet new friends whenever he started attending a new school. Commenting on much of his life, Lynch has remarked, Alongside his schooling, Lynch joined the Boy Scouts, although he would later note that he only became so I could quit. He rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout and it was through being an Eagle Scout that he was present with other Boy Scouts outside of the White House at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, which took place on Lynchs birthday in 1961. They had some hopes that in Europe they could train with the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school. Upon reaching Salzburg, however, they found that he was not available and, Back in the United States, Lynch returned to Virginia, but since his parents had moved to Walnut Creek, California, he stayed with his friend Toby Keeler for a while. He decided to move to the city of Philadelphia and enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, after advice from Jack Fisk and it was here that he began a relationship with a fellow student, Peggy Reavey, and they were married in 1967. The following year, Peggy gave birth to their daughter Jennifer, later describing this situation, Peggy stated that definitely was a reluctant father, but a very loving one. Hey, I was pregnant when we got married, later describing living there, Lynch stated that We lived cheap, but the city was full of fear. A kid was shot to death down the street and we were robbed twice, had windows shot out and a car stolen. The house was first broken into three days after we moved in
6.
Sharon Stone
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Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She received further acclaim and Golden Globe Award nominations for her roles in the 1998 drama The Mighty, in 2004, Stone won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performance in The Practice. In 2005, she was named Officer of the Order of Arts, Sharon Yvonne Stone was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania, to Dorothy Marie, an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and factory worker. She has a sister, Kelly, and two brothers, Michael and Patrick Stone, Stone was considered academically gifted as a child and entered the second grade when she was five years old. She graduated from Saegertown High School in Saegertown, Pennsylvania in 1975, while attending Edinboro University, Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County, Pennsylvania and was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania. One of the pageant judges told her to school and move to New York City to become a fashion model. In 1977, Stone left Meadville, moving in with an aunt in New Jersey and she was signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York City. Stone later moved to Europe and while living there, she decided to quit modeling, so I packed my bags, moved back to New York, and stood in line to be an extra in a Woody Allen movie, she later recalled. Stone was cast for a role in Allens Stardust Memories. French director Claude Lelouch cast her in Les Uns et les Autres and she was on screen for two minutes and did not appear in the credits. In 1983, she appeared in the short-lived sports-themed television series Bay City Blues, playing Cathy St. Marie and her next film role was in Irreconcilable Differences, starring Ryan ONeal, Shelley Long, and a young Drew Barrymore. Stone played a starlet who breaks up the marriage of a successful director, in 1984, she appeared in Echoes of the Mind, a two-part episode of Magnum, P. I. playing identical twins, one a love interest of Tom Sellecks character. Through the remainder of the 1980s, she had roles in films as King Solomons Mines and Allan Quatermain. In 1988, she played Janice Henry for the filming of the miniseries War and her appearance in Dutch film director Paul Verhoevens sci-fi action film Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Stones career a boost. To coincide with the release, she posed nude for Playboy. In 1999, she was rated among the 25 sexiest stars of the century by Playboy, in another Verhoeven film was the role that made her a star, playing Catherine Tramell, a brilliant, bisexual, alleged serial killer, in Basic Instinct. Several actresses at the time turned down the role, mostly because of the nudity required, in the films most notorious scene, Tramell is being questioned by the police, and she crosses and uncrosses her legs, exposing her vulva, which is not covered by underwear. Later, when I saw it in the screening I was shocked, I think seeing it in a room full of strangers was so disrespectful and so shocking, so I went into the booth and slapped him and left
7.
