Obsessions

Skeptical young detective Ichabod Crane gets transferred to the hamlet of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where he is tasked with investigating the decapitations of three people – murders the townsfolk attribute to a legendary specter, The Headless Horseman.

The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.

A Spanish orchestra conductor deals with the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend.

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.

A film producer murders his star actress during an erotic "game" and makes it look like suicide. The dead girl's lesbian lover discovers what happened, and plots her revenge.

Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves home with the intent to track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.

Between a four-year gap in the murder of a young girl, the daughter of a well-known sculptor is discovered dead, and her parents conduct an investigation, only to discover they are in over their heads as the body-count keeps rising.

A World War II vet sets out in 1948 to avenge the death of his wife at the hands of Nazis. His targets are four Germans, a Sicilian, and a Hungarian who committed the atrocities. He is aided by a CIA operative, who has another agenda. One of the targeted men is being groomed by the US to become the West German chancellor and is to be protected. Along the way, a third person joins the team.

Detectives Grijpstra and De Gier are sent to investigate the case of a man who apparently hanged himself in a center for oriental meditation. It is ruled as suicide and the case seems to be closed, but the same night there is an attempted break in. The investigation hits a dead end and everyone involved is a suspect. Based on the book "The Corpse in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen” by Jan-Willem van de Wetering.

A man visits his girlfriend in Amsterdam after the war. He soon finds himself, for inexplicable reasons, in a country house where two women as 'white slaves' have to learn all kinds of erotic skills, and where a private detective, who has sold his own wife to an Arab in Tangier, comes to investigate.

While hiding from bullies in his school's attic, a young boy discovers the extraordinary land of Fantasia, through a magical book called The Neverending Story. The book tells the tale of Atreyu, a young warrior who, with the help of a luck dragon named Falkor, must save Fantasia from the destruction of The Nothing.

Laura and Fabrizio have been meeting every summer in the forest by her parent's summer home. Fabrizio is a solitary boy with only his dog for company; Laura a sweet but unconfident child. This summer new aspects enter into their story as both are growing up. Laura is falling in love with Fabrizio, while he displays a new sexual awareness of her masked by his malice. Things develop further when they meet Sylvia who, unlike the innocent Laura, is confident and assertive. Fabrizio develops a fascination with her, eventually bribing Laura to fetch her to the forest to join them in play.

The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.

Emmanuelle and her architect husband continue their amoral lifestyle in the Seychelles. But when a casual dilliance between her and a film director starts to turn serious her husband shows very traditional signs of jealousy.

Once again, Bastian is transported to the world of Fantasia which he recently managed to save from destruction. However, the land is now being destroyed by an evil sorceress, Xayide, so he must join up with Atreyu and face the Emptiness once more.

A young boy must restore order when a group of bullies steal the magical book that acts as a portal between Earth and the imaginary world of Fantasia.

A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

Ari Ben Canaan, a passionate member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, attempts to transport 600 Jewish refugees on a dangerous voyage from Cyprus to Palestine on a ship named the Exodus. He faces obstruction from British forces, who will not grant the ship passage to its destination.

Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.

Andras Vayda grows up in a turbulent, war-torn Hungary, where he procures local girls for the occupying G.I.'s during World War II. Disappointed by girls of his age, he meets Maya, a married women in her thirties, who tutors him in the lessons of love and romance. Maya is only the first of many mature women that Andras will meet through his teenage and young adult life.

At the deathbed of his used-to-be militant mother an older man looks back at his childhood, when he was in love with his sensual aunt Coleta.

Tarzan returns to his homeland of Africa to save his home from destruction.

25-year-old Michael has been released from prison after a five-year sentence. He moves into a big apartment block, filled with young women who gladly have sex with him.

Corrie and Betsie ten Boom are middle-aged sisters working in their father's watchmaker shop in pre-World War II Holland. Their uneventful lives are disrupted with the coming of the Nazis. Suspected of hiding Jews and caught breaking rationing rules, they are sent to a concentration camp, where their Christian faith keeps them from despair and bitterness.

Dutch television adaptation of the English theatre musical 'Love from Judy' by Eric Maschwitz and Hugh Martin, based on the novel 'Daddy-Long-Legs' by Jean Webster. Jerusha Abbott, a girl growing up in the orphanage, is called to the headmistress where she hears that one of the orphanage's wealthiest regents has taken notice of her fate and wants her to study to be a writer. One condition is that Jerusha has to write him a short letter once a month, stating what progress she is making.

Dutch television adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play "Saint Joan".

The viscous conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is now a generation old. For many of the children of the region, the terrorist war has been going on for their entire lifetimes, killing their family and friends, and overshadowing their lives. They are the Children of Rage

Three robbers who have just robbed a gas station flee into the zoo. But in their haste, they lose the note telling them where they hid the money. The note is found by two children who help take care of the animals in their spare time... This is the beginning of an exciting adventure, in which the children track down the crooks. In a wild chase through the zoo, the animals also make themselves heard, and the children receive help from an unexpected source!

VARA exists 80 years! We celebrate this with the DVD you have in your hands. About 5 hours top entertainment from VARA's entertainment cabinet. Fragments that will take you from 1958 to now. You still remember Dorus with his mouse trap? Or the "Kopspijkers" cabaret with the song "One Day Fly", Theo Maassen with his farewell speech of Henk van den Tillaart or Harry Vermegen and Henk Spaan with Popie Jopie? That's all on this DVD, and more!