June 2nd 1989, the boys’ prep school drama Dead Poets Society, starring Robin Williams, is released in selected U.S. theatres. Set in 1959 at a fictional all-male preparatory school called Welton Academy, the film starred Robin Williams as John Keating, a charismatic English teacher who encourages his students to “seize the day” (“carpe diem” in Latin) and embrace the passion for life expressed by great poets like Walt Whitman. With Keating’s guidance, several students (including characters played by Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles) revive an underground campus organization known as the Dead Poets Society. When their rebellious behaviour gets the boys in trouble with school and family authority figures (with tragic consequences in one case), Keating is taken to task for his influence on them. Directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay by Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society featured a soaring score by the multiple Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India).