I Am Joke, Said Joke

VPRO icon Wim Brands died on April 4, 2016. He was known to the general public as a presenter of the VPRO Boeken program and also closer, with six collections of poetry to his name. This documentary about his life and work, built entirely from archive material, pays tribute to this television personality. A portrait in which attention is also paid to his complicated relationship with death. With a.o. Karl Ove Knausgård, David Sedaris, Ellen Deckwitz and Pieter Boskma. Brands' work merges with his rich inner life and that he chose death at the age of 56 casts a shadow over everything.

Swedish/Estonian writer Mare Kandre (1962-2005): "It's about life and death and it must always be." "She brought her the truth," says Johan von Sydow, referring to the rock mythos and artistic romantic law that is about to die young.

Cartoneras is a documentary that grapples with Latin America’s urban realities, and the cardboard publishing movement that has emerged from these in the 21st century. Reflecting on the different contexts that propelled this form of community publishing, like Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, the independent art scene, and the movements which formed around waste-pickers, the film’s narrative is developed through conversations with important actors from the cartonera world.

In this short documentary, Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski introduces us to Wood Mountain, the south central Saskatchewan village he calls home. In between musings on his poetry, which is tinged with nostalgia and the vast loneliness of the plains, the poet discusses the area’s multicultural background and Native heritage, as well as the customs and stories of these various ethnic groups.

Second part of the trilogy about the Granada poet directed by Juan José Ponce, which focuses on the writer's journey to Argentina and Uruguay

Poet and author Xi Xi is one of Hong Kong's most treasured writers. Though also acclaimed in Taiwan and mainland China for seminal works like the essay Shops, her writings are firmly rooted in the spirit of Hong Kong. Leave it to Fruit Chan, another staunchly grassroots auteur, to make a documentary on Xi Xi's career. Chan sought out renowned critics and writers to discuss Xi Xi's works, starting with 1979's My City. He also juxtaposes photos of a changing Hong Kong with readings of her writings, and even playfully inserts characters from her stories into the film.

A documentary about writer and novelist Liu Yichang.

Poetry, literature, painting and old film clips converge in this lyrical, unusually designed film essay about Le Moulin, the Taiwanese poets’ collective which protested in the 1930s against the cultural superiority of the Japanese occupier and the domination of realism in poetry.

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.

A peculiar portrait of the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) drawn by the extravagant and original look of the Spanish writer Fernando Arrabal, who establishes a bold parallelism between Borges' work and opinions and his own creations, both literary and cinematographic.

The man who invented James Bond: The story of Ian Fleming, real-life spy, ladies' man and sportsman, who was there at the birth of MI-5 and the CIA, and gave the world one of its most enduring and iconic heroes: Bond. James Bond.

An exploration into the life and art of the renowned author of "Last Exit To Brooklyn" and "Requiem For A Dream." Hubert Selby Jr., a self-described "scream looking for a mouth," against all odds, reached international acclaim with his controversial novels. His is a classic story of the great American novelist, overcoming tuberculosis, drug addiction and financial ruin, Selby eventually triumphed in his life and penned seven of the most remarkable and distinctly American books ever written.

An in-depth look at the Canadian rock band Rush, chronicling the band's musical evolution from their progressive rock sound of the '70s to their current heavy rock style.

The documentary is a true story of four real intellectual Europeans from different cultures who are worried about the decline of literature’s life and the destiny of the street level bookshops in every country. That is why they have a mission to save symbolically “the world's last quality books”.

Mark Gatiss explores and celebrates Dracula, an icon of popular culture, asking just why we keep coming back to the count.

An account of the life and work of Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941) narrated by US actress Anjelica Huston.

From Victor Hugo`s classic French novel of the nineteenth century to Tom Hooper`s award winning blockbuster, Les Misérables has undergone one of the most successful transitions from book to stage to screen. In this new documentary, the scintillating journey of Hugo`s universal story is traced from book to stage to screen with contributions from those who have starred in and helped to create the entertainment phenomenon which has captured a place in everyone`s hearts. Helmed by entertainment and celebrity journalist Neil Sean, this insightful documentary traces the events of the Paris insurrection in 1832 and features excerpts from the restored 1978 Les Misérables lm starring Anthony Perkins alongside interviews with Frances Ruffelle, Hugh Jackman, Nick Jonas, Tom Hooper, Alfie Boe, Amanda Seyfried, Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Anne Hathaway.

Cormac McCarthy has spent the last 25 years writing his novels at the mountain top retreat of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico. An institute dedicated to the formal analysis of complex systems. In this documentary filmed at the library at SFI (and in the desert), Cormac in conversation with his colleague David Krakauer, reflects on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious

102 Years in the Heart of Europe: A Portrait of Ernst Jünger (Swedish: 102 år i hjärtat av Europa) is a Swedish documentary film from 1998 directed by Jesper Wachtmeister. It consists of an interview by the journalist Björn Cederberg with the German writer, philosopher and war veteran Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). Jünger talks about his life, his authorship, his interests and ideas. The actor Mikael Persbrandt reads passages from some of Jünger's works, such as Storm of Steel, The Worker, On the Marble Cliffs and The Glass Bees.

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.