James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday (1953), Exodus, Spartacus, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of alleged Communist influences in the motion picture industry.
Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin, better known as Fernandel, was a French comic actor. Born near Marseille, France, to Désirée Bedouin and Denis Contandin, originating in Perosa Argentina, a town located in the province of Turin, Italy, he became a comedy star, first gaining popularity in French vaudeville, operettas, and music-hall revues. His stage name originated from his marriage to Henriette Manse, the sister of his best friend and frequent cinematic collaborator Jean Manse. So attentive was he to his wife that his mother-in-law amusingly referred to him as Fernand d'elle.
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet. He was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955. Regarding his nationality, Arrabal describes himself as "desterrado", or "half-expatriate, half-exiled".
Claude Barruck Joseph Lelouch is a French film director, writer, cinematographer, actor and producer. Lelouch grew up in an Algerian Jewish family. He emerged as a prominent director in the 1960s. Lelouch gained critical acclaim for his 1966 romantic melodrama film A Man and A Woman. At the 39th Academy Awards in 1967, A Man and a Woman won Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film. Lelouch was also nominated for Best Director. While his films have gained him international recognition since the 1960s, Lelouch's methods and style of film are known for attracting criticism.
Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba, known professionally as Papa Wemba, was a Congolese singer and musician who played Congolese rumba, soukous, and ndombolo. Dubbed the "King of Rumba Rock", he was one of the most popular musicians of his time in Africa and played an important role in world music. He was also a fashion icon who popularized the Sape look and style through his musical group Viva la Musica, with whom he performed on stages throughout the world.
Yves Robert was a French actor, screenwriter, director, and producer.
Roland Topor was a French illustrator, cartoonist, comics artist, painter, novelist, playwright, film and TV writer, filmmaker and actor, who was known for the surreal nature of his work. He was of Polish-Jewish origin. His parents were Jewish émigrés from Warsaw, Poland. He spent the early years of his life in Savoy, where his family hid him from the Gestapo.
Good Night, and Good Luck is a 2005 historical drama film about American television news directed by George Clooney, with the movie starring David Strathairn, Patricia Clarkson, Jeff Daniels, Robert Downey Jr., and Frank Langella as well as Clooney himself. The film was co-written by Clooney and Grant Heslov, and it portrays the conflict between veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow (Strathairn) and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, especially relating to the anti-communist Senator's actions with the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Panic Movement was an art collective formed by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Roland Topor in Paris in 1962. Inspired by and named after the god Pan, and influenced by Luis Buñuel and Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, the group concentrated on chaotic and surreal performance art, as a response to surrealism becoming mainstream.
Dracula and Son is a 1976 French comedy horror film directed and written by Édouard Molinaro. The film is about a vampire father and son. Christopher Lee reprises his role as Count Dracula from the Hammer Films Dracula film series.
She Killed in Ecstasy is a 1971 West German-Spanish erotic thriller film directed by Jesús Franco. The film's plot borrows elements from previous Franco films Miss Muerte and Venus in Furs. The film's productions staff includes many cast members and nearly the same crew as his previous film Vampyros Lesbos.
The Bachelor Father is a 1931 American pre-Code MGM comedy drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Marion Davies and featuring Ralph Forbes, C. Aubrey Smith, Ray Milland and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. It was based on a same-titled play by Edward Childs Carpenter, with Smith re-creating his role from the Broadway production. The plot centers around a stuffy British nobleman whose three grown children suddenly arrive at his estate and decide to move in with him.
Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1971 American horror film directed by Gordon Hessler, and starring Jason Robards, Christine Kaufmann, Herbert Lom and Lilli Palmer. The screenplay by Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar is a loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story of the same name. However, it departs from Poe's version in several significant aspects, at times more resembling Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. In a DVD interview, Hessler said that he felt it necessary to reinvent the plot as he believed the majority of audiences were too familiar with Poe's story.
The 24th Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 27 May 1971. The Palme d'Or went to The Go-Between by Joseph Losey.
Roger Frappier is a Canadian producer, director, editor, actor, and screenwriter.
The Diabolical Dr. Z is a 1966 French-Spanish horror film directed by Jesús Franco. The film stars Mabel Karr as Irma Zimmer, a surgeon who creates a machine that turns people into zombified slaves. Ms. Zimmer is the daughter of a Professor Zimmer, who was hounded to his death several years earlier by four of his scientific associates. Zimmer uses the machine to control an erotic dancer named Miss Muerte who uses her long poison-tipped fingernails to murder the people Ms. Zimmer holds responsible for her father's death.
The Book of Life is a 2014 American animated fantasy adventure comedy film directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez and written by Gutierrez and Doug Langdale. It was produced by 20th Century Fox Animation, Reel FX Animation Studios, and Chatrone, and distributed by 20th Century Fox. Guillermo del Toro, Brad Booker, Aaron D. Berger, and Carina Schulze produced the film. It features the voices of Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, and Channing Tatum. Based on an original idea by Gutierrez, the story follows a bullfighter who, on the Day of the Dead, embarks on an afterlife adventure to fulfill the expectations of his family and friends.
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse is a 1973 French surreal drama film directed by Fernando Arrabal. The film first released on November 22, 1973 in France and stars George Shannon as an epileptic man who, falsely suspected of murdering his mother, flees to the desert where he meets a hermit and brings him back to the city where the hermit becomes a circus performer.
