Nederlandse Omroepstichting (NOS)

A collection of vignettes highlighting different aspects of the life, work, and character of the acclaimed Canadian classical pianist.

The mutant fetus is born. Dr. Helmer comes under heavy scrutiny for a botched operation that left a patient braindead, and begins to dabble in the dark arts in order to ward off those seeking an end to his career. Hypochondriac Mrs. Drusse finally does have something bad happen to her medically when an ambulance hits her.

Two troubled children fall in love and run away from Brussels to the Belgian coast, but find life on their own more difficult than expected.

A lighthouse guardian leads a young prince towards an imaginary world, Taxandria, where the boy learns about the power of love and the value of liberty. A totalitarian regime has forbidden time: time watches have been confiscated, photo cameras are illegal as they freeze a point in time. A typical Servais theme: a power is oppressed by a constraint that denies what is best in the individual, and therefore has to be twisted in various ways, to establish an entirely artificial world, that has rules that may question some of the rules of our world at this side of the mirror.

In Cross Now, during a blazing row with his boss, strangely enough architect Michael Ponsford still gets his promotion. However, he does not get much time to enjoy it, because, in the middle of the argument, his boss suffers a heart attack. And he is not the only one to die. Ponsford is haunted by death: the woman with whom he had been flirting for too long, his wife's father, one of his competitors, they all succumb. Finally, Ponsford's young son also dies.

It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.

A historical adaptation of John Gay's 18th Century ballad opera, exuberantly performed for BBC television.

Graeme Warrack was Divisional Chief Doctor of the 1st Airborne Division at the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. With other doctors, medical personnel and padres, he stayed behind with the wounded. The first improvised hospital was a German-occupied Dutch military barracks at Apeldoorn. From here, the wounded were transported to prisoner of war camps in Germany. As the last of the wounded left, Colonel Warrack escaped.

The story of the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and his life and career during the rule of Stalin.

Johan Ten Berghe joins the Dutch army when the Dutch East Indies unilaterally declare independence as Indonesia. He initiates his naive driver Twan in life in the East, having grown up there as son of colonial official Hendrik, now missing. Their adventures intertwine with Johan's childhood memories, especially concerning his native best friend, Oeroeg, who joined the rebellion, as well as their nanny and later de facto stepmother. Conflicting loyalties become tangible in extreme situations

Two interconnected stories in the 1930s, one set in Berlin, the other in Palestine: Mania Vilbouchevich Shohat (1880-1961), called Tania, a Russian Jew and revolutionary, goes from Minsk to Palestine to live on a collective. She promotes feminism and laments a shift in the men from self-defense to aggression. Her friend, Else Lasker-Schuler (1869 - 1945), expressionist poet and German Jew, is in Berlin, writing, caring for her son, watching Hitler's movement take power. She goes to Jerusalem and imagines a park for Arab and Jew. Her poems, voiced from within, capture her experience. The film meditates on the violence at the root of Israel's birth: of the Nazis and of the Zionists.

Fisherman Simon returns to his native village of Boka Sarantonio with his Colombian wife Adelaida after many years away. His absence has changed him so much that the villagers become convinced that Adelaida has brought a curse upon the village. To avert it, barmaid Rosoura enlists the help of brua, with fatal consequences.

Maria Garcia (Carmen Maura) is a television journalist and she's about to be a single mother. Her career foremost in her mind, she doesn't slow down even for a minute, despite her pregnancy. She is, however, taking Lamaze classes and is quite competently coping with the romantic attentions of a man she's not very interested in. It's not at all irrelevant that her news beat includes stories on terrorism, the greenhouse effect, pollution and genetic engineering, because when her baby's due date comes and goes, she starts hearing from her infant from in the womb. It is telling her that it and many other babies are refusing to be born into such a horrible world. She learns that this is true, and that the children born through induced labor are dying.

The story of the last years of Handel.

Biographical film about the life and work of the Belgian painter Jan Cox. Cox had a tempestuous youth, during which he co-founded the Jeune Peinture Belge group and worked on the fringes of the Cobra movement.

Adaptation for television of the stage play of the same name by the Dutch playwright Herman Heijermans. When lodger Eva Bonheur lends her landlady Mop two thousand pounds and Mop is unable to repay her, Bonheur gets control of the house and decides to put Mop, her husband Jasper and their daughter Miep out on the street.