A Traveler's Needs

Iron and Silk is a 1990 movie based on the eponymous book by American writer Mark Salzman. It details his journey to China after college to study Chinese wu shu, better known in the west as kung fu, and to teach English. Though not trained as an actor, Salzman starred as himself, as did Pan Qingfu, who claimed no one else could portray him on film. Salzman's experiences occurred in Changsha, Hunan, though the film was shot in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. (Wikipedia)

In late 19th-century England, Jude aspires to be an academic, but is hobbled by his blue-collar background. Instead, he works as a stonemason and is trapped in an unloving marriage to a farmer's daughter named Arabella. But when his wife leaves him, Jude sees an opportunity to improve himself. He moves to the city and begins an affair with his married cousin, Sue, courting tragedy every step of the way.

When linguistics professor Henry Higgins boasts that he can pass off Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle as a princess with only six months' training, Colonel George Pickering takes him up on the bet. Eliza moves into Higgins's home and begins her rigorous training after the professor comes to a financial agreement with her dustman father, Alfred. But the plucky young woman is not the only one undergoing a transformation.

A British Guianese engineer starts a job as a high school teacher in London’s East End, where his uninterested and delinquent pupils are in desperate need of attention and care.

Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.

In 1943 Malmö, 15-year-old Stig is attracted to his teacher Viola, 22 years his senior, who, drawn to his youth and innocence, believes the lad is a God-sent relief from her miserable marriage to a drunken, unfaithful lout.

Professor Mirella Buzzati, recovering from a failed relationship that ended with a divorce from her husband, travels to Perugia where she has obtained a mathematics teaching position at a high school. Her hatred of men, evident during the train ride and in her interactions with male colleagues who quickly flock to her, quickly yields to the attractiveness of Alain, a student nicknamed "the dark and handsome" by the high school girls. He already has a relationship with Giorgina, a fellow student of the same age and a fanatical militant of "Lotta Continua." In an effort to win over her idol, Mirella becomes unscrupulous in her teaching, preaches political and sexual revolution; she earns the headmaster's rebukes, and heaps scathing criticism on her rival Giorgina. After a stint in Paris with a lesbian colleague, the professor resumes her attack and obtains Alain's physical performance, but not her love: the boy understands her well and deeply despises her.

A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.

Eleven-year-old petty criminal Maroa lives with her violent grandmother Brigida in Caracas. After her boyfriend Carlos is involved in a shooting, Maroa is arrested and sent to a school where Joaquin conducts the youth orchestra, and he asks the naturally talented Maroa to join. Days now revolve around the classes that Joaquin, the shy and unconventional teacher, gives her. He is immediately interested in this talented young girl, who lacks all notion of discipline. Joaquin, the only person to offer hope in the midst of her rejection, finds that through Maroa, his world has also changed forever.

Dimitris Thalassias is a single singing teacher at a senior high school in Athens and undertakes the care of a child abandoned by its mother at the door of the foundling hospital. He does everything required to raise it right, but he sees his life changing unexpectedly, since his fiancée leaves him, and his relations with his students go from bad to worse. While this is happening, the mother shows up to claim her child. In the end, everything is corrected, and a solution is provided through marriage.

Jaime works as a librarian at a music school. It's no coincidence that his greatest passion is music. A self-taught pianist with a personality marked by difficulties in social interaction, he will meet someone who discovers his talent and will help him overcome many of his insecurities.

The film starts in the early evening of a normal day: Sophie, a 20 year old girl, is pregnant and wanders through the night to get sure about her future life. Does she want to be a mother or do an abortion? Does she love her friend or not? Who is the father of her unborn baby? Trying to figure out what to do Sophie encounters many people, and in the morning she has come to a decision. But this is not the movie's end...

Lucas Simons, an 11-year-old filmmaker, is obsessed with death after the loss of his brother. When Lucas accidentally captures a mysterious presence in one of his films, he inadvertently becomes a YouTube phenomenon, and must learn to live life in the spotlight while also learning how to once again start living life to its fullest.

A woman catches her husband in bed with a much younger lady. Shocked and distraught, the woman leaves her husband. She decides to embark on a road trip of erotic self discovery. The woman meets a cartoonist during her sensual pilgrimage and gets involved in a torrid sexual affair with him.

Rebellious young Axel Blackmar gets caught up into the family car business when his cousin, Paul, coaxes him to come to Arizona to attend the wedding of their Uncle Leo. As Axel makes the decision to try selling Cadillacs with his family, he meets an eccentric woman named Elaine and her equally quirky stepdaughter, Grace. Their lives become inextricably intertwined through romance, dreams – and death.

Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?