Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Rossiya Theatre
The Rossiya Theatre known as the Pushkinsky Cinema is monument of architecture and the largest theatre in Moscow operated by Stage Entertainment. It is located in Pushkinskaya Square. Since the early 1960s, it was the largest cinema hall in Europe and the main cinema hall of the USSR; the Rossiya Cinema became the largest of its kind in Europe. The cinema has always hosted major events, such as the Moscow International Film Festival. In 1997, The Rossiya was leased to the large film distributor Karo Film, which renovated the theatre and changed its name to Pushkinsky; the Pushkinsky was leased in 2012 to Stage Entertainment Russia for a period of five years. 2012-2014: The Little Mermaid 2014: Chicago 2014-2015: Beauty and the Beast 2015-2016: Singin' in the Rain 2016-2017: Cinderella Pushkinskaya Square Tverskaya Street MDM Theater Rossiya Theatre - Stage Entertainment Russia Stage Entertainment Theatres Russia «Karo Film Pushkinsky» Cinema The Rossiya Theatre has opened for musicals
Brazilians
Brazilians are citizens of Brazil. A Brazilian can be a person born abroad to a Brazilian parent or legal guardian as well as a persons who acquired Brazilian citizenship. Brazil is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many different ethnic origins; as a result, majority of Brazilians do not equate their nationality with their ethnicity embracing and espousing both simultaneously. In the period after the colonization of the Brazilian territory by Portugal, during much of the XVI century, the word "Brazilian" was given to the Portuguese merchants of Brazilwood, designating the name of such profession, since the inhabitants of the land were, in most of them, indigenous or Portuguese born in Portugal, or in the territory now called Brazil. However, long before the independence of Brazil, in 1822, both in Brazil and in Portugal, it was common to attribute the Brazilian gentile to a person of clear Portuguese descent, resident or whose family resided in the State of Brazil, belonging to the Portuguese Empire.
During the lifetime of the United Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves, there was confusion about the nomenclature. According to the Constitution of Brazil, a Brazilian citizen is: Anyone born in Brazil if to foreign born parents. However, if the foreign parents were at the service of a foreign State, the child is not Brazilian. A person born abroad to a Brazilian father or a Brazilian mother, not registered but who, after turning 18 years old, went to live in Brazil. According to the Constitution, all people who hold Brazilian citizenship are equal, regardless of race, gender or religion. A foreigner can apply for Brazilian citizenship after living for four uninterrupted years in Brazil and being able to speak Portuguese. A native person from an official Portuguese language country can request the Brazilian nationality after only 1 uninterrupted year living in Brazil. A foreign born person who holds Brazilian citizenship has the same rights and duties of the Brazilian citizen by birth, but cannot occupy some special public positions such as the Presidency of the Republic, Vice-presidency of the Republic, Minister of Defense, Presidency of the Senate, Presidency of the House of Representatives, Officer of the Armed Forces and Diplomat.
Brazilians are descendants of Portuguese settlers, post-colonial immigrant groups, Enslaved Africans and Brazil's indigenous peoples. Along with other immigrants of who arrived in Brazil, from the 1820s well into the 1970s, most of the settlers were Portuguese, Spaniards and Germans, with large numbers of Japanese, Gypsies, Poles and Levantine Arabs; the three principal groups were European colonizers and African labor. Brazil was inhabited by an estimated 2.4 million Amerindians before the first settlers arrived in the 16th century. They had been living there since the Pleistocene and still exist in many different tribes and ethnicities, amounting to the hundreds, giving them varying features and shades. There are different estimates for the Indigenous population around 1498, when the cohort commanded by Duarte Pacheco Pereira first set foot in Brazilian territory, followed by Pedro Álvares Cabral and Amerigo Vespucci in 1500 and 1502, with figures revolving between 2.4 million and 3.1 million.
What is more accurate is that about three quarters of them died from contracted diseases brought by colonizers and conflicts, while the remaining were pushed to the Amazon Basin, sometimes migrating beyond the borders with Hispanic provinces. It is important to mention that a strong assimilation by miscegenation with local populations occurred, where Natives living under Jesuit protection and having a monastic life decided to leave for the life in towns; the European diseases spread along the indigenous trade routes, whole tribes were annihilated without coming in direct contact with Europeans. Today, 517,000 Indigenous people live in reservations and 160 thousand speak assorted Native languages, whereas millions of Brazilians have at least some degree of Amerindian ancestry due to the mentioned interracial encounters; the country was discovered by Portugal in 1500 and received about 724,000 Portuguese colonizers males, who settled there until the end of Colonial Brazil. But other sources claim that the given numbers of total entrances were surpassed.
