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1-6 of 6
- Canadian performer who was seen in films and television from late 1950s to the 1970s. Called "the Canadian James Dean", after appearing in several features with success, Borisenko went to England where he had starring roles in two films by fellow Canadians: Sidney J. Furie's wartime melodrama "During One Night" (1960), and Mark Robson's account of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, "Nine Hours to Rama" (1963), in which he played Naryan Apte, the friend of Gandhi's murderer, Nathuram Vinayak Godse (played by Horst Buchholz). After he walked off the set of Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), dissatisfied with his role (which was then given to Donald Sutherland), Borisenko appeared on different television shows, back in Canada and in England. Moving in the 1970s to Los Angeles, he changed his name to Jonas Wolfe, appeared in several films, as "Black Gunn" (1972) and "The Laughing Policeman" (1973), and opened a music club, where he reportedly gave the rock group Van Halen their first paying gig. Borisenko finally retired from acting and dedicated to poetry, painting and sculpture.
- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Birri is known as the "Father of the New Latin American Cinema". He studied film at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Roma, and after graduating returned to the province of Santa Fe in Argentina, where he founded the first film school specialized in documentary in Latin America. He was forced to exile due to the Argentinean military coup d'état, and lived in Italy where he shot his three-hour experimental film "Org". In 1986 he helped to found the International School of Film and Television in Cuba, and was chosen as first principal. He also taught film courses in Mexico and Venezuela, but remained in Italy, where he died.- Actress
- Producer
Isabel Sarli was discovered by filmmaker Armando Bo and became the star of his films, starting with El trueno entre las hojas (1957) in 1956. Her nude scenes in this drama --a first in Argentinian cinema-- and their subsequent soft-porn movies were highly criticized and condemned in Argentina. In spite of censorship and persecution, she became an international star, filming in Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, and films like Fuego (1969) and Fiebre (1971) reached the American and European markets. Although she was very funny in sex comedies like La mujer del zapatero (1965), Bo insisted in casting her in naturalistic melodramas. After his death in 1981, Isabel Sarli retired and only appeared sporadically in other directors' films.- Script and Continuity Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Matilde Landeta was one of the first woman filmmakers in México, along with Adela Sequeyro. Both wrote the movies they directed, and both could only make a few in a film industry strongly controlled by their male counterparts.
At first Matilde's family opposed to her aspirations, but her brother Eduardo Landeta, an actor in early sound movies, introduced her to director Fernando de Fuentes, who gave her the opportunity to be the script supervisor of his «Revolution Trilogy» (comprised of «El prisionero 13», «El compadre Mendoza» and «¡Vámonos con Pancho Villa!») In this capacity and later as assistant director, she worked in 75 movies, including two classics of the «golden age» of Mexican cinema, Emilio Fernández's «Flor silvestre« and Julio Bracho's «Distinto amanecer«; the comedy «El cocinero de mi mujer» by Cuban director Ramón Peón, and the horror drama «La herencia de la Llorona», one of the few films directed by Mauricio Magdaleno, Fernández's frequent screenwriter.
As she had no support to become a director, Landeta founded her own production company called Tacma and made her screen adaptation «Lola Casanova», a historical drama based on a novel by Francisco Rojas González. But she had "disobeyed" the industry rules, so she was boycotted and the release was delayed for a year. Although people's reaction was good, the film was removed from the cinema in five days. But she went on and adapted another novel by González Rojas, «La negra Angustias», that many consider her best film. A story of the Mexican revolution, it starred María Elena Marqués as Angustias, the young daughter of a generous bandit, who is rejected for living with a witch and for refusing men's harassment. When she kills a charro who tried to rape her, Angustias runs away, joins Zapata's troops, becomes a colonel and, following her father's steps, fights for justice for women and peasants.
Landeta completed her trilogy of female melodramas in 1951 with «Trotacalles», starring the tragic Czech star Miroslava. She was offered a job supervising the content of foreign films being shot in México, and doing shorts for American television. In those years she and brother Eduardo wrote the script for «Juvenile Court», a drama about street boys, which she sold to the National Film Bank of México, under the agreement that she would direct it. But the accord was broken by the industry: the project was given to Alfonso Corona Blake as his first directorial assignment, the title was changed to «El camino de la vida», and they tried to erase the Landeta brothers' names from the writing credits. Matilde sued and won the case, but she was not allowed to work in the film industry in México.
The director continued working in shorts for many years, but in 1975 film critic Jorge Ayala Blanco rediscovered «La negra Angustias» during the preparations of a retrospective of films directed by women to celebrate the International Women's Year. Ayala Blanco wrote the magazine article "Matilde Landeta, nosotros te amamos" (Matilde Landeta, we love you), which led to a revival of the filmmaker's oeuvre. After decades of being ousted of Mexican cinema, she was first the subject of Marcela Fernández Violante's documentary «Matilde Landeta, pionera del cine nacional»; and then she directed her last two films: the documentary »El rescate de las islas Revillagigedo», produced and co-written by actress Elda Peralta, whom she had directed in «La negra Angustias» and «Trotacalles»; and the romantic drama «Nocturno a Rosario», starring Ofelia Medina.
Matilde Landeta won the Ariel, the Mexican top film prize, for Best Screen Story for El camino de la vida, and received the Lifetime Achievement Ariel in 1992. In 2005 the Asociación Cultural Matilde Landeta was created, and with Fernández Violante as its president, the association gives an annual award to the best screenplay written by a woman.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Discovered by a talent scout at Northwestern University in 1958, Paula Prentiss was signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer and teamed with Jim Hutton in a string of comedies. She rapidly became one of the best American comediennes of the 1960s. Her funny voice inflections, free acting style and brunette good looks established her as a leading lady in comedies of the screwball type, although she was very good in dramatic roles, too. Not much attracted to the Hollywood scene, she retired from films on several occasions, due also to illness and motherhood, but she was always admired and welcome whenever she made a comeback. She and her husband, the actor and director Richard Benjamin, are the parents of Ross Benjamin and Prentiss Benjamin.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Although his actress wife Paula Prentiss became a star by the early 1960s, it took Richard Benjamin almost fifteen years to establish his screen persona, but the wait was rewarding. After extensive work in theatre as actor and director, and his participation in the cult TV series He & She (1967), in which he co-starred with Prentiss, he won the starring role in the screen adaptation of Philip Roth's best-seller, Goodbye, Columbus (1969). That was followed by roles in Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and another Roth adaptation, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), that turned him into a prominent "archetype of East Coast Jewish intellectual agony", as critic Jonathan Romney defines him. But his forte was comedy and he won a Golden Globe when he repeated his stage role in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1975). Although he still performs, Benjamin turned to direction since the 80s with the highly acclaimed comedy My Favorite Year (1982).