About a largely unsung writer of the twentieth century: John Fante, the renegade author whose highly autobiographical novels illustrate his deep-rooted love of Los Angeles and his struggles working through poverty and prejudice.
Boxing champion Michele Aboro grew up in South London, where life for a girl was never easy, let alone for a mixed-race lesbian girl. Thanks to her tenacious spirit and an uncanny talent for combat sports, she put her difficult past behind her and managed to sign a contract with the biggest boxing promoter in Europe. She won all 21 fights, 18 of them with a knockout - an exceptional achievement in women’s boxing. But despite her spectacular record in the ring, her career came to a sudden halt when her promoter broke her contract under the belief that she was not "promotable."
A BAFTA award nominated documentary explaining how well-logging equipment enables the petroleum engineer to obtain evidence of the potential of the oil reservoir.
At the beginning of the documentary, fine artist Jan Montyn is lying in bed, stripped to the waist. The blades of a fan are spinning; war footage is projected across. In 1944, Montyn enrolled in the German navy and ended up on the eastern front. He shows drawings he made in the trenches with charcoal and toothpaste. Back in Holland, he was hospitalised with 'shell shock'. Nevertheless, later on he would fight the communists in Korea and work as a relief worker in Vietnam and Cambodia. The film crew follows him back to Vietnam, a country where he first arrived in the early seventies: 'Sometimes, I try to convert the horror to paradise.' And now he is sailing on a river, surrounded by dancing young women. But we also see him at work and breathe down his neck when he is etching and engraving. He looks back on his life without a guilty conscience or shame. 'Many wars, many women, many etches', could be his epitaph, the voice-over says.
