Stark & imperative, but shot through with a sense of warm humanity, Beth Steel's debut play Ditch is a clear-eyed look at how we might behave when the conveniences of our civilisation are taken away, & a frightening vision of a future that could all too easily be ours. ...

Ditherus is tempted into buying a sword from a mysterious peddler. Searched by centurion Marcus Furius when he gets home, Ditherus is thrown into prison when the sword is discovered & sentenced to death as a traitorous thief. Ditherus & his servant are taken to Gladiator School where the motto is ' Death or Glory
- but most likely Death'.
...

Jules (Frederic Andrei) is a Parisian mail courier in possession of two highly sought-after tapes: the first contains a rare recording of American opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Fernandez), with whom he has fallen in love; the second is a tape slipped into his bag by a young woman just before she is murdered. The unwitting Jules thus finds himself being pursued by Taiwanese bootleggers & a thuggish gang of drug-dealers, who will do anything to get their hands on the cassettes. The directorial debut of Jean-Jacques Beineix (' Betty Blue', ' The Moon in the Gutter'). ...

A story that begins in 1903 when George Pocaterra left Italy & came to the Canadian Rockies with hopes of striking it rich. In 1933, he returned to Italy, where he met & fell in love with Norma Piper, a Calgary singer who had moved to Italy to study opera. They eventually married, & he took over the management of Norma's operatic career. ...