Martin Scorsese
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Martin Charles Scorsese is an American director, producer, screenwriter, and film historian, whose career spans more than 50 years. Scorseses body of work addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is regarded as one of the most significant. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, an organization dedicated to film preservation. Their third film together, The Departed, won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director in addition to the winning the award for Best Picture. Their collaborations have resulted in numerous Academy Award nominations for both as well as winning several other prestigious awards. His work in television includes the episode of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the crime drama The Departed, with eight Best Director nominations, he is the most nominated living director and is tied with Billy Wilder for the second most nominations overall. Scorsese was born in Queens, New York and his family moved to Little Italy, Manhattan before he started school. His father, Charles Scorsese, and mother, Catherine Scorsese and his father was a clothes presser and an actor, and his mother was a seamstress and an actress. His fathers parents emigrated from Polizzi Generosa, in the province of Palermo, Sicily, Scorsese was raised in a devoutly Catholic environment. As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Powell, Scorsese was one of only two people who regularly rented that reel. The other was future Night Of The Living Dead director George A. Romero, Scorsese has cited Sabu and Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth. He has also spoken of the influence of the 1947 Powell and Pressburger film Black Narcissus, whose innovative techniques later impacted his filmmaking. Enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep, Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He acknowledges owing a debt to the French New Wave and has stated that the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since. He has also cited filmmakers including Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni and he went on to earn his M. F. A. from NYUs School of the Arts in 1966, a year after the school was founded. Scorsese attended New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts making the short films Whats a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This. and Its Not Just You, Murray
8.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active film-maker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy, Close-Up, Taste of Cherry – which was awarded the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival that year – and The Wind Will Carry Us. In his later works, Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, he filmed for the first time outside Iran, in Italy and Japan, Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator and these filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues. He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, Kiarostamis films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death and he majored in painting and graphic design, and supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman. As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designing posters, between 1962 and 1966, he shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television. In the late 1960s, he began creating credit titles for films and its debut production and Kiarostamis first film was the twelve-minute The Bread and Alley, a neo-realistic short film about a schoolboys confrontation with an aggressive dog. The department became one of Irans most noted film studios, producing not only Kiarostamis films, but acclaimed Persian films such as The Runner and Bashu, in the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an individualistic style of film making. When discussing his first film, he stated, Bread and Alley was my first experience in cinema, I had to work with a very young child, a dog, and an unprofessional crew except for the cinematographer, who was nagging and complaining all the time. Well, the cinematographer, in a sense, was right because I did not follow the conventions of film making that he had become accustomed to, following The Experience, Kiarostami released The Traveler in 1974. The Traveler tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a troubled and troublesome boy from a small Iranian city. Intent on attending a match in far-off Tehran, he scams his friends and neighbors to raise money. In addressing the boys determination to reach his goal, alongside his indifference to the effects of his actions, the film examined human behavior. It furthered Kiarostamis reputation for realism, diegetic simplicity, and stylistic complexity, in 1975, Kiarostami directed two short films So Can I and Two Solutions for One Problem. In early 1976, he released Colors, followed by the fifty-four-minute film A Wedding Suit, Kiarostamis first feature film was the 112-minute Report. It revolved around the life of a tax collector accused of accepting bribes, in 1979, he produced and directed First Case, Second Case
9.
Michael Moore
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Michael Francis Moore is an American documentary filmmaker and author. His film Bowling for Columbine, which examines the causes of the Columbine High School massacre, both Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, which examines health care in the United States, are among the top ten highest-grossing documentaries. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising and he has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation, a satirical newsmagazine television series, and The Awful Truth, a satirical show. In 2005, Time magazine named Moore one of the worlds 100 most influential people. Michael Moore was born in Flint, Michigan, and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Helen Veronica, a secretary, and Francis Richard Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories and his uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike. Moore was brought up Catholic, and has Irish, Scottish and he attended parochial St. Johns Elementary School for primary school and later attended St. Pauls Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a year. He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in drama and debate, graduating in 1972. As a member of the Boy Scouts of America, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, at the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board. At the time he was the youngest person elected to office in the U. S. as the age to hold public office had just been lowered to 18. Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan–Flint following his first year, at 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a political magazine. Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua, Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit and you would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years. Moore believes that Mother Jones fired him because of the refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper on the magazines cover, Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me. Since then Moore has become known as a critic of the view of globalization. Smith, former CEO and President of General Motors, harlan Jacobson, editor of Film Comment magazine, said that Moore muddled the chronology in Roger & Me to make it seem that events that took place before G. M. ’s layoffs were a consequence of them
10.
Claude Lelouch
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Claude Barruck Joseph Lelouch is a French film director, writer, cinematographer, actor and producer. Lelouch was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, the son of Charlotte and his father was born to an Algerian Jewish family and his mother was a convert to Judaism. His father gave him a camera to him a fresh start after his failure in the baccalaureat. He started his career with reportage – one of the first to film life in the Soviet Union. He also filmed sporting events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and his first full-length film as director, Le Propre de lhomme, was decried by the critics – Claude Lelouch, remember this name well, because you will not hear it again – Cahiers du cinéma said. La femme spectacle, following prostitutes, women shopping, going for nose-jobs, was censored for its misogynist tendency, a Man and a Woman changed his fortunes and was met with favour even by the Cahiers group. The 1981 musical epic Les Uns et les Autres is widely considered as his masterpiece and his 1976 film, Cétait un rendez-vous, purportedly features a Ferrari 275 GTB being driven at extreme speed through the streets of Paris at dawn. The entire short is shot from the point of view of the car, legend has it that Lelouch was arrested after it was first shown publicly. In a 2006 interview, Lelouch stated that he drove his own Mercedes-Benz 450SEL6.9 in the film and he has collaborated more than two dozen times with composer Francis Lai. They scored a hit with the piece chabadabada for the film A Man and a Woman sung by Nicole Croisille and Pierre Barouh. He is the father of 7 children, in 1993 he was the President of the Jury at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. 2016, Commander in the Order of the Crown, lelouchs A Man and a Woman won the Palme dOr at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, as well as two Oscars including Best Foreign Language Film. His 1967 film, Vivre pour vivre, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, in 1971, he won the David di Donatello for Best Foreign Directing for Le Voyou. Media related to Claude Lelouch at Wikimedia Commons Claude Lelouch at the Internet Movie Database
11.
