Nightingales

"Nightingales" are eight student nurses living off campus in Southern California in this stylish Aaron Spelling production that ultimately was developed into a short-lived series which aired on NBC at the beginning of 1989. Subsequently edited down to 90 minutes, the film later served as the premiere episode for the series, which was reworked to add Suzanne Pleshette and Barry Newman as stars.

In order to keep a promise he made to his wife, an old man sets off to her native village with a bird in a cage. Along the road, together with his granddaughter, he discovers new values, particularly those related to the heart.

Joselito is a child whose mother left town when he was just a baby and whose father has died. He lives with his grandfather, the bellringer of the town, and his best friend is the sexton. He enjoys singing and has not lost hope of someday meeting her mother.

This film tells the story of David Rothenberg’s efforts to gather together an international band of musicians to cross the species line and make music live with nightingales. Because of its spacious parks and the large number of enthusiastically singing birds, Berlin is the best city to make music with nightingales. Almost everything one plays to a nightingale will encourage him to sing more. These encounters becomes a direct window into the unknown, a touch of communication with a being with whom we cannot speak. The play of pure tones jarring against click and buzz, it all becomes not a code but a groove, an amphitheater of rhythms in which we strive to find a place.

An advertisement for Tad Nightingale's "Family Annihilator Shotgun", which aired on WNN during the winter of 1997.

Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's Nightingale and The Emperor's New Clothes are integrated in this marvelous Russian adaptation by fairytale master Nadezhda Kosheverova.