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Shine (1996 Film)
''Shine'' is a 1996 Australian biographical psychological drama film based on the life of David Helfgott, a pianist who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions. The film stars Geoffrey Rush, Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris Haywood, and Alex Rafalowicz. The film was directed by Scott Hicks. The screenplay was written by Jan Sardi. ''Shine'' had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In 1996, Geoffrey Rush was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 69th Academy Awards for his performance in the lead role. Plot A young man wanders through a heavy rainstorm, finding his way into a nearby restaurant. The restaurant's employees try to determine if he needs help. Despite his manic mode of speech being difficult to understand, a waitress, Sylvia, learns that his name is David Helfgott and that he is staying at a local hotel. Sylvia returns him to the ...
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Scott Hicks (director)
Robert Scott Hicks (born 4 March 1953), known as Scott, is an Australian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known as the screenwriter and director of '' Shine'', the biopic of pianist David Helfgott. For this, Hicks was nominated for two Academy Awards. Other movies he has directed include the film adaptations of Stephen King's '' Hearts in Atlantis'' and Nicholas Sparks' '' The Lucky One''. Early life and education Hicks was born on born 4 March 1953 in Uganda. His father was a civil engineer. His family lived in Kenya, outside of Nairobi before moving to the UK when Scott was 10 years old, and then moving to Adelaide, South Australia, when Hicks was 14 years old. He had piano lessons until his early teens, and learnt to read music, but "wasn’t really prepared to put the necessary time in". Hicks enrolled for an arts degree at Flinders University in Adelaide when he was 16, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in 1975, along with his wife . Rock music ...
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Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort (a ski resort near Provo, Utah), and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. History 1978: Utah/US Film Festival Sundance began in Salt Lake City in August 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah. It was founded by Sterl ...
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Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The demonym ''Adelaidean'' is used to denote the city and the residents of Adelaide. The Traditional Owners of the Adelaide region are the Kaurna people. The area of the city centre and surrounding parklands is called ' in the Kaurna language. Adelaide is situated on the Adelaide Plains north of the Fleurieu Peninsula, between the Gulf St Vincent in the west and the Mount Lofty Ranges in the east. Its metropolitan area extends from the coast to the foothills of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and stretches from Gawler in the north to Sellicks Beach in the south. Named in honour of Queen Adelaide, the city was founded in 1836 as the planned capital for the only freely-settled British province in Australia. Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's foun ...
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Mania
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a mental and behavioral disorder defined as a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level, or "a state of heightened overall activation with enhanced affective expression together with lability of affect." During a manic episode, an individual will experience rapidly changing emotions and moods, highly influenced by surrounding stimuli. Although mania is often conceived as a "mirror image" to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or dysphoric. As the mania intensifies, irritability can be more pronounced and result in anxiety or anger. The symptoms of mania include elevated mood (either euphoric or irritable), flight of ideas and pressure of speech, increased energy, decreased need and desire for sleep, and hyperactivity. They are most plainly evident in fully developed hypomanic states. However, in full-blown mania, they undergo progressively severe exacerbations and become more and more obscured by ...
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69th Academy Awards
The 69th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) took place on March 24, 1997, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented the Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories honoring films released in 1996. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates, and directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Billy Crystal hosted the show for the fifth time. He first presided over the 62nd ceremony held in 1990 and had last hosted the 65th ceremony held in 1993. Three weeks earlier, in a ceremony held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on March 1, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Helen Hunt. This also served as the launch event for DVD, with its U.S. launch being on the same day as the ceremony. ''The English Patient'' won nine awards, ...
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Academy Award For Best Actor
The Academy Award for Best Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. The award is traditionally presented by the previous year's Best Actress winner. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 with Emil Jannings receiving the award for his roles in '' The Last Command'' (1928) and ''The Way of All Flesh'' (1927). Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. In the first three years of the awards, actors were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award. During the third ceremony in 1930, only one of those films was cited in each winner' ...
