Schumann's Bar Talks

Stefan Zucker, the world's highest tenor, visits the opera divas of his childhood. The journey from apartment to apartment, from diva to diva, from Rome to Milan, turns into an opera road movie.

Opera confronts us with extremes of emotion, sometimes delivering unforgettable, life-changing experiences. Fuoro sacro (‘Sacred Fire’) seeks out singers who have the power to pierce our hearts, presenting three of them at work in the most intimate details of their rehearsals and preparations. Ermonela Jaho, Barbara Hannigan and Asmik Grigorian are watched closely as some of their secrets are revealed: how they inhabit their roles and transform words and notation on a page into that intangible but powerful magic being communicated to audiences from the opera stage. Over 90 minutes of extras are included featuring vocal warm-ups and live performances accompanied by pianists Evgenia Rubinova, Reinbert de Leeuw and Francesco Piemontesi.

A Journey to the Origins of Modern Yoga. Yoga is known to go back to God Shiva, who perfected 8,4 million postures, according to Indian tradition. Far less known is the fact that yoga is at the same time an early 20th century-creation of Indian savant T. Krishnamacharya, which is what this film is about. Krishnamacharya's life and teachings are seen through the eyes of the director on his search for authentic yoga. His journey leads him from students and relatives of Krishnamacharya's such as the legendary teachers Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois to the source of modern yoga: the palace of the Maharaja of Mysore, where Krishnamacharya founded the first ever yoga school. A feature-length documentary including rare historical footage as well as lavish reenactments.

The world renowned Vienna Boys' Choir performs a variety of works by Mozart in this release of a 1988 performance captured live at Hofburg Chapel in Vienna and the Parish Church of St. Stephen in Baden bei Wien. Selections featured in this release are "Missa solemnis in C Minor, K 139 'Waisenhaus Mass'", "Alma Dei creatoris, K 277", "Sancta Maria, mater Dei, K 273", "Inter natos mulierum, K 72", "Sub tuum praesidium K198", and "Ave verum corpus K 618". ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Hildegard Knef: legendary German film diva. An actress whose personality is as complex as the characters she has played. She is by turns irritable, impatient, charming, humorous, fascinating and enchanting. But behind the many masks is the temperamental woman, the Hildegard Knef who has weathered many of life′s blows: failure in Hollywood, cancer, lost loves, the enmity of the press and, finally, the horror of aging. A Woman and a Half - Hildegard Knef is the portrait of a Knef who has become cynical and unpredictable in order to protect herself, but also a Knef full of warmth, humor and spirit.

The saga of fitness, which exploded in the 1980s and contributed, in its own way, to liberating women's bodies.

When the pianist Francesco Piemontesi hears an unreleased recording of the pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, it comes as a shock to him. This freedom of playing, these colors and nuances, this virtuosity, which is always presented with a smile, overwhelms him. He decides to explore what he believes he is hearing here: the alchemy of the piano.

For us today, Wilhelm Furtwängler is a monument: immense and unapproachable. The documentary Furtwängler’s Love from 2004 provides us with the opportunity to get to know the man behind the conductor. At the centre is his wife Elisabeth, who gives a vivid and thoughtful account of her years at Furtwängler’s side, full of charm and wit.

Orchestra rehearsals with Teodor Currentzis. The House of the Radio of the GDR in Berlin. A young couple in love. The artistic process viewed from the outside – and from the inside. Mahler’s boundary-breaking Third Symphony. What triggered the composition 130 years ago, and what does it trigger in us today?

The film tells the story of classic black singing against the background of black emancipation in politics and society. This story stretches from the first successes of the bass Paul Robeson, who all his life regarded his voice as an instrument of liberation, to the young singing pupils of the Harlem School of Arts, who identify themselves with their origins in rejuvenated pride. The great African-American singers express their views, as do opera company directors and critics. Historical and contemporary film extracts and specially produced film sequences demonstrate the richness and variety of black singing.

In her documentary Country Roads Marieke Schroeder embarks on a search for the authentic America - a country at a turning-point. It is a search for the substantial: the morale, the pioneering spirit that holds the nation and its population together in crisis. We meet the young generation of American singer-songwriters who consider themselves as successors of Country-rebels such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Steve Earle. They despair of themselves and their homeland and at the same time are full of hope, full of faith. Country Music opens up our view of the soul of the American nation and lets us rediscover the land and the music.

Out drinking one night after a fight with her boyfriend, three men brutally rape Sarah Tobias in a bar while people watch and cheer. District Attorney Kathryn Murphy takes the case; however, she allows the rapists to receive a mild sentence. A distraught Sarah decides to seek punishment for the men who witnessed and encouraged the rape. To get justice, Sarah must take the stand and revisit the night of her attack.

A journalist duo go on a tour of serial killer murder sites with two companions, unaware that one of them is a serial killer himself.

Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman.

Bounced from her job, Erin Grant needs money if she's to have any chance of winning back custody of her child. But, eventually, she must confront the naked truth: to take on the system, she'll have to take it all off. Erin strips to conquer, but she faces unintended circumstances when a hound dog of a Congressman zeroes in on her and sharpens the shady tools at his fingertips, including blackmail and murder.

A gritty crime saga which follows the lives of an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff's Dept. and the state's most successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.