Academy Award Winner, Best Foreign Language Film. From Japan, Departures follows Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and who is suddenly left without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled “Departures” thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a “Nokanshi” or “encoffineer,” a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife…
Author: Bijan Tehrani
It’s not easy to be a Moslem when you have to transform yourself into an Italian to get the attention of the ladies. It is summer and Gothia Cup, and the Italian team gets all the girls.The main character of Ciao Bella, Mustafa is kind, caring, ready for some action, but without a chance. So when opportunity knocks, he takes on the role as the slick”Massimo”, an Italian. An entirely new world opens up to him. Red-headed, beautiful, young and looking for anything more exciting than what’s going on in the world’s most boring suburb. What could be better than…
For the last three decades Iranian cinema has been very successful in the international scene. There are a lot of international film fans looking for a chance to watch Iranian films that don’t make their way to film festivals in order to get a better understanding of Iranian cinema and its quality. Film fans can now unite behind Gold Line’s GLbox. Now the internet service of GLwiz.com can be presented on your television by using the company’s box. You can access Iranian television and programs outside Iran including Voice of America and BBC in Farsi. You could watch on-demand items…
Val Mijailovic is a 38 year veteran of martial arts, World Karate Champion, World Karate Union Hall of Fame Inductee, United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame Inductee, Multi-business founder/owner and award winning documentary filmmaker. Val holds a 7th degree black belt in martial arts and is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences – Cinematographers Peer Group. Mijailovic is the founder of several companies including: Cine Sports Production Inc., Northstar Video Duplication Inc., Exclusive Pictures Inc., Heaven Fire Productions, Inc., Rainbow Tribe Productions, Inc., Ingles 2000 Inc., and Check Disc Labs, Inc. Mijailovic is currently Senior…
Lemon Tree is the story of Salma, a Palestinian widow who lives on the green line border between Israel and the West Bank. She has to stand up against her new neighbor the Israeli Defense Minister when he moves into his new house opposite her lemon grove. The Israeli security forces are quick to declare that Salma‘s trees pose a threat to the Minister’s safety and issue orders to uproot them. Together with Ziad Daud, her young Palestinian lawyer, Salma goes all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court to try and save her trees. Her struggle raises the interest…
Long Nguyen is an award winning visual artist and actor of over a dozen feature films and episodic television shows. Long is the winner of two “Best Actor” awards. One for “Journey from the Fall” in the 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival and one for the short film “Apsara” in the 2003 California Independent Film Festival. Long had supporting roles in the following feature films: Heaven & Earth (directed by Oliver Stone,) Operation Dumbo Drop (directed by Simon Wincer,) Into Thin Air (directed by Robert Markowitz,) Green Dragon (directed by Tim Bui,) Missing Brendan (directed by Eugene Brady,) and Coyote…
An established trained actor; Christine Solomon is of Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanese ethnicity; born in Egypt and raised in Montreal from the age of seven. A member of The Egyptian Actor’s Union, she has performed in a wide range of productions across Canada, United States and Egypt. She is also related to famous Egyptian director Sandra Nashaat.Christine has been a performer since her tender years and took up gymnastics at the age of eight. She thrived from the very beginning until the age of twelve when she developed an interest in the art of theatre. Solomon began modeling at the…
Ahmad Kiarostami has worked in cinema and software industries for twenty years. After taking on leadership roles at Microsoft Middle East, he founded three companies including the first multimedia and online production venue in Iran, where he published award-winning multimedia products in cinema and visual arts. Ahmad was a member of several national software standard committees, and developed the first full-text search technology for Persian content which was adopted by different products and online newspapers. This technology is used in his personal project, Persopedia, one of the first and biggest online libraries on Persian poetry.Ahmad has made short films and…
An Unlikely Weapon follows Eddie Adams’ journey from a small town newspaper to the Associated Press; the transition from war photography to celebrity photography. Adams’ life brought many opportunities including photographing Arnold Schwarzenegger in a pool with a rubber ducky, and Clint Eastwood in silhouette for the movie Unforgiven. From Penthouse to Time Magazine, and to his founding of a free workshop for young photographers on his farm in upstate New York, Adams’ life went through many changes and evolutions.Eddie Adams photographed 13 wars, 6 American Presidents and every cultural and historical figure of the last 50 years. Eddie’s photograph…
TOKYO SONATA is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. The father who abruptly loses his job conceals the truth from his family; the eldest son in college hardly returns home; the youngest son furtively takes piano lessons without telling his parents; and the mother, who knows deep down that her role is to keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so. From the exterior, all is normal and the same. But somehow, a single, unforeseeable chasm has appeared within the family, threatening to disintegrate them. Born on July 19, 1955 in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan,…