Behind the White Glasses

Narrated by Linda Hunt, this documentary examines the life of the late author and gay rights activist Paul Monette. Born in 1945 to a well-off Massachusetts family, Monette grows up unable to accept his homosexuality, for years hiding it from his loved ones while struggling to develop as a writer. In 1978, Monette publishes his first novel, which allows him to come out to his parents. After losing one lover to AIDS in 1986, he becomes a ferocious advocate for awareness of the disease.

Umberto Eco, the author of best-selling novels who passed away in February 2016, unveils the secrets behind his undertakings and novels.

An elderly man is working tirelessly to revive the Jewish world lost in the Holocaust. His name is Aharon Appelfeld, and he became one of the greatest Jewish writers of our time. Every day, through his murmuring voice and handwriting, the survivors, the children of Ukraine, the peasants of Yiddishland come alive in the tiny office of a Jerusalem apartment. Aharon Appelfeld, solitary, wants to fight this battle to his last breath.

Tatiana faces an economic crisis that has forced her to be temporarily away from her kids, her "gang", as she calls them. By writing out her feelings and covering her wall with pictures of the kids, Tatiana opens her heart from the loneliness of a rented room in Bogotá. While she attempts with determination to let her kids know that, despite the circumstances, she is still there for them.

Bill Drummond, once the most notorious man in pop music, now travels around the world baking cakes, building beds and shining shoes as part of a twelve year World Tour which is his final art project. This film follows him as he does his work in India and the United States.

In autumn 1944, during the Liberation of Brittany, writer Louis Guilloux worked as an interpreter for the American army. He was a privileged witness to some little-known dramatic aspects of the Liberation: the rapes and murders committed by GIs on French civilians. He also discovered the racism of American military justice. This experience haunted the novelist for thirty years. In 1976, he recounted it in a short novel, "Ok, Joe", which went unnoticed. This film compares his account with the memories of the last witnesses to these forgotten crimes and their punishments.

Bosnian Croat writer Miljenko Jergović and Serbian writer Marko Vidojković replace one another by the steering wheel of Yugo, a symbol of their common past while driving on the Brotherhood and Unity Highway that stretched across five of six republics of Yugoslavia.

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.

In 2002, Sophie Constantinou and Bill Weir interviewed Padgett about his life and works, specifically his friendship and collaborations with the New York School of Poets. These moments were captured as part a series of short films catalyzed by Kenward Elmslie. His vision was to illustrate the artistic spirit of and collaborations among American writers, poets and artists from the late 50s to today.

This film is not a classic portrait but a documentary using fiction to bring Martin Suter’s novels to life while introducing us to the author behind the stories on a whole new level. ‘Fantasy is usually more true than reality itself’ says Suter.

Well-known Croatian author Pero Kvesić, who has been struggling with a severe lung disease, documents his death from his own point of view. Recording his everyday struggle, the picture resembles a peculiar blog filled with self-irony and witty comments about life and death. Although the world around continues to shrink, the hero and the director in one does not cease to fill it with sense.

The documentary story of Harlan Ellison

A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.

Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.

Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.

Ron Padgett (1942- ) is a poet and editor whose artistic career took off during his teenaged years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There, along with Joe Brainard and Dick Gallup, he produced The White Dove Review, an art and culture magazine. Both Padgett and Brainard serendipitously moved together to New York City, where Padgett studied at Columbia University under the tutelage of Kenneth Koch and interacted with various Beat poets. He has taught poetry at various schools in the City, edited volumes such as the Full Court Press and Teachers & Writers Magazine and written volumes of poetry including 2013’s Collected Poems which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He also wrote “memoirs” of both Brainard and fellow Tulsan Ted Berrigan.

It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, musician and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A promising athlete as a child, Philip began experiencing mood swings in his early 20s. His extended family, including his daughter, share their conflicted feelings love, guilt, shame, anger with the camera. They want to make sure he's safe, but how much can they take?

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.

Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor.