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Alex Viany
Biography
Almiro Viviani Fialho (1918 — 1992), better known as Alex Viany, was a Brazilian director, producer, screenwriter, author, journalist and actor.
He is the author of the book Introduction to Brazilian Cinema (1959), cited by Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes as the first work of Brazilian filmography. He also wrote The Cinema Novo Process.
He debuted as a director in 1953, in the feature film "Agulha no Palheiro". In 1954, he directed "Rua sem Sol", which received the São Paulo State Governor's Award for best director, best actor for Carlos Alberto and best actress for Glauce Rocha (1930-1971). In 1955, he directed “Ana”, an episode of the feature film "A Rosa dos Ventos" (1954-1957), produced by the Communist Party of East Germany, organized by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens (1898-1989). In 1963, he directed "Sol sobre a Lama", shot in Bahia and under the influence of Cinema Novo. He made the last feature film of his career, only in 1978, with "A Noiva da Cidade".
He directed the short films A Máquina e o Sonho (1974), Humberto Mauro: eu Coração Dou Bom (1979) and Maxixe, a Dança Perdida (1980).
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Henri Alekan
Biography
Henri Alekan (10 February 1909, Paris – 15 June 2001, Auxerre, Bourgogne) was a French cinematographer.
Alekan was born in Montmartre in 1909. At the age of sixteen he and his brother became travelling puppeteers. A little later he started work as third assistant cameraman at the Billancourt Studios. He then spent a short time in the army, returning to Billancourt in 1931.
In the late 1930s he was the camera operator to Eugene Shufftan on Marcel Carné's Quai des Brumes and Drôle de drame. He was greatly influenced by Schufftan's non-naturalistic style. His first success as a director of photography was René Clément's realistic war drama La Bataille du Rail of 1946. In the same year he worked on Jean Cocteau's fable La Belle et la Bête.
He found himself out of sympathy with the French New Wave cinema which emerged in the late 1950s and Alekan shot some rather conventional films in Hollywood. A new generation of directors appreciated his visionary style, however, and he worked with Raúl Ruiz on The Territory and On Top of the Whale, with Joseph Losey on Figures in a Landscape and The Trout, and with Wim Wenders on The State Of Things and Wings of Desire. His last films were made with the Israeli director Amos Gitai.
He wrote one of the best books about cinematography Des lumières et des ombres (1984, Éditions du Collectionneur).
Alekan died from leukemia on 15 June 2001 in Auxerre, Bourgogne, aged 92.
Source: Article "Henri Alekan" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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John Gianvito
Biography
John Gianvito is an independent film director based in Boston, where he also holds an Associate Professorship in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. He has taught at numerous major universities in New England and currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Robert Flaherty International Film Seminar. His extensive curatorial work also includes a five-year appointment as Film Programmer at the Harvard Film Archive. He made his debut as a director in 1978 with his short film The Direct Approach and rose to prominence with the subsequent feature The Flower of Pain (1983), a semi-autobiographical film about an adolescent relationship structured as a series of fragments, or “shards of memory” in Gianvito’s words. Commenting on the film to the Viennale, Gianvito described his attempt at “stripping away as much personal anecdotal material as possible, and concentrating on uncovering within each scene the disruptions, the unconscious and conscious mistakes.” Most recently, Gianvito has made Vapor Trail (Clark) which had its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2010. That same year, his documentary Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007), inspired by Howard Zinn’s famous tome A People’s History of the United States, was named one of the fifty greatest documentaries of all time by Time Out New York. For his extraordinary and unique contributions to cinema, Gianvito received the French honorary title of Knight in the Order of Art and Letters in 2001.
– Wen Zhuang
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Marah Hasan
Biography
A Syrian actress, born in Damascus. She studied English literature, then left it to study acting, as she graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in 2019. She presented a graduation project entitled Badge, under the supervision of Professor Fayez Qazak. While studying at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, she appeared in the film The Heavenly Road and the series Old Streets of the Levant (2019) in the role of Maria. Among her credits are El Qubba Alley S1 (2021) and Fire with Fire (2023).
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Jean Anouilh
Biography
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.
Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon. Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here, at the age of 12, though his earliest works do not survive.
In 1918 the family moved to Paris where the young Anouilh received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal. Jean-Louis Barrault, later a major French director, was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense, rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself. He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne but, unable to support himself financially, he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at the advertising agency Publicité Damour. He liked the work, and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while drafting advertising copy. ...
Source: Article "Jean Anouilh" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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William Binney
Biography
William Edward Binney is a former intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and whistleblower. He retired on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency.
He was a critic of his former employers during the George W. Bush administration, and later criticized the NSA's data-collection policies during the Barack Obama administration. He dissented from the view that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election. More specifically, he was critical of the view that Russia hacked the DNC server.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Mamukkoya
Biography
Mamukkoya was a popular Malayalam comedian actor. His unique usage of Mappila dialect and style marked his presence in the industry. He acted in more than 450 Malayalam films and was the first winner of State award for Best Comedian in Malayalam cinema.
He was born to Chalikandiyil Muhammed and Imbachi Ayisha on 5th July, 1946. He had a brother Koyakutty. He had his primary education from MM High School, Calicut.
He was married to Suhara. The couple had four children, Muhammed Nisar, Shahitha, Nadiya and Abdul Rasheed. He was residing in Beypore near Kozhikode.
Mamukkoya started his career as a theatre actor. He got his chance in the film industry through Anyarude Bhoomi (1979). His second entry to Malayalam cinema was through Sibi Mayil's movie Doore Doore Oru Koodu Koottam. After this film he was introduced to Sathyan Anthikkad by scriptwriter Sreenivasan. He landed a role in Gandhinagar Second Street. His portrayal of Gafoor in Sathyan Anthikkad's Mohanlal – Sreenivasan starrer Nadodikkattu (1987) carved a niche for him in Malayalam cinema. His award winning performance in Perumazhakkalam (2004) proved that he can handle non-comedy roles as well with ease. He did the title role in the film Korappan, the great (2001), which depicted him as a forest brigand like Veerappan. He got the Kerala State Award for Second Best Actor in 2004 for the movie Perumazhakkalam.
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Carrie Ng Ka-Lai
Biography
Carrie Ng Ka-Lai (Chinese: 吳家麗, born November 30th, 1963) is a Hong Kong actress well known for both Category-III cult and mainstream films. She won Best Actress at the 1993 Golden Horse Film Festival awards for her performance in Remains of a Woman and Best Supporting Actress at the 2000 Hong Kong Film Awards for The Kid. Other notable film credits include Edward Yang's Mahjong (1996) and cult classics Naked Killer (1992) and Sex and Zen (1991).
Ng made her directorial debut with the revenge-thriller Angel Whispers (2015), which she co-directed, produced and scripted with film executive Shirley Yung.
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Pietro Sparvoli
Biography
Born and raised in Rome, Pietro is an Italian actor best known for his role as Mirko in the 2022 Netflix produced series Di4ries. He had a minor role on the coming-of-age series Prism as well as the Italian drama film La Stranezza. In 2022, he made an appearance in the low-budget YouTube thriller Fangs.
Acting since he was 15, he has studied under Italian actors Luca Pizzurro, Francesco Montanari and Franco Oppini. In addition to acting in film and television, he has appeared in a number of plays around Italy.
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