A Beguine convent in Amsterdam.

A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion. In modern English usage, "convent" or "nunnery" almost invariably refers to a community of women, while "monastery", "priory" or "friary" are used for men; but in historical usage they are often interchangeable.

Technically, a "monastery" or "nunnery" is a community of monastics, whereas a "convent" is a community of mendicants ("friary" specifying a male community specifically), and a "canonry" a community of canons regular. The terms "abbey" and "priory" can be applied to both monasteries and canonries and distinguish those headed by an Abbot from the lesser dependent houses headed by a Prior.

See also[link]

• Abbey
• Christian monasticism
• Monastery

External links[link]

•  "Convent". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• Carmelite Monastery of the Sacred Hearts —- an example of a modern-day convent
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Convent". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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John Malkovich
John Malkovich, August 2009
Born	John Gavin Malkovich (1953-12-09) December 9, 1953 (age 58) Christopher, Illinois, US
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Education	Benton Consolidated High School
Alma mater	Illinois State University
Occupation	Actor, film producer/director, fashion designer
Years active	1984–present
Home town	Benton, Illinois
Spouse	Glenne Headly (1982–88) Nicoletta Peyran (1989–present)
Children	2
Parents	Daniel Leon Malkovich, Joe Anne (née Choisser)
Awards	National Board of Review Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award

John Gavin Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award nominations. He has also appeared in critically acclaimed films such as Empire of the Sun, The Killing Fields, Dangerous Liaisons, Of Mice and Men, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, and Red. He will produce the film version of the book The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Early life[link]

Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois. His paternal grandparents were Croats, natives of Ozalj in Croatia.^[1][2][3][4] His mother was of Scottish and German ancestry.^[5] He grew up in Benton, Illinois, in a large house on South Main Street. His father, Daniel Leon Malkovich, was a state conservation director and publisher of Outdoor Illinois, a conservation magazine. His mother, Joe Anne (née Choisser), owned the Benton Evening News (a local newspaper in Benton, Il.), as well as Outdoor Illinois.^[6][7][8] Malkovich attended Logan Grade School,^{[citation needed]} Webster Junior High, and Benton Consolidated High School, in Benton, Illinois. During his high school years, he appeared in various plays and the musical, Carousel. He was also a member of a folk/rock musical trio, and was a member of a local summer theater/comedy project in Benton in 1972, where he co-starred in Jean-Claude van Itallie's America Hurrah. Upon graduation from high school, he entered Eastern Illinois University, and then transferred to Illinois State University, where he majored in theatre.^[9]

Career[link]

In 1976, Malkovich, along with Joan Allen, Gary Sinise, and Glenne Headly, became a charter member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.^[6] He moved to New York City in 1980 to appear in a Steppenwolf production of the Sam Shepard play True West, for which he won an Obie Award.^[10][11] Malkovich then directed a Steppenwolf co-production, the 1984 revival of Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead, for which he received a second Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award.^[10] His Broadway debut that year was as Biff in Death of a Salesman, alongside Dustin Hoffman as Willy. Malkovich won an Emmy Award^[12] for this role when the play was adapted for television by CBS in 1985.

One of the actor's first forays into film was as an extra alongside Allen, Terry Kinney, George Wendt, and Laurie Metcalf in Robert Altman's 1978 film A Wedding. He made his feature film debut in 1984, as Sally Field's blind boarder Mr. Will in Places in the Heart; for his portrayal of Mr. Will, Malkovich received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also portrayed Al Rockoff in The Killing Fields. He continued to have steady work in films such as Empire of the Sun, directed by Steven Spielberg, and the 1987 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. A few years later, Malkovich became a star when he portrayed the sinister and sensual Valmont in the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons. He later reprised this role for the music video of "Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox.

In 1990 he recited, in Croatian, verses of Croatian national anthem Lijepa naša domovino (Our Beautiful Homeland) in Nenad Bach's song "Can We Go Higher?".^[13]

Malkovich starred in the 1992 film adaptation of John Steinbeck's award-winning novella Of Mice and Men as Lennie alongside Gary Sinise as George. In 1994, he was nominated for another Oscar, in the same category, for In the Line of Fire. Though he played the title role in the Charlie Kaufman-penned Being John Malkovich, he played a slight variation of himself, as indicated by the character's middle name of "Horatio". Malkovich has a cameo in the movie Adaptation.—also written by Kaufman—appearing as himself during the filming of Being John Malkovich. The Dancer Upstairs, Malkovich's directorial film debut, was released in 2002. Recent film roles include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Beowulf, Burn After Reading, Changeling, Red and Secretariat.

