The Luddites

Curse of the Golden Flower

December 2006 •Chinese

During China's Tang dynasty the emperor has taken the princess of a neighboring province as his wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family itself.

Sense and Sensibility

December 1995 •English

The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, whose chances at marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. When Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass on by law to his son from his first marriage, John and wife Fanny. But these circumstances leave Mr. Dashwood's current wife, and daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, without a home and with barely enough money to live on. As Elinor and Marianne struggle to find romantic fulfillment in a society obsessed with financial and social status, they must learn to mix sense with sensibility in their dealings with both money and men.

Daisy Miller

May 1974 •English

Despite mixed emotions, Frederick Winterbourne tries to figure out the bright and bubbly Daisy Miller, only to be helped and hindered by false judgments from their fellow friends.

Pride & Prejudice

September 2005 •English

A story of love and life among the landed English gentry during the Georgian era. Mr. Bennet is a gentleman living in Hertfordshire with his overbearing wife and five daughters, but if he dies their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they have never met, so the family's future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

December 2003 •English

This film, adapted from a work of fiction by author Tracy Chevalier, tells a story about the events surrounding the creation of the painting "Girl With A Pearl Earring" by 17th century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. A young peasant maid working in the house of painter Johannes Vermeer becomes his talented assistant and the model for one of his most famous works.

A Woman's Life

November 2016 •French

Normandy, 1819. Jeanne is a young woman full of childish dreams and innocence when she returns home after finishing her schooling in a convent. She marries a local Viscount, Julien de Lamare, who soon reveals himself to be a miserly and unfaithful man. Little by little Jeanne’s illusions are stripped away.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

December 2008 •English

Born under unusual circumstances, Benjamin Button springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy, a child who flits in and out of his life as she grows up to be a dancer. Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.

Suffragette

October 2015 •English

Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.

Sisi/Last Minute

September 1991 •German

The immature young ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, was extremely shy around women but (according to this film) was constantly being propositioned, lewdly or otherwise, by ambitious courtesans. When he was finally married to his Empress, the teen-aged Bavarian princess Sisi (Elizabeth), it seems that his relief knew no bounds, for he was now sure that he would never have to think about sex ever again. According to the filmmakers, this is the true history of that marriage. This story is a complete reversal of the romantic legend depicted in the popular 1955 film Sissi, which helped brighten the emerging stardom of Romy Schneider.

Sisi

December 2009 •German

The Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph falls in love with the young Elisabeth. It's love at first sight but Franz Joseph's mother Sophie doesn't approve this love.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

October 2006 •English

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

Shades of Fern

January 1986 •Czech

Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.

Ammonite

November 2020 •English

In 1840s England, palaeontologist Mary Anning and a young woman sent by her husband to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship. Despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realisation that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.

Solitude

January 1991 •Catalan

Early 20th century in a remote place in Catalonia. Mila, a newly wed young woman is forced by her husband and some circumstances to move to a remote location in the mountains. Marital problems arise in this lonely atmosphere but Mila finds comfort in Gaietà, a shepherd who incarnates the values of land and nature. Based on the novel Solitud by Victor Català (1905).

City of Photographers

November 2006 •Spanish

A film about the fearless photographers and photojournalists who documented strikes, demonstrations, protests etc during the Chilean military regime of Augusto Pinochet, sometimes risking their very lives.

Beskyt deres egne

October 2017 •Danish

Love's Twisting Path

April 2019 •Japanese

Set in Kyoto in the last days of the Edo Period, the bloody conflict continues between local feudal domains, which aim to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Shogun's police and city patrol. Tajuro Kiyokawa, once the master of the sword but now a depraved samurai who left his domain putting aside his past ambition, barely makes ends meet. Toyo, a woman who runs a tavern next door, feels affection for Tajuro who guards her place against nasty customers, but he never realizes Toyo's feelings.

1945

January 2022 •Tamil

Set in Burma in the year 1945, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose plans to launch the INA to fight the British. This is also the time when Adi comes back to Burma to take care of his family business. Upon his arrival, he gets engaged to a British Tasildar’s daughter. Just as he is set to get married, the atrocities of the British keep growing and Adi is forced to fight the British.

Madame Bovary

June 2015 •English

The classic story of Emma Bovary, the beautiful wife of a small-town doctor in 19th century France, who engages in extra marital affairs in an attempt to advance her social status.

Tulip Fever

July 2017 •English

An artist falls for a married young woman while he's commissioned to paint her portrait. The two invest in the risky tulip market in hopes to build a future together.