James Ivory

The first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the wandering company that left an indelible impact on film culture.

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ONLY IN THEATERS, a film by actor/director Raphael Sbarge, is an intimate and moving journey taken with the Laemmle family, spanning nearly three years of challenges, losses, and personal triumphs. Laemmle Theatres, the beloved 84-year-old arthouse cinema chain 3rd generation family business in Los Angeles, is facing seismic change and financial pressure. Yet the family behind this multigenerational business – whose sole mission has been to support the art of film – is determined to survive.

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In 1960, acclaimed filmmaker James Ivory traveled to Afghanistan to shoot scenes for a documentary that was never completed. In 2022, he decided to revisit this unique footage, which takes him back to his adventurous youth.

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Hopkins’ career has spanned several decades, which is why we will also use many interviews that he gave throughout his life, allowing us to put him back into the context of each period and will be helpful in understanding his role in the history of cinema, because he was far from following the trends. He never belonged to any film movement; he is a chameleon that has always preferred natural acting, ‘non-acting’ when method acting was the fashion.

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Meeting with James Ivory at the Cinémathèque Française on January 18, 2020, presented by Frédéric Bonnaud and Wafa Ghermani.

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A film about the life of A Passage to India author E M Forster, following his huge growth as a writer and the twists and turns of his personal life.

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In collaboration with Academy Award winning Director/Screenwriter, James Ivory, Rich Atmosphere: The Music of Merchant Ivory Films, showcases the impact of composer Richard Robbins on Merchant Ivory films.

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This film brings to life a fictional castrato named Zefirino.

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The filmmakers and lead actors of The Remains of the Day (1993) discuss how they came to make the film, and the subtle power of its execution.

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A documentary about making The Remains of the Day.

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Historical context for The Remains of the Day.

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Documentary about Merchant Ivory Productions, including interviews with the principals of the film production company and actors which have appeared in their films.

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An annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is better known by its nickname Oscar.

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The documentary will feature such frequent Ivory collaborators Emma Thompson , Helena Bonham Carter and Hugh Grant, as well as director Wes Anderson. The documentary will also draw from never-before-seen archival footage, film clips, vérité sequences, behind-the-scenes outtakes and sit-down interviews to form a comprehensive portrait of the filmmaker.

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An in-depth documentary on renowned film producer James Ivory, co-founder of globally acclaimed Merchant Ivory Productions.

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In a secluded village in the French Pyrenees, American writer Olivia returns to her family’s ancestral home – where her grandmother fled Paris during the Nazi invasion in World War II – seeking material for a long-stalled novel. There she encounters Madeline, a talented local woman whose ingenuity and spirit echo memories of her grandmother. As Olivia incorporates details from Madeline’s life into her fictional narrative, three storylines intersect: her grandmother’s past, her novel and Olivia’s present-day experiences.

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The first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the wandering company that left an indelible impact on film culture.

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In the early 1970s, art historian and curator Stephen Scher turned a camera on the complex ecosystem of Parisian dining. This collage of footage remained perfectly preserved in the can for 50 years; but now, as the filmmaker assembles it into a documentary, we can behold the end of a culinary era.

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In 1960, acclaimed filmmaker James Ivory traveled to Afghanistan to shoot scenes for a documentary that was never completed. In 2022, he decided to revisit this unique footage, which takes him back to his adventurous youth.

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Mong just moved to New York from China to take over the family laundry shop. Both her professional and social lives are affected when she finds out about an affair happening in the building where she works.

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A young writer tries to obtain romance letters a poet sent to his mistress.

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Leonardo, an Italian immigrant living in New York, marries a Latin American woman, Nikki, to obtain the greencard. In the process the two really fall in love, but it seems that "Uncle Sam" will be the last to laugh.

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In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.

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While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

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This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.

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After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.

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The drama, adapted from a story by Katherine Anne Porter, tells of a Swedish immigrant who arrives on a small Texas farm at the turn of the century for work, is hired, and subsequently, and inadvertently, causes the downfall of his employer when a suspicious visitor comes to call.

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In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.

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When her husband's arrest leaves her penniless, a woman accepts an invitation to move in with a strange couple.

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Looks at the musical extravaganzas which constitute the main bulk of commercial cinema in India; in particular at the career of Helen, the undisputed Queen of such sagas, having appeared in some five hundred since 1957. Excerpts from some of her films are interspersed with an interview with the star in her dressing room.

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Nirad C. Chaudhuri expounds his views on culture, history, religion and society from a comparative perspective.

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An English novelist travels to Bombay to watch one of her novels translated to film. She chases after the movie's leading man while the screenwriter chases after her.

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Britain's top pop artiste, Tom Pickle, travels to Bombay, India, circa 1960s to learn to play the sitar from renowned maestro Ustad Zafar Khan.

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The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

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A documentary of Delhi, it scans the city's historic past that includes successive Afghan, Moghul, and English invasions, while it reveals its variegated life of the present.

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Prem, a young school teacher, is arranged married and begins the journey of learning the roles and responsibilities required of him.

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Visual images consist entirely of Indian miniature paintings, while an off-screen narrator traces the rise of this art form within the courts of Akbar (1542-1605), who united what is now India and Pakistan, and his son Jahangir (1569-1627). Two schools of the miniature paintings, done by anonymous artists, flourished after Akbar established unity and peace across what had been many smaller states: the Moghul (Islamic) school and the Rajput (Hindu) school. The Moghul paintings record the events of the court, while the Rajput school connects physical beauty and, in particular, the longing of women to the transcendent values of the spirit.

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Ivory's initial effort as a filmmaker was Venice: Theme and Variations, a documentary made as his master's thesis at the USC film school that, although only 28 minutes long, is rich in composition and aesthetic texture.

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An American named Alexander Fox begins an idyllic new life in the tiny sovereign state of Andorra after a personal tragedy, determined to reinvent himself. But as he becomes entangled in the lives of the mysterious locals, including the retired Australian Mrs. Dent and the matriarch’s daughter Miss Quay, the mystery of Alexander’s origin deepens. When bodies emerge in the harbour, he finds himself in a spiralling crisis of conscience and identity, in a country he may not be able to escape from.

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Roselli grew up in Hoboken five houses down from Sinatra, some considering his vocal talents superior to Sinatra’s. Frank’s mother Dolly privately considered Jimmy her favorite singer. But due to his combative personality and refusal to yield to mob pressure to control him and his earnings, Roselli’s career suffered greatly.

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