Stefan Zweig was the most read author of the German language in the 1930s. He believed in a united, peaceful Europe and travelled most parts of the world. He was a pacifist and was torn apart by to the cruelties and horrors of the second World War. He committed suicide in Brasil. This documentary tells the story of his life.
Twenty years ago, novelist Salman Rushdie was a wanted man with a million pound bounty on his head. His novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked riots across the Muslim world. The ailing religious leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had invoked a little-known religious opinion - a fatwa - and effectively sentenced Rushdie to death. This film looks back on the extraordinary events which followed the publication of the book and the ten year campaign to get the fatwa lifted. Interviews with Rushdie's friends and family and testimony from leaders of Britain's Muslim community and the Government reveal the inside story of the affair.
In 1847, British writer Emily Brontë (1818-48), perhaps the most enigmatic of the three Brontë sisters, published her novel Wuthering Heights, a dark romance set in the desolation of the moors, a unique work of early Victorian literature that stunned contemporary critics.
Janko Kráľ
Performance and conversation with husband-and-wife poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon at a New Jersey festival, in their Wilmot (N.H.) hometown and their Eagle Pond farmhouse.
Poet, essayist, novelist and filmmaker, Michel Houellebecq has always had close ties with the cinema and the world of the visual arts, which have accompanied and extended his reflexions since the start of his career, as the frequent allusions to them in his novels attest. This portrait of Houellebecq is from his early days of bad boy provocateur stardom. Having just published Plateforme in french and enjoying the many translations of Les Particules élémentaires.
The Hurricane Maria represented a historic event for the island of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican spirit at the helm of this natural disaster was shattered beyond repair. And from the rumble the Puerto Rican spirit will be reborn again. Omar Iloy makes a desperate call to the wounded spirit of the island, a call for hope and help.
Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.
Intimate portrait of poet, playwright, painter and filmmaker Derek Walcott, set in his beloved native island, St Lucia.
De la rivière à la mer
A short film, based on a series of poems, about childhood, the break with parental, and war.
Combining the authenticity of Indigenous writer Rebecca Thomas' narrative, the power of poetry, and stunning animation, "I Place You into the Fire" invites viewers to consider their roles in fostering understanding, compassion and justice.
A biography of the poet W. B. Yeats and his contribution to the Irish independence movement as a Protestant nationalist.
The documentary is titled after Arkadaş Z. Özger’s poem “Hello My Dear” which had caused much controversy in the period it was first published. Considered to be in defiance of heteronormativity, the said poem includes references to the poet’s personality, his family, his relationship to the society, and his “unexpected” death, which came three years after its publication. Today, 50 years after it was written, the documentary follows these same lines in the poem utilising cinematic elements. The documentary also rediscovers the poetics; reaches out to the family, the comrades, the friendships, departing from the official historical accounts, cognizant of his experience of otherness, in pursuit of the “lost” portrait of Arkadaş Z. Özger.
Gerais da Pedra
An exploration on Paz's poetry by Paz himself, his childhood, his ideas about love and the nature of art
Fernanda Pivano: A Farewell to Beat
Na slovo s Alexandrom Matuškom
Pod hasprunskou slivkou
Filmed on location in Montana and Washington State, this 1976 biography of poet and teacher Richard Hugo features readings of some of his most famous poems as well as interviews with his family and friends.