The Jesuits asked the Portuguese Crown to ship orphaned women under royal wardship for marriage with the settlers. Daughters of noblemen who died overseas administrating captaincies in the colonies or in battle for the king would marry settlers of higher rank. Bahia's port in the Northeast received one of the first groups of orphans in 1551. Portugal remained the only significant, but not an exclusive source of European immigration to Brazil until the early 19th century; these other people came from different nationalities - b
Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Russian filmmaker and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union. Three times Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation. Full Cavalier of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" Nikita Mikhalkov won the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival and nominated for the Academy Award in the category "Best Foreign Language Film" for the film "Close to Eden". Winner of the Academy Award in the category "Best Foreign Language Film" and the Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival for the film "Burnt by the Sun". Mikhalkov received the "Special Lion" of the Venice Film Festival for his contribution to the cinematography and nominated for the Academy Award in the category "Best Foreign Language Film" for the film "12". Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the artistic Mikhalkov family, his great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a princess of the House of Golitsyn. Nikita's father, Sergei Mikhalkov, was best known as writer of children's literature, although he wrote lyrics to his country's national anthem on three different occasions spanning nearly 60 years – two different sets of lyrics used for the Soviet national anthem, the current lyrics of the Russian national anthem.
Mikhalkov's mother, poet Natalia Konchalovskaya, was the daughter of the avant-garde artist Pyotr Konchalovsky and granddaughter of another outstanding painter, Vasily Surikov. Nikita's older brother is the filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky known for his collaboration with Andrei Tarkovsky and his own Hollywood action films, such as Runaway Train and Tango & Cash. Mikhalkov studied acting at the children's studio of the Moscow Art Theatre and at the Shchukin School of the Vakhtangov Theatre. While still a student, he appeared in Georgi Daneliya's film I Step Through Moscow and his brother Andrei Konchalovsky's film Home of the Gentry, he was soon on his way to becoming a star of the Soviet cinema. While continuing to pursue his acting career, he entered VGIK, the state film school in Moscow, where he studied directing under film maker Mikhail Romm, teacher to his brother and Andrei Tarkovsky, he directed his first short film in 1968, I'm Coming Home, another for his graduation, A Quiet Day at the End of the War in 1970.
Mikhalkov had appeared in more than 20 films, including his brother's Uncle Vanya, before he co-wrote and starred in his first feature, At Home Among Strangers in 1974, an Ostern set just after the 1920s civil war in Russia. Mikhalkov established an international reputation with A Slave of Love. Set in 1917, it followed the efforts of a film crew to make a silent melodrama in a resort town while the Revolution rages around them; the film, based upon the last days of Vera Kholodnaya, was acclaimed upon its release in the U. S. Mikhalkov's next film, An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano was adapted by Mikhalkov from Chekhov's early play and won the first prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In 1978, while starring in his brother's epic film Siberiade, Mikhalkov made Five Evenings, a love story about a couple separated by World War II, who meet again after eighteen years. Mikhalkov's next film, A Few Days from the Life of I. I. Oblomov, with Oleg Tabakov in the title role, is based on Ivan Goncharov's classic novel about a lazy young nobleman who refuses to leave his bed.
Family Relations is a comedy about a provincial woman in Moscow dealing with the tangled relationships of her relatives. Without Witness tracks a long night's conversation between a woman and her ex-husband when they are accidentally locked in a room; the film won the Prix FIPRESCI at the 13th Moscow International Film Festival. In the early 1980s, Mikhalkov resumed his acting career, appearing in Eldar Ryazanov's immensely popular Station for Two and A Cruel Romance. At that period, he played Henry Baskerville in the Soviet screen version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, he starred in many of his own films, including At Home Among Strangers, A Slave of Love, An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano. Incorporating several short stories by Chekhov, Dark Eyes stars Marcello Mastroianni as an old man who tells a story of a romance he had when he was younger, a woman he has never been able to forget; the film was praised, Mastroianni received the Best Actor Prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for his performance.
