1.
Steve Tesich
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Stojan Steve Tesich was a Serbian American screenwriter, playwright and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the movie Breaking Away. Steve Tesich was born as Stojan Tešić in Užice, in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia on September 29,1942 and his family settled in East Chicago, Indiana. Tesich graduated from Indiana University in 1965 with a BA in Russian and he went on to do graduate work at Columbia University, receiving an MA in Russian Literature in 1967. He also wrote his first plays while at Columbia University, after graduation, he worked as a Department of Welfare caseworker in Brooklyn, New York in 1968. He had been a rider in 1962 for the Phi Kappa Psi team in the Little 500 bicycle race. His teammate was Dave Blase, who rode 139 of 200 laps and was the rider crossing the finish line for his team. Dave Blase was the model for the character in Tesichs award-winning screenplay Breaking Away in 1979. His play Division Street opened on Broadway in 1980 starring John Lithgow, the 1980 production of Division Street played at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. The production opened on October 8,1980 and closed after 21 performances and his novel Karoo was published posthumously in 1998. Arthur Miller described the novel, Fascinating—a real satiric invention full of wise outrage. ”The novel was a New York Times Notable Book for 1998, the movie Breaking Away won the 1980 Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture-Musical/Comedy. The screenplay to the movie was published in book form as Breaking Away,1979. As a movie tie-in, a novelization of the screenplay was published in 1979 by Warner Books in New York written by Joseph Howard based on the screenplay by Steve Tesich. In 1973, Tesich won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright for the play Baba Goya, in 2005, the Serbian Ministry for diaspora established the annual Stojan—Steve Tešić Award, to be awarded to the writers of Serbian origin that write in other languages. L. Doctorow, German-language version entitled Abspann and a French-language version Karoo same as original, New York, Performing Arts Journal Publications,1981. Contents, Division Street -- Baba Goya -- Lake of the Woods -- Passing Game, Steve Tesich at the Internet Movie Database The American Place Theatre Presents Touching Bottom by Steve Tesich. Srpska-mreza. com A Few Moments with Steve Tesich by Dejan Stojanović
2.
Breaking Away
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Breaking Away is a 1979 American coming of age comedy-drama film produced and directed by Peter Yates and written by Steve Tesich. It follows a group of four teenagers in Bloomington, Indiana. The film stars Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern, Jackie Earle Haley, Barbara Barrie, Paul Dooley, Breaking Away won the 1979 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Tesich, and received nominations in four other categories, including Best Picture. It also won the 1979 Golden Globe Award for Best Film, the film is ranked eighth on the List of Americas 100 Most Inspiring Movies compiled by the American Film Institute in 2006. In June 2008, AFI announced its Ten top Ten—the best ten films in ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community, Breaking Away ranked as the eighth best film in the sports genre. Tesich was an alumnus of Indiana University Bloomington, the film was shot in and around Bloomington and on the universitys campus. Dave, Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are working-class friends living in the town of Bloomington. Now turning 19, they all graduated from school the year before and are not sure what to do with their lives. Dave is obsessed with competitive bicycle racing, and Italian racers in particular, however, his mother Evelyn is more understanding. Dave develops a crush on a university student named Katherine and masquerades as an Italian exchange student in order to romance her, One evening, he serenades Katerina outside her sorority house, with Cyril providing guitar accompaniment. When her boyfriend Rod finds out, he and some of his fraternity brothers beat Cyril up, though Cyril wants no trouble, Mike insists on tracking down Rod and starting a brawl. The university president reprimands the students for their arrogance toward the cutters and, over their objections, when a professional Italian cycling team comes to town for a race, Dave is thrilled to be competing with them. However, the Italians become irked when Dave is able to keep up with them and he subsequently confesses his deception to Katherine, who tearfully slaps him before storming off. Daves friends persuade him to them in forming a cycling team for the Little 500. Daves parents provide T-shirts with the name Cutters on them, ray privately tells his son how, when he was a young stonecutter, he was proud to help provide the material to construct the university, yet he never felt comfortable on campus. Later, Dave runs into Katherine, whos going to be leaving for a job in Chicago, they patch things up, and she wishes him luck in the race. Dave is so much better than the competitors in the Little 500 that while the college teams switch cyclists every few laps, he rides without a break. However, he is injured in a crash and has to stop, after some hesitation, Moocher, Cyril, and Mike take turns pedaling, but soon the Cutters lead vanishes
3.
