Riding the Highline

As Black and LGBTQ+ History Month begin this February, material science clothing brand PANGAIA leads celebrations with a poetic film that honors these two communities. Following a year of isolation, and with it a deeper understanding of the importance of outdoor spaces and the environment, Wè is a portrait of the self-love and acceptance we have learned to show others and gift to ourselves.

A 1-hour Documentary looking at the Manchester post-punk group and its infamous leader Mark E Smith. The Film follows the current band recording their final Session for the John Peel Show (they were his favourite group and recorded more sessions than any other band) as well as chronicling the chaotic history of the band & its numerous line-up changes.

Five gay Black men who are HIV-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding their infection and homosexuality.

From humble roots as pastor's sons in New Jersey, through their meteoric rise to fame, the Jonas Brothers' bond was unshakeable-until a surprising and painful breakup led Joe, Kevin and Nick down very different paths. With deeply personal interviews, previously unreleased footage and exclusive music, this is the Jonas Brothers as never seen before.

As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.

Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.

Películas is the name of a poetry book by Luís Miguel Nava, a homosexual poet, born in Viseu, who died in Brussels and whose magnificent poetic work remains widely unknown. Drawn from the filmmaker’s family super8 film archive, and excerpts from the film Un chant d'amour, by Jean Genet, the film builds a “body” marked by memories, by various skins, by Nava's films, by his poems and by its landscapes.

A journey into the BBC archives unearthing glorious performances and candid interviews from some of Britain's greatest poets.

WAR OF WORDS is an energizing, controversial and inspiring feature documentary that lifts the lid on the fast growing UK Battle Rap scene. The documentary is an examination of an exciting subculture of youth in the UK today; their creativity and work ethic, their passion for language and ability to control their own destiny. It investigates freedom of expression and respect for other cultures and lifestyles. While the language is often harsh and unflinching, the 'anything goes' philosophy of the battle arena results in one of the most harmonious and creative scenes in youth culture. The film is a truly entertaining expose on how the UK has embraced this American art form, creating one of the most exciting youth subcultures happening right now.

Seamus Murphy’s documentary examines Irish writer Pat Ingoldsby’s unique world. Ingoldsby’s poems and candid anecdotes bear witness to a visceral relationship with his beloved Dublin, fellow Dubliners and anything that catches his interest. Personal challenges, a sensitive humanity and a lifetime as a maverick have taught him to harness reality and reach well beyond it to avenge the banal with absurd magic. It heals him as it does us.

A biography of the poet W. B. Yeats and his contribution to the Irish independence movement as a Protestant nationalist.

Dania is 21 years old and grew up in a Christian community in the Faroe Islands’ Bible belt. She has just moved to Tórshavn and is seeing Trygvi, a hip-hop artist and poet locally known as Silvurdrongur (Silver Kid). He comes from a secular family and writes poems and texts about the shadow sides of humanity. Dania herself sings in a Christian band but is fascinated by Trygvi’s courage to write brutally honest lyrics. As she tries to find her place in the world and understand herself, she starts to write more personal texts. Her writings develop into a collection of critical poems called ‘Skál’ (‘Cheers’), about the double life that she and other youths must live in the conservative Christian world.

A Hollywood movie executive and his wife, a one-time beauty queen, were brutally slain in the den of their Spanish-style mansion. The special uncovers the hidden clues of the Menendez family's descent into hell including never-before-seen home movies and photos from the family vault and testimony from members of the Menendez inner circle. The brothers' best friends and neighbors, the lead detectives, lawyers and jurors from the case, and the family members profile the intimate details of the Menendez family, including Erik's secret life.

In 2002, Ju Anqi made a film about a tour by the poet Shu through Xinjiang, the most western-lying, autonomous Uyghur province of China. All that we know about Shu is that he plays a poet who sends himself on a business trip - an absurd, satirical starting point that sets the tone for the film. For a variety of reasons, it was not until 2013 that Ju started editing the rough, lyrical material that he had shot in what is now a very restless Xinjiang: it's like an excellent wine that has had time to mature. Structured around 16 poems which he wrote on the road, Shu’s physically exhausting journey takes him along endless rocky roads, passing shabby inns and through impressive landscapes from one prostitute to the next. In its documentary authenticity, Poet on a Business Trip is also an historic document that exudes an atmosphere of loss, providing an unsentimental yet melancholy glimpse of a country in transition and a mirror for the existential irreversibility of time. (c) iffr.com

Reclaiming what was once stolen from him, a man journeys back to the place of his childhood nearly 80 years after his world came crashing down.

An elegy about ‘José Ð Almeida’s life and work. Along an intimate metamorphosis, this dreamlike and visually expressive world created by the visionary and insane dreamer is recreated and performed between a symbiosis of moving image, photography and painting- in a scenic, dramatic, symbolic and mystical tone.

Filmmaker Alan Berliner documents his first cousin, the poet-translator Edwin Honig, as he succumbs to Alzheimer's.

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.

A Thousand Years of Joy charts poet/activist Robert Bly's journey from Midwestern farm boy to global troubadour, bestselling author of Iron John and leader of the men's movement.

'La Mamma Morta’ is an aria from the opera Andrea Chenier that is also well-known for its use in a memorable sequence in the Oscar award-winning Philadelphia. Thirty years on, this new short film from WNO includes a brand-new recording of the aria featured alongside recreated scenes that better encapsulate the perspectives of people living with HIV today. To mark World AIDS Day 2023, the Welsh National Orchestra released a special new version of La mamma morta, featuring WNO Orchestra, soprano Camilla Roberts and Nathaniel Hall from Channel 4’s It’s a Sin. Released as part of the last rendition in the Three Letters project, this film aims to tackle societal stigma around HIV.