Zamiatou is the mother of two quarrelsome boys and a depressed teenage girl. She is also the wife of a man arrested for political reasons who returned from prison mentally and physically destroyed. She struggles hard to survive in a poor and desolate area. She is ready to face anything to keep the family alive except prostituting her beautiful daughter.

This program teaches highlighting the good parts and trouble spots, research, visualizing and dramatization, non-fiction vs. fiction, the echo effect, online reasearch vs. physical, changing directions, genre material, staying fresh and externalizing characters' thoughts. Subjects covered include:--What to include. --How to avoid the 200 page screenplay. --How faithful should you be to the original? --Is it easier to adapt fiction or non-fiction, trash or art? --Which books, plays and stories will make good movies. --How to rectify problems without alienating a book's fans?

Based on the play written by August Strindberg on 1912, and filmed in New York's Central Park. Two actresses, one a wife and mother, the other living alone, meet in a cafe. While the wife talks, the other is silent. But the wife must finally face the truth: the silent woman is her husband's mistress. Still, their agonizing confrontation, as well as the relief that follows, binds them together: the battle is over and it becomes irrelevant which one is the stronger. Each woman has come to a deeper knowledge of herself through the other.

Michael Haneke's adaptation of Franz Kafka's The castle is an ingenious, faithful interpretation evoking Kafka's vision of a dystopian society hobbled by paperwork and bled dry by conformism and convolution.

Based on the play by Bertolt Brecht (originally translated by Charles Laughton), Galileo explores not merely the infamous historical figure, but the philosophical concepts for which he was both celebrated and condemned.

The women of defeated Troy are at the mercy of the Greeks in this adaption of Euripedes' tragic anti-war play. The unbeatable cast is lead by Katharine Hepburn, Irene Papas, Genevieve Bujold and Vanessa Redgrave.

Jarman presents Shakespeare's intricate comedy of magic and revenge in a form that is at once faithful to the spirit of the play and a dazzling spectacle mixing Hollywood high camp and gothic horror. His film recalls the innocent homoeroticism of Pasolini's versions of the classics while its lush sense of décor and color is worthy of Minnelli.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a village woman is given the grueling task of looking after (and fulfilling the sexual needs of) her quadruple-amputee husband, a decorated solider tortured by memories of his war crimes. Based on a short story by Edogawa Rampo, Koji Wakamatsu's film is a fascinating, deeply affecting indictment of right-wing militarist-nationalism, a partner-piece to the left-wing extremism of United Red Army.