Chariots of Fire
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Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British historical drama film. The film was conceived and produced by David Puttnam, written by Colin Welland, ben Cross and Ian Charleson starred as Abrahams and Liddell, alongside Nicholas Farrell, Nigel Havers, Ian Holm, Lindsay Anderson, John Gielgud, Cheryl Campbell, and Alice Krige in supporting roles. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture and it is ranked 19th in the British Film Institutes list of Top 100 British films. The film is notable for its memorable electronic theme tune by Vangelis. The films title was inspired by the line, Bring me my chariot of fire, from the William Blake poem adapted into the popular British hymn Jerusalem, the original phrase chariot of fire is from 2 Kings 2,11 and 6,17 in the Bible. In 1919, Harold Abrahams enters the University of Cambridge, where he experiences anti-Semitism from the staff and he becomes the first person to ever complete the Trinity Great Court Run – running around the college courtyard in the time it takes for the clock to strike 12. Abrahams achieves an undefeated string of victories in national running competitions. Although focused on his running, he falls in love with a leading Gilbert and Sullivan soprano, Eric Liddell, born in China of Scottish missionary parents, is in Scotland. His devout sister Jennie disapproves of Liddells plans to pursue competitive running, but Liddell sees running as a way of glorifying God before returning to China to work as a missionary. When they first race against each other, Liddell beats Abrahams, Abrahams takes it poorly, but Sam Mussabini, a professional trainer whom he had approached earlier, offers to take him on to improve his technique. This attracts criticism from the Cambridge college masters, who allege it is not gentlemanly for an amateur to play the tradesman by employing a professional coach, Abrahams dismisses this concern, interpreting it as cover for anti-Semitic and class-based prejudice. When Eric Liddell accidentally misses a prayer meeting because of his running, his sister Jennie upbraids him. But He also made me fast, and when I run, the two athletes, after years of training and racing, are accepted to represent Great Britain in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Also accepted are Abrahams Cambridge friends, Lord Andrew Lindsay, Aubrey Montague, while boarding the boat to Paris for the Olympics, Liddell learns the news that the heat for his 100-metre race will be on a Sunday. He refuses to run the race – despite strong pressure from the Prince of Wales and his religious convictions in the face of national athletic pride make headlines around the world. Abrahams is badly beaten by the heavily favoured United States runners in the 200 metre race and he knows his last chance for a medal will be the 100 metres. He competes in the race, and wins and his coach Sam Mussabini is overcome that the years of dedication and training have paid off with an Olympic gold medal. Now Abrahams can get on with his life and reunite with his girlfriend Sybil, before Liddells race, the American coach remarks dismissively to his runners that Liddell has little chance of doing well in his now far longer 400 metre race
4.
Costa-Gavras
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Costa-Gavras is a Greek-French film director and producer, who lives and works in France. He is known for films with political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller Z. Most of his movies have made in French, however, six were made in English, Missing, Hanna K. Betrayed, Music Box, Mad City. He produces most of his films himself, through his production company K. G. Productions, Costa-Gavras was born in Loutra Iraias, Arcadia. His family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese and his father had been a member of the Pro-Soviet branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned during the Greek Civil War. In 1956, he left his university studies to film at the French national film school. After film school, he apprenticed under Yves Allégret, and became an assistant director for Jean Giono, after several further positions as first assistant director, he directed his first feature film, Compartiment Tueurs, in 1965. His 1967 film Shock Troops was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival, the film is a fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. It had additional resonance because, at the time of its release, Z won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Costa-Gavras and co-writer Jorge Semprún won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Film Screenplay, LAveu follows the path of Artur London, a Czechoslovakian communist minister falsely arrested and tried for treason and espionage in the Slánský show trial in 1952. State of Siege takes place in Uruguay under a government in the early 1970s. Hormans father, played by Jack Lemmon, and wife, played by Sissy Spacek, search in vain to determine his fate. Nathaniel Davis, US ambassador to Chile from 1971–1973, a version of character had been portrayed in the movie, filed a US$150 million libel suit. 1372, against the studio and the director, which was eventually dismissed, the film won an Oscar for Best Screenplay Adaptation and the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival. Betrayed, roughly based upon the terrorist activities of American neo-Nazi and white supremacist Robert Mathews, in Music Box, a respected Hungarian immigrant is accused of having commanded an Anti-Semitic death squad during World War II. His daughter, a Chicago defense attorney played by Jessica Lange, the film is inspired by the arrest and trial of Ukrainian immigrant John Demjanjuk and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas realization that his father had been a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party. The film won the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival, La Petite Apocalypse was entered into the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. Amen. was based in part on the highly controversial 1963 play, ein christliches Trauerspiel, by Rolf Hochhuth