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Chris Haywood
Chris Haywood (born ) is an English-born Australian actor, writer and producer, with close to 500 screen performances to his name. Haywood has also worked as a casting director, art director, sound recordist, camera operator, gaffer, grip, location and unit manager. Early life and education Haywood was born around 1948 in Billericay, Essex, England. He spent his early childhood in Chelmsford before moving to High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire where he attended Royal Grammar School from 1959 to 1965. He then started working in the cellars of a local wine shipper before gaining a place at E15 Acting School. After graduating in 1970 he emigrated to Australia. Career Soon after arriving in Sydney, Haywood became involved with Sydney's Nimrod Theatre Company, helping to build the premises with scrap timber. He was the Artistic Director of the Pros and Cons Playhouse at Parramatta Gaol from 1979 to 1981, and established the drama service on Kiribati National Radio. His acting c ...
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Nicholas Bell
Nicholas Bell (born 15 August 1958) is an English actor who has worked in Australia for more than 20 years. He works regularly with the Melbourne Theatre Company as well as with all the major television broadcasters in Australia, most notably the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In addition to his work in film and television, Bell has also recorded over a dozen audiobooks with Bolinda, a company based in Melbourne, Australia. In 2001 he accepted on behalf of the cast and crew of the Australian comedy series '' The Games'' the TV Week Logie Award for Most Outstanding Comedy Program. Film and television Film * ''Father'' (1990) as Paul Jamieson * ''Hunting'' (1991) as Piggot * ''Gross Misconduct'' (1993) as Detective Matthews * ''The Feds'' (1993, TV Movie) as Stephen Garrard * ''Paperback Romance'' (1994) as Sophie's Doctor * ''Hotel Sorrento'' (1995) as Edwin * '' Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie'' (1995) as Zordon * '' Shine'' (1996) as Ben Rosen * '' Dark City'' (1 ...
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Sonia Todd
Sonia Todd (born 1959; Adelaide) is an Australian actress. She is best known for her television roles as Sgt. Georgia Rattray in ''Police Rescue'', Meg Fountain in ''McLeod's Daughters'' and Gina Austin in the soap opera ''Home and Away''. Biography She studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art and starred in the play '' Strictly Ballroom'', directed by Baz Luhrmann. She also played the waitress, Sylvia, in the film '' Shine'' directed by Scott Hicks, in the café scene where Geoffrey Rush plays '' Flight of the Bumblebee'' by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to an understandably stunned audience. Todd is married to Rhett Walton and has two sons (born in 1992 and 2000), the first from a previous relationship. Todd became known from the role of 'Georgia Rattray' in the television series ''Police Rescue'', for which she won for an AFI Award in 1991. She was also nominated for an AFI Award for her role in the four-part mini-series ''The Potato Factory'' (2000). From 2001–0 ...
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Googie Withers
Georgette Lizette Withers, CBE, AO (12 March 191715 July 2011), known professionally as Googie Withers, was an English entertainer who was a dancer and actress with a lengthy career spanning some nine decades in theatre, film, and television. She was a well-known actress and star of British films during the Second World War and postwar years. She often starred in British productions, primarily in films with actor and producer John McCallum, whom she married, and together they emigrated in the late 1950s to her husband's native Australia, where they became best known in theatre, although she would play prison governor Faye Boswell in the TV series ''Within These Walls'' during the 1970s and continued to feature in films. Biography Withers was born in Karachi, British India (now Pakistan), to Edgar Withers, a captain in the Royal Navy, and a mother of Dutch French German descent, Lizette Wilhelmina Katarina.Brian McFarlane, ''Assured lady of the screen took no nonsense'', obi ...
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Mental Breakdown
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting, or occur as single episodes. Many disorders have been described, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. Such disorders may be diagnosed by a mental health professional, usually a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. The causes of mental disorders are often unclear. Theories may incorporate findings from a range of fields. Mental disorders are usually defined by a combination of how a person behaves, feels, perceives, or thinks. This may be associated with particular regions or functions of the brain, often in a social context. A mental disorder is one aspect of mental health. Cultural and religious beliefs, as well as social norms, should be taken into account when making a diagnosis. Services are b ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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