Desire for Beauty

Feisty, fiercely independent and firmly rooted in place, 90 year-old Mabel Robinson broke barriers back in the 40s when she became the first woman in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, to launch her own business—a hairdressing salon where she still provides shampoo-n-sets over 70 years later. Weaving animation and archival imagery with intimate and laugh out loud moments in the salon, the film celebrates the power of friendship, doing what you love and staying active. With no desire to retire anytime soon, Mabel gives voice to a generation who are not front and center of cinema or the pop hairstyles of the day, and subtly shifts the lens on our perception of beauty and the elderly.

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

David Aames has it all: wealth, good looks and gorgeous women on his arm. But just as he begins falling for the warmhearted Sofia, his face is horribly disfigured in a car accident. That's just the beginning of his troubles as the lines between illusion and reality, between life and death, are blurred.

In a world full of stupidity and fear, an unnaturally beautiful boy named Armin is born. Soon enough, Armin's magical nature begins to affect everything and everyone around him, leading to unexpected and dire consequences.

A young beautician, newly arrived in a small Louisiana town, finds work at the local salon, where a small group of women share a close bond of friendship and welcome her into the fold.

Sergei, an aspiring musician, accidentally meets a deaf-mute girl, Natasha, and falls in love with her. He has to change a lot to prepare himself for a new relationship with a different and very vulnerable person. Natasha is like an alien or an alieness with whom Sergei has to find a completely new language to speak. Natasha tries hard to understand his musical world. The problem is that Natasha lost her hearing during the war and associates sounds with fear and pain. Even a symphony concert is torture for her.

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

When a disc containing memoirs of a former CIA analyst falls into the hands of gym employees, Linda and Chad, they see a chance to make enough money for Linda to have life-changing cosmetic surgery. Predictably, events whirl out of control for the duo, and those in their orbit.

Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.

In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.

Veronica is brilliant, gifted and beautiful, but the handsome aristocrat she loves, Marco Venier, cannot marry her because she is penniless and of questionable family. So Veronica's mother, Paola, teaches her to become a courtesan, one of the exotic companions favored by the richest and most powerful Venetian men. Veronica courageously uses her charms to change destiny -- and to give herself a chance at true love.

An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity – one that comes with its own price.

A proof by example of the existence of beauty within Seattle.

Based on a Japanese manga, Kanna-San, Daiseikou Desu, this story revolves around Kang Han-na, an overweight phone sex employee and secret vocalist for Ammy, a famous Korean pop singer who actually lip syncs as she cannot sing. After getting humilitated publicly by an ungrateful Ammy, Han-na undergoes an extreme makeover to become a pop sensation herself.

We follow the two Texas doctors who invented the modern breast implant and its surgical procedure. However, when success and money come their way, they split up and follow different paths. One becomes the surgeon of the everyday woman while the other's career freefalls and has to settle with strippers and actresses. The film covers their history and their inventions, from the sixties until today.

Sen no Rikyu (Ebizo Ichikawa) is the son of a fish shop owner. Sen no Rikyu then studies tea and eventually becomes one of the primary influences upon the Japanese tea ceremony. With his elegant esthetics, Sen no Rikyu is favored by the most powerful man in Japan Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Nao Omori) and becomes one of his closest advisors. Due to conflicts, Toyotomi Hideyoshi then orders Sen no Rikyu to commit seppuku (suicide). Director Mitsutoshi Tanaka's adaptation of Kenichi Yamamoto's award-winning novel of the same name received the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the 37th Montréal World Film Festival, the Best Director Award at the 2014 Osaka Cinema Festival, the 30th Fumiko Yamaji Cultural Award and the 37th Japan Academy Film Prize in nine categories, including Best Art Direction, Excellent Film and Excellent Actor.

A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his mentor and sent him to prison.

The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. She is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome one. A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

The surgeon who did the job was dead. Only the nurse knew what this gangster looked like in his new face. He learned about women from her!