Mikhalkov's next film, set in the little-known world of the Mongols, received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Mikhalkov's Anna: 6–18 documents his daughter Anna as she grows from childhood to maturity. Mikhalkov's most famous production to date, Burnt by the Sun, was steeped in the paranoid atmosphere of Joseph Stalin's Great Terror; the film received the Grand Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, among many other honours. To date, Burnt by the Sun remains the highest-grossing film to come out of the former Soviet Union. In 1996, he was the head of the jury at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. Mikhalkov used the critical and financial triumph of Burnt by the Sun to raise $25 million for his most epic venture to date, The Barber of Siberia; the film, screened out of competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, was designed as a patriotic extravaganza for domestic consumption.
It featured Julia Ormond and Oleg Menshikov, who appears in Mikhalkov's films, in the leading
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel is an American actor and producer. He has starred in films such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Duellists, Thelma & Louise, Reservoir Dogs, The Piano, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk till Dawn, Cop Land, Red Dragon, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs. Keitel has been nominated for a number of accolades in his career, including Academy and Golden Globe awards, has won an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role in The Piano. From 1995 to 2017, he was a co-president of the Actors Studio, along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn. Keitel was born in New York, on May 13, 1939, the son of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants, his parents owned and ran a luncheonette, his father worked as a hat maker. He grew up in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, with his sister and brother, Jerry, he attended Abraham Lincoln High School. He decided to join the Marines at the age of 16, a decision that took him to Lebanon during Operation Blue Bat.
After his return, he worked as a court reporter for several years before beginning his acting career. Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J. R.", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door. Since Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets, which proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. Keitel re-teamed with Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, in which he had a villainous supporting role, appeared with Robert De Niro again in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp. In 1977 and 1978, Keitel starred in the directorial debuts of Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, James Toback. Cast as Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Keitel was involved with the first week of principal photography in the Philippines.
Coppola was not happy with Keitel's take on Willard, stating that the actor "found it difficult to play him a passive onlooker". After viewing the first week's footage, Coppola replaced Keitel with a casting session favorite, Martin Sheen. Keitel drifted into obscurity through most of the 1980s, he continued to do work on both stage and screen, but in the stereotypical role of a thug. Keitel played a corrupt police officer in the 1983 thriller Copkiller, before taking supporting roles in the romantic drama Falling in Love, starring Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, Brian De Palma's mobster comedy Wise Guys, starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo. Keitel played Judas in Martin Scorsese's controversial The Last Temptation of Christ and co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes, directed by Jack Nicholson. Ridley Scott cast Keitel as the sympathetic policeman in Thelma & Louise in 1991; the following year, Keitel played another mobster in the Whoopi Goldberg-starring comedy Sister Act.
Keitel starred in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in 1992, where his performance as "Mr. White" took his career to a different level. Since Keitel has chosen his roles with care, seeking to change his image and show a broader acting range. One of those roles was the title character in Bad Lieutenant, about a self-loathing, drug-addicted police lieutenant trying to redeem himself, he co-starred in the movie The Piano in 1993, played an efficient cleanup expert, Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Keitel starred as a police detective in Spike Lee's Clockers. In 1996, Keitel had a major role in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's film From Dusk till Dawn, in 1997, he starred in the crime drama Cop Land, which starred Sylvester Stallone, Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro, his roles include the fatherly Satan in Little Nicky, a wise Navy man in U-571, diligent FBI Special agent Sadusky in National Treasure and the latter's sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets. In 1999, Keitel was replaced by Sydney Pollack on the set of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, due to shooting conflicts, appeared in Tony Bui's award-winning directorial debut, Three Seasons.
