Movie Title: Maachis (1996)

Movie Plot Summary: Following the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards, a wave of violence broke out against innocent Sikhs and their families. Pressure was also brought on the police to bring the assassins and their allies to justice. The police, with their limited resources, and the lack of any witnesses, brutally brought in innocent Sikh men and women, and aggressively interrogated them with third degree methods. This created a wave of sympathy for the extremists, and more people started joining them to revolt against an oppressive regime. This story is of one such family, consisting of Veerandra (Tabu), her brother Jaswant Singh or Jassi (Raj Zutshi), and her mom. One day Inspector Vohra (Kanwaljeet) comes to their house with a police escort to find out the whereabouts of Jimmy or Jaimal (Jasjit Shergill). Jassi playfully introduces the police party to his pet dog Jimmy, and is taken away for questioning. He returns several days later, bleeding and badly wounded. Veerandra’s boyfriend Kripal Singh or Pali (Chandrachur Singh) vows to avenge Jassi’s beating and joins up with Commander (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and Sanataan (Om Puri), both hardcore extremists.

Movie Title: Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916)

Movie Plot Summary: The beach front house, where Fatty and Mabel live, has been launched out to sea by the villains. When Fatty and Mabel arise, they find the beds floating in a sea of water.

Movie Title: Sôgen no shôjô Laura (1975)

Movie Plot Summary: Japanese cartoon series based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the best known as Little House on the Prairie series. The author described there her childhood memories and adventures, when she was traveling with her parents and sisters looking for the place for home.

Movie Title: Our Burmese Days (1996)

Movie Plot Summary: An examination of biculturalism wrapped in an extraordinary personal odyssey. Our Burmese Days is also a fascinating defacto glimpse of life in a country that’s rarely covered in the media today. Now known as Myanmar, the film’s title is a reference to the novel Burmese Days by George Orwell, who worked for a time in the country’s colonial police force. This record of a daughter’s attempts to understand her mother’s denial of her roots because it is too complicated a story to tell reveals a family history that is both as tragic and as comic as any and yet unique when seen in the context of their colonial past. U.K.- born director Lindsey Merrison spent the first half of her life not even knowing that her mother, Sally, was Anglo-Burmese. Speaking in impeccable English, and claiming she came from Hemel Hempstead (a byword for white, middle-class respectability) the latter never referred to the country she left in the early 1950’s. Merrison’s film follows her mom and her uncle Bill on a trip back to Burma for the first time in over 40 years, revisiting sites from their youth, some relatively unchanged. The trip is illuminating for Bill, but often painful for Sally. For Merrison too, the journey is eye-opening with the tables gently turned on her role of inquisitor as she penetrates further and further into her mother’s heart of darkness. As Bill says to her at the end, there’s no big truth about life, just a series of discoveries. B&W footage of the war in Burma is well integrated with modern views and memories. The camera gives a a feel for contemporary life, both urban and rural without being touristy. The filmmaker had long negotiations with the country’s militaryfor a permit to shoot this film. While the political situation is only hinted at the film is eloquent about the violence of world and family history; eloquent about the anguish and spiritual expense of hating one’s own origins.

Movie Title: 26 N. Halsted (2000)

Movie Plot Summary: 26 N. Halsted is a 30-minute issue responsive public affairs program designed to address, discuss and disseminate information relevant to Chicago and its communities. It is our goal to conduct thought-provoking discussions that directly and indirectly affect you and your neighborhoods. Our panel is made up of both prominent community members, who are recognized experts in the given issue being discussed, as well as the average man on the street, who these issues affect. If you are looking for a program for, by and about Chicagoans … 26 N. Halsted is your one stop shop for information.

Movie Title: Luv Game, The (1988)

Movie Plot Summary: Lana Lite is looking for love in all the right places. Rachel is a legal eagle looking for a hung jury. Terry can’t make up her mind…So she makes up her bed for 2 more. And how about a ballet buff who meets a black stripper – in the buff. If you want love – you need to make the connection on THE LUV GAME!!

Movie Title: Major Crime (1997) (TV)

Movie Plot Summary: Major Crime focuses on the police efforts to apprehend a sex offender. Detective Gordon Tallas’s relentless pursuit of a dangerous sociopath seems doomed at every turn.

Movie Title: Friends (1994) {The One with the Embryos (#4.12)}

Movie Plot Summary: Several of Alice’s embryos are planted in Phoebe with a 25% chance that they will attach. Phoebe really wants it to work, and it’s her only shot. Meanwhile, Chandler and Joey are against Rachel and Monica in a winner-take-all, How Well Do You Know Us trivia contest with Ross as adjudicator. The girls lose their apartment to the guys.

Movie Title: Great Gambler, The (1979)

Movie Plot Summary: Vijay is an expert gambler, and has been so as long as he can remember, and has never lost a game. These skills bring him to the attention of the underworld, who are interested in hiring him so that he can do as they ask him to do so. Vijay agrees to do so, and plays successfully, though unknowingly to entrap a patriotic Indian, to give up military secrets. When the Indian police come to know of this, they assign the case to Inspector Jai, who is asked to apprehend Vijay at any cost. The only problem is that Inspector Jai is Vijay’s look-alike, and is not at all a good gambler.

Movie Title: Tales of Hoffmann, The (1951)

Movie Plot Summary: Hoffmann is a lovelorn young man in Nuremberg who is watching his latest love, Stella, dance in the ballet. In the interval he goes to the tavern where he tells his friends the tales of the three major loves of his life. Each story forms a separate act of this magnificently staged opera. It is NOT just a film of a staged production but a truly filmic version of the Offenbach opera.