A celebration of Dr. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America’s most defining civil rights moments. From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her swinging soirees with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, we are given special access to interviews with Dr. Angelou whose indelible charm and quick wit make it easy to love her.
An intimate documentary about the life and times of Swiss poet and folk singer Mani Matter (1936-1972), seen from his friends' perspective.
This film is dedicated to Mas-Félipe Delavouët, the poet discovered by Lawrence Durrell, who wrote 14,000 verses in Provençal over a period of thirty years, and who died on November 18, 1990. "The sky, history and Mediterranean and Provençal myths are the inexhaustable wellspring of this man rooted down there, near Salon-de-Provence" (J.-D. Pollet). "Mas-Félipe Delavouët wrote five books in Provençal, 14,000 verses. A sort of "Odyssey". Of myths. What is stunning in him is that he always talks of disappearances. Cities, works, men, writings, television, etc., everything has to disappear. In order to be reborn. No pain. A sort of hand-to-hand of man and nature. During the filming, I would simply throw out some words... For example, one time I said "creation" and he said: "creation doesn't exist..., creation is before me..., I can only read creation"; this sentence describes Delavouët perfectly (J.-D. Pollet, 1989 and 1993).
The life and work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, a long interview, fragments of some of his most significant verses and dramatizations of some of his stories. Borges for everyone.
In 1244, Jelaluddin Rumi, a Sufi scholar in Konya, Turkey, met an itinerant dervish, Shams of Tabriz. A powerful friendship ensued. When Shams died, the grieving Rumi gripped a pole in his garden, and turning round it, began reciting imagistic poetry about inner life and love of God. After Rumi's death, his son founded the Mevlevi Sufi order, the whirling dervishes. Lovers of Rumi's poems comment on their power and meaning, including religious historian Huston Smith, writer Simone Fattal, poet Robery Bly, and Coleman Barks, who reworks literal translations of Rumi into poetic English. Musicians accompany Barks and Bly as they recite their versions of several of Rumi's ecstatic poems.
On l'appelait Roda
A look at the theme of love in the life of the poet WH Auden, who wrote such famous poems as "Stop All the Clocks" (made famous in "Four Weddings and a Funeral"), "Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love" and "As I Walked Out One Evening". This film centres on new interviews with Auden’s close friends and looks at how his most important relationships were reflected in some of the greatest poems of the 20th century.
Michael Strunge and other young Danish poets, accompanied by images of night-time Copenhagen.
Pablo Neruda’s life unfolds and becomes the basis for the symbolic representation of his poem “Barcarola”, intermixing live action, still footage, computer images, dance and poetry.
Sergio Abel lives in a small town in Central Cuba and he videotapes his life. He is also a grade school teacher. A beautiful documentary that incorporates Sergio’s observations and footage and his student’s aspirations for the future with the outsider’s eye to tell his story.
A tribute to the poet Patrizia Cavalli
Marco Paolini interviews Luigi Meneghello about growing up under fascism, his involvement with the Italian resistance movement, his later self-exile, acclaimed literary work and its relationship with dialect.
Short documentary on Chilean poet Jorge Teillier (1935-1996), who comes back to Lautaro, on the south of Chile, the place where he was born.
The creative chemistry of four brilliant artists —drummer John Densmore, guitarist Robby Kreiger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and singer Jim Morrison— made The Doors one of America's most iconic and influential rock bands. Using footage shot between their formation in 1965 and Morrison's death in 1971, it follows the band from the corridors of UCLA's film school, where Manzarek and Morrison met, to the stages of sold-out arenas.
He is considered the greatest European poet of the Middle Ages and his work unfolds the whole panopticon of occidental education – theology, philosophy, sciences, politics and literature. But who has really read it, the “Divine Comedy”? Who knows more of its creator Dante Alighieri than that he had an eagle-like profile and was in love with a woman named Beatrice? 700 years after Dante’s death, the filmmaker Adolfo Conti travels through Italy with Dante’s words in mind and eyes to see the world as Dante did. As the film encounters the beauty of arts and the Tuscan landscape, the forces of nature, a dramatic life story is unfolded.
A day in the life of Swedish poet Karl Holmqvist.
An account of the experiences by poet and National Literature Award laureate Raúl Zurita, during his travels and his daily life, as he reflects on topics such as state terrorism and death
A conversation with the Swedish author Birgitta Trotzig (1929-2011) , member of the Swedish Academy between 1993 and 2011. Trotzig's language is strongly driven and honored, often dark and hard-to-reach, but with a sharpness penetrating deeply into the reader susceptible to her prose. The main themes of her books are guilt and liberation, often with a Christian vocabulary, and the balance between ethics and ethics.
A dramatized approach to the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) through the recreation of some of his works and the staging of various aspects of his thought and his life.
Blanca Luz Brum traveled an unusual path, through twentieth-century Latin America, actively participating in the intellectual, political and artistic movements of Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico. It is today a symbol of female emancipation in Latin America. The versions about her life are varied and dissimilar, the testimonies of those who knew her, full of contradictions.