Keitel re-teamed with Jane Campion for Holy Smoke!. In 2002, at the 24th Moscow International Film Festival, Keitel was honored with the Stanislavsky Award for his outstanding achievement in the career of acting and devotion to the principles of Stanislavsky's school, he appeared in the Steinlager Pure commercials in New Zealand in 2007. Unlike many American male actors, Keitel has appeared nude in several films, including full frontal nudity in Bad Lieutenant and The Piano. In January 2008, Keitel played Jerry Springer in the New York City premiere of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall. In 2008, Keitel was cast in the role of Detective Gene Hunt in ABC's short-lived US remake of the successful British time-travel
Clear Skies (film)
Clear Skies is a 1961 Soviet romance film directed by Grigori Chukhrai. It won the Grand Prix at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival; the film takes place in the USSR during the 1950s. During the war pilot Alexey Astakhov fights, gets captured and manages to escape. In peacetime Alexey is treated with distrust and suspicion - he is a soldier, in captivity and thereby has "stained the moral character of the Soviet pilot." Alexey suffers, can not find work in his field nor a place in life. Sasha Lvova's love which she has carried through the war and the difficulties of the postwar period saves him. After the death of Stalin, Astakhov is called to the Ministry of Defense, where his military award is returned. Alexey returns to the squadron and tests planes. Yevgeni Urbansky as Aleksei Astakhov Nina Drobysheva as Sasha Lvova Natalya Kuzmina as Lyusya Vitali Konyayev as Petya Georgi Kulikov as Mitya Leonid Knyazev as Ivan Ilyich Georgi Georgiu as Nikolai Avdeyevich Oleg Tabakov as Seryozhka Alik Krylov as Sergey Vitali Bondarev as Yegorka Clear Skies on IMDb
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress. Described as the "best actress of her generation", Streep is known for her versatility and accent adaptation. Nominated for a record 21 Academy Awards, she has won three. Streep has received 31 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight - more nominations, wins, than any other actor, she has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and has been nominated for fifteen British Academy Film Awards, seventeen Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning two each. Streep made her stage debut in Trelawny of the Wells in 1975. In 1976, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays. In 1977, she made her screen debut in the television film The Deadliest Season, made her film debut in Julia. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her role in the mini-series Holocaust, received her first Academy Award nomination for The Deer Hunter. Streep went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer, the Academy Award for Best Actress for Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady.
Streep's other Oscar-nominated roles were in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Out of Africa, Evil Angels, Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, One True Thing, Music of the Heart, The Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia, August: Osage County, Into the Woods, Florence Foster Jenkins, The Post. She returned to the stage for the first time in over 20 years in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of The Seagull, won a second Emmy Award and a Golden Globe in 2004 for the HBO mini-series Angels in America. Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture, through performing arts. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2010 National Medal of Arts, in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2003, the government of France made her a Commander of the Order of Letters, she was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017. Mary Louise Streep was born on June 1949, in Summit, New Jersey.
She is the daughter of a commercial artist and art editor. She has two younger brothers: Harry William Streep III and Dana David Streep, who are actors. Streep's father Harry was of Swiss ancestry, her father's lineage traces back to Loffenau, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States, where one of her ancestors served as mayor. Another line of her father's family was from Switzerland, her mother had English and Irish ancestry. Some of Streep's maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, were descended from 17th-century immigrants from England, her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle in Rhode Island. Streep is the second cousin 7 times removed of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Streep's maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, the latter the namesake of Streep's second daughter, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy, Ireland. Streep's mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench encouraged her daughter, instilled confidence in her from a young age.
Streep has said: "She was a mentor because she said to me,'Meryl, you're capable. You're so great.' She was saying, ` You can do. If you're lazy, you're not going to get it done, but if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.' And I believed her." Although Streep was more introverted than her mother, at times, when she needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would consult her mother, asking her for advice. Streep was raised as a Presbyterian in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, a Junior High school back then. In her Junior High debut, she starred as Louise Heller in the play "The Family Upstairs". In 1963, the family moved to New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School. Author Karina Longworth described her as a "gawky kid with glasses and frizzy hair", yet noted that she liked to show off in front of the camera in family home movies from a young age. At the age of 12, Streep was selected to sing at a school recital, leading to her having opera lessons from Estelle Liebling.
However, despite her talent, she has remarked that, "I was singing something I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lesson—not to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through." She quit after four years. Streep had many Catholic school friends, attended mass. Meryl was a high school cheerleader for the Bernards High School Mountaineers and was chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year, her family lived on Old Fort Road. Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play Miss Julie at Vassar College in 1969, in which she gained attention across the campus. Vassar drama professor Clinton J. Atkinson noted, "I don't think anyone taught Meryl acting, she taught herself." Streep demonstrated an early ability to mimic accents and
