Ava Gardner

With his mafia wiseguy links and access to entertainment industry star power, Frank Sinatra helped John F. Kennedy into the White House in 1960. But it all came to a bitter end.

In the 1950s, a small group of artists monopolized the attention of the cameras and the public. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford together form the "rat pack": they sing the most popular hits of the moment, star in the most profitable Hollywood films and are already making a splash on television . This documentary, produced by a recognized specialist in the history of Hollywood, recounts the exceptional destiny of this informal group which flirted with the greats of this world, notably through Sinatra, personal friend of American President Kennedy.

I have a lot of interest and respect for classic cinema. I tried to make a film with at least 20 portraits of classical actresses whose films I'm familiar with. Difficult choices from all over the world. They each have their own beauty.

A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.

At the height of her fame in 1954, actress Ava Gardner transplanted herself from Hollywood to the country of Spain. As she lovingly stated in her autobiography, “I don’t know if it was the climate, the men, or the music, but as soon as I set foot in Spain, I had a crush on this country.” In this documentary by Sergio Mondelo, the filmmaker explores the motivations behind this move and contrasts Gardner’s glitz and glam lifestyle with the hardships faced by the Spainish people under Franco’s rule.

Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

A barefoot contessa, a screwed-up princess, an exquisite drunk, a bawdy aristocrat, a nightmare for puritanical America and the moguls of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Ava Gardner never stopped loving those she loved. She turned women green and made men sweat. And rejected with all her force the bulwark of normality.

During the 1940s, Nevil Shute had a steady job as an engineer in the British military but in his spare time, he wrote novels that were being well-received. Once the war was over, Shute choose to move to Australia and focus on writing, soon becoming an internationally acclaimed novelist. His novel On The Beach, particularly hit a chord with the international community, depicting the impact of global nuclear destruction. This documentary studies Shute's career and the adaptation of his most famous novel into a feature film in Melbourne, as his predictions of a post-Hiroshima world seem to be foreboding in their accuracy.

Like so many other actors, Ava Gardner hated to watch her films. She said that the woman on the screen wasn't her. But all films tell two stories: the plot and the tale of the bodies filmed. This film narrates what happened between two images: a first shot of 'Pandora' and a first shot of 'Harem', the first and last movie filmed by the actress in Spain. Ava must certainly have thought that neither of these two women had anything in common with herself.

In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.