The Pianist (2002 film)
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The Pianist is a 2002 historical drama film co-produced and directed by Roman Polanski, scripted by Ronald Harwood, and starring Adrien Brody. It is based on the autobiographical book The Pianist, a World War II memoir by the Polish-Jewish pianist, the film was a co-production between France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland. The Pianist met with significant critical praise and received multiple awards and it was awarded the Palme dOr at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film and BAFTA Award for Best Direction in 2003 and seven French Césars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Brody. In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during Nazi Germanys invasion of Poland. Hoping for a victory, Szpilman rejoices with his family at home when learning that Britain. But the promised aid does not come, fighting lasts for just over a month, with both the German and Soviet armies invading Poland at the same time on different fronts. Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government, Jews are soon prevented from working or owning businesses, and are also made to wear blue Star of David armbands. By November 1940, Szpilman and his family are forced from their home into the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto, people starve, the guards are brutal, and starving children are abandoned in the streets. On one occasion, the Szpilmans witness the SS kill a family in an apartment across the street during a round-up. On 16 August 1942, Szpilman and his family are transported to Treblinka extermination camp as part of Operation Reinhard, but a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police recognises Władysław at the Umschlagplatz and separates him from his family. He becomes a slave labourer and learns of a coming Jewish revolt and he helps the resistance by smuggling weapons into the ghetto, on one occasion narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. Szpilman eventually manages to escape and goes into hiding with help from a friend, Andrzej Bogucki. In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his window as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, after a neighbor discovers Szpilman in the flat, he is forced to flee to a second hiding place. The new room has a piano in it but he is compelled to keep quiet while beginning to suffer from jaundice, in August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Armia Krajowa attacks a German building across the street from Szpilmans hideout. Tank shells hit the apartment forcing him to flee, over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed. Szpilman is left alone to search desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins and he eventually makes his way to a house where he finds a can of pickles. While trying to open it he is discovered by Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld who learns that Szpilman is a pianist and he asks Szpilman to play on a grand piano in the house
12.
Michelle Yeoh
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Tan Sri Dato Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng is a Chinese Malaysian actress, best known for performing her own stunts in the Hong Kong action films that brought her to fame in the early 1990s. Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, she was chosen by People as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1997, in 2008, the film critic website Rotten Tomatoes ranked her the greatest action heroine of all time. In 2009, she was listed by People – as the only Asian actress – as one of the 35 All-Time Screen Beauties and she is credited as Michelle Khan in some of her earlier films. This alias was chosen by the D&B studio who thought it might be more marketable to international, Yeoh later preferred using her real name. Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, to an ethnic Chinese family of mixed Cantonese and her parents are Janet Yeoh and Yeoh Kian Teik, a lawyer and MCA politician. She was keen on dance from an age, beginning ballet at the age of four. At the age of 15, she moved with her parents to the United Kingdom, Yeoh later studied at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, majoring in ballet. However, an injury prevented her from becoming a professional ballet dancer. She later received a B. A. degree in Creative Arts with a minor in Drama, in 1983, at the age of 20, Yeoh won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant. She represented Malaysia at the Queen of the Pacific 1983 beauty pageant which was held in Australia and she was also Malaysias representative at the Miss World 1983 pageant in London. From there, she appeared in a commercial with Jackie Chan which caught the attention of a fledgling Hong Kong film production company. Yeoh started her career acting in action and martial arts films such as Yes, Madam in 1985. The D&B Group in Hong Kong was run by Dickson Poon, Yeoh married Poon in 1987 and retired from acting. After the couple divorced in 1992, Yeoh returned to acting, yeohs performance in Police Story 3, Super Cop marked her comeback. She acted in The Heroic Trio in 1993, and the Yuen Woo-ping films Tai Chi Master, Yeoh learned English and Malay before Cantonese. She learned the Mandarin lines for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phonetically and she played Wai Lin in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Brosnan was impressed, describing her as an actress who was serious. He referred to her as a female James Bond in reference to her combat abilities and she wanted again to perform her own stunts but was prevented because director Roger Spottiswoode considered it too dangerous
