Shadows of the Peacock

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.

Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer.

A mute Scottish woman arrives in colonial New Zealand for an arranged marriage. Her husband refuses to move her beloved piano, giving it to neighbor George Baines, who agrees to return the piano in exchange for lessons. As desire swirls around the duo, the wilderness consumes the European enclave.

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.

Set in Anyang, South Korea, crew members for an upcoming documentary research the devastating fire that took occurred in a factory prior to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. 22 female workers, who were locked in their dormitory, were killed in the fire. Along the way, the crew members also come across the past of Anyang, including the origin of the city's name ("Anyang" is a Buddhist term for "Paradise"), Buddhist temples, a search for a 500-year-old "grandma tree" and upcoming mayoral election.

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.

Bizarre tale of sex, betrayal, and perversion at a military post.

Can Daniel follow the sun from Hamburg to the Bosporus by Friday to meet his love?

A woman's life is destroyed when she discovers that her husband has another family.

A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.

A young, single mother, Jen, begins to lose her faith in the magic of Christmas. However, when she takes her son Eric to see the local mall Santa, Jen immediately feels an attraction and connection with Chris, the young, attractive man filling the suit. As they begin spending time together, she begins to rediscover her belief in Christmas.

A con artist seduces the widow of a millionaire, only to learn she'd plotted with her lover to murder the late husband. A tense game of cat-and-mouse ensues—but who's the cat?

Lifestyle guru and romance expert, Joanna Moret, has developed a fool-proof strategy for ending holiday loneliness and it's all detailed in her best-selling book, The Love Audit. After appearing on a morning show, she is offered the biggest opportunity of her career—to throw the MacAllen Holiday Gala—and if all goes well she'll get her own TV show. Little do her fans, or the MacAllen's, know that she is newly single and can't seem to apply her principles to her own love life. Joanna asks the morning show producer, Ted to pretend they are a couple or risk being exposed as a fraud.

Mild mannered Evie Sanders works as a waitress at “The Black Diamond Bar" in Alpine, Colorado and is hopelessly in love with the bar’s owner/manager, Jace Winters. Though she’s been there for four years, she’s been too shy to make a move, but that all might change after she’s asked to fill out an anonymous “Naughty List” for her friend’s human sexuality class.

Winter sets in as top chef Grace Cooke, at the helm of a high-end restaurant, rakes in rave reviews due to her gastro-scientific approach to cuisine. She’s close to a Michelin star when a bad review from a top critic rocks her world. With her boss’ blessing, she takes time off to see her family at their winery B&B over Christmas. There, she connects with worldly travel writer Asher St. James, and sparks fly with family traditions as Asher helps her reconnect with her roots.

Heaven-Bound Travelers (circa 1935) was discovered among the rolls of film in the Gist collection at the Library of Congress by S. Torriano Berry during the recent restoration of Hell-Bound Train. Eloyce Gist takes a central role onscreen as a wife and mother who is wrongfully accused of adultery by her husband and is left to fend for herself and their daughter in the world. As she struggles to sustain them, the husband becomes riddled with guilt and struggles with his decision, and the social realism of the drama shifts to an allegorical struggle between the devil, appearing to tempt humanity to sin, and the angels. The film does not exist in complete form but the fragments show a project of ambitious scope. Presented with a score composed and performed by Dr. Samuel Waymon.