5.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory. After moving to India in 1951, she married Cyrus S. H. Jhabvala, the couple lived in New Delhi, and had three daughters. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels, Jhabvala wrote a dozen novels,23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar. Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus, Marcus was a lawyer who moved to Germany from Poland to escape conscription and Eleanoras father was cantor of Colognes largest synagogue. Her father was accused of communist links, arrested and released, the family was among the last group of refugees to flee the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain. Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon, an expert on Heinrich Heine and horror films, was fellow of The Queens College and Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. During World War II, Prawer lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and she became a British citizen in 1948. The following year, her father committed suicide after discovering that 40 members of his family had died during the Holocaust, Prawer attended Hendon County School and then Queen Mary College, where she received an MA in English literature in 1951. Jhabvala lived in India for 24 years from 1951 and her first novel, To Whom She Will, was published in 1955. It was followed by Esmond in India, The Householder and Get Ready for the Battle, the Householder, with a screenplay by Jhabvala, was filmed in 1963 by Merchant and Ivory. During her years in India she wrote scripts for the Merchant-Ivory duo for The Guru and she collaborated with Ivory for the screenplays for Bombay Talkie and ABC After-school Specials, William - The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. In 1975, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and that year, she moved to New York where she wrote The Place of Peace. Jhabvala remained ill at ease with India and all that it brought into her life and her early works in India dwell on the themes of romantic love and arranged marriages and are portraits of the social mores, idealism and chaos of the early decades of independent India. Jhabvala moved to New York in 1975 and lived there until her death in 2013, many of these works feature India as a setting where her characters go to in search of spiritual enlightenment only to emerge defrauded and exposed to the materialistic pursuits of the East. The New York Times Review of Books chose her Out of India as one of the best reads for that year. In 2005 she published My Nine Lives, Chapters of a Possible Past with illustrations by her husband, salman Rushdie described her as a rootless intellectual when he anthologised her in the Vintage Book of Indian Writing while John Updike described her an initiated outsider
6.
Heat and Dust (film)
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Heat and Dust is a 1983 romantic drama film with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala based upon her novel, Heat and Dust. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant and it stars Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor and Julie Christie. The plot of Heat and Dust follows two intertwined stories, the first is set in the 1920s and deals with an illicit affair between Olivia, the beautiful young wife of a British colonial official, and an Indian Nawab. The second, set in 1982, deals with Anne, Olivias great-niece, who travels to India hoping to find out about her great-aunts life, and while there also has an affair with an Indian man. Heat and Dust forms part of a cycle of film and television productions which emerged during the first half of the 1980s, in addition to Heat and Dust, this cycle included Gandhi, The Jewel in the Crown, The Far Pavilions and A Passage to India. In 1982, an Englishwoman named Ann begins an investigation into the fate of her great-aunt Olivia, whose letters and she interviews the elderly Harry Hamilton-Paul, who in his youth was Olivias close friend when they were both living in India. Anne’s search brings her to India, where the story of Olivias life is told in flashbacks. In 1923, during the British Raj, Olivia, recently married to Douglas Rivers, Douglas is an attentive husband and the couple seems to be very much in love. When he insists that Olivia spend the summer in Simla to avoid the extreme heat, however, the conventional narrow society of the English memsahibs bores her. Mrs Saunders, the wife of the local doctor, warns Olivia that all Indian men are potential rapists. Mrs Crawford, the Burra Memsahib, is kindly but equally conservative, the racist Doctor Saunders takes an instant dislike to Olivia. While the Anglo-Indian society seems to have little to offer Olivia, the British suspect him of being in league with a gang of bandits, allowing them to operate with impunity in exchange for a share of their booty. At the dinner, Olivia attracts the attention of the Nawab, Harry Hamilton-Paul enjoys a close intimacy with the Nawab and is a permanent guest at the palace. With his good humor and charm, Harry serves a sort of court jester and he is well liked even by the smoking and proud Begum Mussarat Jahan. In the midst of the summer heat, Harry falls ill. The Nawab easily seduces Olivia and they engage in an illicit affair, following in Olivia’s footsteps, Anne comes to Satipur to live in the same surroundings that framed Olivia’s story more than fifty years earlier. She stays as the guest of an Indian family, the head of the household, Inder Lal, is a polite civil servant who serves as her guide while she tries to get connected with the world that Olivia lived. Inder Lal is worried that their innocent relationship will be perceived as sexual
