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The Torture Garden
''The Torture Garden'' (french: Le Jardin des supplices) is a novel written by the French journalist, novelist and playwright Octave Mirbeau, and was first published in 1899 during the Dreyfus affair. The novel is dedicated: "To the priests, the soldiers, the judges, to those people who educate, instruct and govern men, I dedicate these pages of Murder and Blood." Plot summary Published at the height of the Dreyfus affair, Mirbeau's novel is a loosely assembled reworking of texts composed at different eras, featuring different styles, and showcasing different characters. Beginning with material stemming from articles on the 'Law of Murder' discussed in the "Frontispiece" ("The Manuscript"), the novel continues with a farcical critique of French politics with "En Mission" ("The Mission"): a French politician's aide is sent on a pseudo-scientific expedition to China when his presence at home would be compromising. It then moves on to an account of a visit to a Cantonese prison by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau (16 February 1848 – 16 February 1917) was a French novelist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, journalist and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, whilst still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde with highly transgressive novels that explored violence, abuse and psychological detachment. His work has been translated into 30 languages. Biography Aesthetic and political struggles The grandson of Norman notaries and the son of a doctor, Mirbeau spent his childhood in a village in Normandy, Rémalard, pursuing secondary studies at a Jesuit college in Vannes, which expelled him at the age of fifteen. Two years after the traumatic experience of the 1870 war, he was tempted by a call from the Bonapartist leader Dugué de la Fauconnerie, who hired him as private secretary and introduced him to ''L'Ordre de Paris''. After his debut in journalism in the service of the Bonapartists, and his debut in li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State (polity)
A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state. One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a "state" is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, although other definitions are not uncommon.Cudworth et al., 2007: p. 95Salmon, 2008p. 54 Absence of a state does not preclude the existence of a society, such as stateless societies like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy that "do not have either purely or even primarily political institutions or roles". The level of governance of a state, government being considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states, is used to determine whether it has failed. In a federal union, the term "state" is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include “province”, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pierre Michel
Pierre Michel (born 11 June 1942), is a professor of literature and a scholar specializing in the French writer Octave Mirbeau. Michel was born in Toulon, the son of the historian Henri Michel. After defending his doctoral dissertation on the works of Octave Mirbeau at the University of Angers in 1992, Michel founded a year later, the "Société Octave Mirbeau", a literary society he is currently presiding. He is also the founder and editor in chief of ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau ''Cahiers Octave Mirbeau'' is a French literary journal founded in 1994 by French scholar and Octave Mirbeau specialist Pierre Michel. The journal is based in Angers Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is ...'' (1993). A biographer and indefatigable authority of Mirbeau's work, Michel has published critical editions of all his work: novels, plays, articles and correspondence. Pierre Michel was awarded the Sévigné prize in October 2003 for his edition of the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torture Garden (film)
''Torture Garden'' is a 1967 British anthology horror film directed by Freddie Francis and starring Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant (actor), Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing. The score was a collaboration between Hammer Studios, Hammer horror regulars James Bernard (composer), James Bernard and Don Banks. Made by Amicus Productions, it is one of producer Milton Subotsky's trademark "portmanteau" films, an omnibus of short stories (in this case all by ''Psycho (novel), Psycho'' author Robert Bloch, who adapted his own work for the screenplay) linked by a single narrative. Plot Prologue Five people visit a Traveling carnival, fairground sideshow run by showman Dr. Diabolo (Burgess Meredith). Having shown them a handful of Haunted attraction (simulated), haunted house-style attractions, he promises them a genuinely scary experience if they will pay extra. Their curiosity gets the better of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horror Film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious or folk beliefs. Cinematic techniques used in horror films have been shown to provoke psychological reactions in an audience. Horror films have existed for more than a century. Early inspirations from before the development of film include folklore, religious beliefs and superstitions of different cultures, and the Gothic and horror literature of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley. From origins in silent films and German Expressionism, horror only became a codified genre after the release of ''Dracula'' (1931). Many sub-genres emerged in subsequent decades, including body horror, comedy horror, slasher films, supernatural horror and psychological horror. The genre has been produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nucleus Films
Nucleus Films is a UK-based independent DVD and Blu-Ray distribution label and private limited company, founded in 2003 by researcher and writer Marc Morris and film director Jake West. The label distributes rare cult films in the horror and erotica genres. They have also produced a range of documentaries and featurettes about the making of films, noted film directors and the fight against censorship. The label's first titles were Between Your Legs, which premiered at London's FrightFest Film Festival in August 2003, and ''The Ugliest Woman In The World''. Both were released on DVD in the UK in September 2005. In October 2007, Nucleus Films released ''Grindhouse Trailer Classics'', the first of an ongoing series of compilations comprising exploitation film trailers from the 1960s and 1980s. A fifth compilation is planned for release in 2017. Research by Nucleus Films has contributed to a greater understanding of the Video Nasties phenomenon, with archive and analysis demonstrated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Claude Carrière
Jean-Claude Carrière (; 17 September 1931 – 8 February 2021) was a French novelist, screenwriter and actor. He received an Academy Award for best short film for co-writing '' Heureux Anniversaire'' (1963), and was later conferred an Honorary Oscar in 2014. He was nominated for the Academy Award three other times for his work in ''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' (1972), ''That Obscure Object of Desire'' (1977), and ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being'' (1988). He also won a César Award for Best Original Screenplay in ''The Return of Martin Guerre'' (1983). Carrière was an alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and was president of La Fémis, the French state film school that he helped establish. He was noted as a frequent collaborator with Luis Buñuel on the screenplays of the latter's late French films. Early life Carrière was born in Colombières-sur-Orb in southwestern France on 17 September 1931. His family worked as vintners, and his parent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pascal Lainé
Pascal Lainé (born 10 May 1942 in Anet, Eure-et-Loir) is a French academic, novelist, and writer. Awarded both the Prix Médicis (1971 for ''l'Irrévolution'') and the Goncourt (1974 for '' La Dentellière''), Pascal Lainé has published over 20 novels and has written for television, theater, and film. While recovering from childhood illnesses, Lainé discovered novelists Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo, aspiring to their kind of voluminous writing, but in school he focused on philosophy and history, becoming an avid student of Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger. He was also drawn to Marxism (both by conviction and from a desire to rile his parents) and he chose Russian as his second foreign language, permitting him to read Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the original. Lainé studied philosophy at l'École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and began his career as a teacher first at thLycée technique de Saint-Quentinand later at the Lyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city has 3.26 million inhabitants. Its continuously built-up urban area (whose outer suburbs extend well beyond the boundaries of the administrative metropolitan city and even stretch into the nearby country of Switzerland) is the fourth largest in the EU with 5.27 million inhabitants. According to national sources, the population within the wider Milan metropolitan area (also known as Greater Milan), is estimated between 8.2 million and 12.5 million making it by far the largest metropolitan area in Italy and one of the largest in the EU.* * * * Milan is considered a leading alpha global city, with strengths in the fields of art, chemicals, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian Language
Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 million people (2022), Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.Ethnologue report for language code:ita (Italy) – Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version Itali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits,Barcelona: Población por municipios y sexo – Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (National Statistics Institute) its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of List of countries where Spanish is an official language, 20 countries. It is the world's list of languages by number of native speakers, second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's list of languages by total number of speakers, fourth-most spoken language overall after English language, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani language, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance languages, Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Iberian Romance languages, Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
