Ronald Pickup

Vudú is a feature documentary that tells the story of a group of young African artists whose lives are marked by magic and animistic religion. Their dream is to be able to act one day outside their country, Benin, and show in distant peoples their dances and interpretations. Between dreams and realities they will travel to Spain motivated by the faith in their religion, and helped by voodoo magic rites they will try Fulfill their wish.

A mother's love for her children leads to a son's revenge for her death in this dramatic thriller that begins during the Greek civil war. Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers. —Robert B. Young <youngb@tastemaker.com>

The story of Vaslav Nijinsky, who is widely believed to be one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time. Based on Romola Nijinsky's "Last Years Of Nijinski. Set in the early 1910s at a time of passionate artistic experimentalism, and based on biographical fact, this is the story of Vaslav Nijinsky, the young and brilliant but headstrong premier ballet dancer and aspiring choreographer of the Ballets Russes. The company is managed by the famous Sergei Diaghilev, a controlling, fiercely possessive impresario. The increasing tension between these powerful egos, exacerbated by homosexual desire and jealousy, becomes triangular when young ballerina Romola de Pulsky determinedly attempts to draw the increasingly mentally-unstable Nijinsky away from Diaghilev. —Eric Wees <eric_wees@pch.gc.ca>