Malkovich has hosted three episodes of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live. The first occasion was in January 1989 with musical guest Anita Baker; the second in October 1993 with musical guest Billy Joel (and special appearance by former cast member Jan Hooks); and the third was in December 2008 with musical guest T.I. with Swizz Beatz (and special appearances by Justin Timberlake, Molly Sims, and Jamie-Lynn Sigler).

In keeping with his renaissance-man image, he created his own fashion company, Mrs. Mudd, in 2002 in a partnership with Italian businessman Francesco Rulli. The company released its John Malkovich menswear collection, "Uncle Kimono," in 2003^[14] and its second clothing line, "Technobohemian," in 2010.^[15] Malkovich designed the outfits himself.^[16]

In a 2008 interview on College Hour, Malkovich revealed that he has been discussing making a motion picture adaptation of the Arnon Grünberg novel The History of My Baldness.^[17]

In November 2009, Malkovich appeared in an advertisement for Nespresso with fellow actor George Clooney. He portrayed Quentin Turnbull in the film adaption of Jonah Hex.^[18]

In 2011, Malkovich directed Julian Sands in A Celebration of Harold Pinter in the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.^[19][20]

In 2008, Malkovich portrayed the story of Jack Unterweger in a performance for one actor, two sopranos, and period orchestra entitled Seduction and Despair, which premiered at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica, CA.^[21] A fully staged version of the production, entitled The Infernal Comedy premiered in Vienna in July 2009. The show has since been performed in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 throughout Europe, North America and South America^[22].

Malkovich is known for his distinctive voice, which The Guardian describes as "a reedy, faintly orgasmic drawl".^[23]

Personal life and political views[link]

Interview at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Malkovich was married to actress Glenne Headly from 1982 to 1988. They divorced after Malkovich became involved with Michelle Pfeiffer, his co-star in Dangerous Liaisons.^[11] He later met his long-term partner Nicoletta Peyran on the set of The Sheltering Sky where she was the second assistant director, in 1989. They have two children; Amandine (born 1990) and Loewy (born 1992).

Malkovich is fluent in French, and for nearly 10 years lived and worked in a theater in Southern France. He and his family left France in a dispute over taxes in 2003,^[11][24] and since then he has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[25] In a 2008 interview on The Late Show with David Letterman, Malkovich said he had just spent five weeks that summer living in France.

Malkovich lost millions^[26] to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme when it collapsed in 2008.^[27]

Malkovich stated in a 2011 interview that "I’m not a political person actually, and I don’t have an ideology." He also said that he hadn't voted since George McGovern lost his presidential run in 1972.^[28] According to actor William Hootkins, who worked with Malkovich in BBC Television's Rocket to the Moon, Malkovich is "so right-wing you have to wonder if he's kidding."^[11]

When asked in an interview by the Toronto Star whether it was necessary to have spiritual beliefs to portray a spiritual character, he said "No, I'd say not...I'm an atheist. I wouldn't say I'm without spiritual belief particularly, or rather, specifically. Maybe I'm agnostic, but I'm not quite sure there's some great creator somehow controlling everything and giving us free will. I don't know; it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me."^[29]

In a 2002 appearance at the Cambridge Union Society, when asked whom he would most like to "fight to the death", Malkovich replied that he would "rather just shoot" journalist Robert Fisk and British MP George Galloway.^[30] Both Fisk and Galloway reacted with outrage.^[31][32]

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

Director[link]

• Johnny Loves Bobby (1989)
• Strap-Hanging (1999)
• The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
• Hideous Man (2002)
• Blazing Satchels (2008)
• Lady Behave

Writer[link]

• Hideous Man (2002)

Producer[link]

• The Accidental Tourist (1988) (executive producer)
• Ghost World (2001)
• The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
• The Libertine (2004)
• Kill the Poor (2006)
• Art School Confidential (2006)
• Juno (2007)
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Malkovich

• John Malkovich at the Internet Movie Database
• John Malkovich at the Internet Broadway Database
• John Malkovich at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• John Malkovich on Charlie Rose
• "John Malkovich" in conversation with Jim Sharman at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney Festival, January 2011
• Works by or about John Malkovich in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• John Malkovich collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• How We Met: John Malkovich & Bella Freud – brief 2008 interview in The Independent
• John Malkovich in Mexico
• John Malkovich at Emmys.com

Walerian Borowczyk (September 2, 1923 – February 3, 2006) was a Polish film director. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.^[1]

Biography[link]

The house in Le Vésinet near Paris where the artist lived his last thirty years.

