Fearful that the Russians would continue their lead in the space race and be the first to put a man on the moon, NASA felt an enormous pressure to push the Apollo Program forward as quickly as possible, though they knew that pushing too hard could lead to the ultimate disaster.
During the general elections of 1994, Tunin, a mechanic with a firm belief in communism fears that his party is about to lose, so he journeys to a northern village to stir up trouble.
Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
A family, trying to pull themselves together after losing their infant son, moves into a new home, where, almost immediately, the mother begins experiencing paranormal phenomena.
Teenager, Clare Steves, is kidnapped by an old boyfriend, Eddie Spencer, who demands $250,000. The ransom is paid and Clare is released, but when the kidnapers are caught, they claim that the whole scheme was Clare's idea as a way to punish her father.