Born in Kwilcz, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, then devoted himself to painting and lithography [1], including the creation of posters for the cinema [2], which earned him a national prize in 1953. In 1959, he settled in Paris.

His early films were surreal animations, some only a few seconds long, including several comic abecedaria. His most acclaimed early films were Był sobie raz (Time Upon a Once) (1957) and Dom (House) (1958, with Jan Lenica). In 1959, he worked with Chris Marker for Les Astronautes. Major works of this period include the stop motion film Renaissance (1963), which uses reverse motion to depict various destroyed objects (a prayer book, a stuffed toy, etc.) re-assembling themselves, only to be destroyed again when the last object (a bomb) is complete, and the nightmarish Jeux des anges (1964), selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time.^[2] In 1967, he directed his first animated feature film, Théâtre de Monsieur & Madame Kabal: un film dessiné pour les adultes (Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre).

Borowczyk moved into live-action feature film with Goto, l'île d'amour (Goto, Isle of Love) (1968) and Blanche (1971), both tales of illicit love thwarted by jealous husbands, and both starring his own wife, Ligia Branice. One of his most appreciated films of this period, Dzieje grzechu (A Story of Sin) (1975), which was nominated for Palme d'or, is an adaptation of a Polish literary classic by Stefan Żeromski. Like his 1966 short film Rosalie (a Guy de Maupassant adaptation and a Silver Bear winner), Dzieje grzechu had successfully rendered the themes of seduction and infanticide. Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales) (1974) and his later work, including Interno di un convento (Behind Convent Walls) (1977) (inspired by Promenades dans Rome of Stendhal) and Cérémonie d'amour (Rites of Love) (1988) have been controversial, lauded by some for their unique surrealist vision and derided by others as contentless pornography. Especially, La bête (The Beast, 1975) (based on the novel Lokis by Prosper Mérimée and originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own, but then in 1974 as the fifth story in Contes immoraux) was seen by many as a decline in the director's career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by prominent critics such as Ado Kyrou. His 1980 film Lulu was based on the eponymous character created by Frank Wedekind.

In 1981, he made Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (Blood of Dr Jekyll), a version of the Jekyll and Hyde story starring Udo Kier and Patrick Magee and depicting Jekyll's transformation as a violent rebellion against the Victorian morality. In his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman described the film as "dark, misanthropic and interestingly offensive". He made a brief return to animation with his 1984 short film Scherzo infernal. In 1987, he directed Emmanuelle 5, an installment of the Emmanuelle series, that was also released in a hardcore video-only version. He was unhappy with the project due to a dispute concerning the casting of lead actress Monique Gabrielle. In 1988 and 1990, he directed four episodes for the series Série rose: Les Chefs d’œuvre de la littérature érotique on M6.

Many of Borowczyk's films use historical settings, including Ars Amandi: l'arte di amare (The Art of Love) (1983), set in the time of Ovid (and featuring the poet as a character); Blanche, set during the Middle Ages; and three of the four episodes in Contes immoraux, set respectively in the nineteenth century, the sixteenth century, and the Borgia papacy.

A number of his films (like the "tale" La Marée (The Tide) in Contes immoraux, the 1976 La Marge (The Streetwalker), the episode Marceline in Les Héroïnes du mal: Margherita, Marceline, Marie (Immoral Women) (1979), and Cérémonie d'amour were based on stories by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. A less usual product of this cooperation was Une collection particulière of 1973, a representation of Borowczyk's collection of pornographic items, with Mandiargues having written (and read) the narration.

Borowczyk was the author of two books; Anatomia diabła (Anatomy of Devil) (1992) and Moje polskie lata (My Polish Years) (2002).

He died of heart failure in Paris in 2006. He was 82 years old.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs (with a chapter dedicated to Borowczyk). ISBN 0-312-13519-X
• Nightmare Movies (1988) by Kim Newman. ISBN 0-517-57366-0
• Walerian Borowczyk: Cinema of Erotic Dreams, by Jeremy Mark Robinson, Crescent Moon Publisher 2008, ISBN 1-86171-230-8

External links[link]

• Walerian Borowczyk at the Internet Movie Database
• Walerian Borowczyk's Heroines of Desire A review of the film Les Héroïnes du mal, in relation with Borowczyk cinema
• Walerian Borowczyk On Razor Reel