'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.
After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
Five gay Black men who are HIV-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding their infection and homosexuality.
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.
Arthur Rimbaud : Six mois en enfer
In Busto of a poet, the word is the real protagonist: the verses, reflections and texts of José Ángel Valente take shape through the poet's gaze around the lands, landscapes and monuments of Navarre, in a deep and magical journey. Image, word, music and silence converge and harmonize.
“I love poetry because it makes me feel like my mind expands.” In Regard Silence, that's the very first sentence expressed—in sign language of course. Watching the poems signed by deaf people in this film has a similarly mind-expanding effect. That’s because sign language—the Mexican version in this case—is a very different means of communication than written or spoken language.
‘Death Sounds a Quiet Gong’ was originally screened at Village Works (12 St. Marks Place, New York City, NY) on October 24, 2025. The poem was first published in the inaugural release of biannual literary journal the Tough Poets Review.
Lesley, in her 80s, and teenager Jay deliver spoken word poetry expressing their sense of belonging, home, and their vision for the future of the area where they live. One in a series of short films made in collaboration with residents of Ebbsfleet and its surrounding areas.
Lucien Francoeur, rock poet of the French imagination of North America, lives the destiny he has chosen for himself at 200 miles an hour.
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?
This was a labour of love combining the work of some incredible artists to bring Máire Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry into the medium of film. Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion explores the life, work and sensual poetic imagination of the revolutionary Irish poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Born in 1922, her story is set against a backdrop of a tumultuous century in Irish history in which she and her family were centrally involved. At a time when women's voices were being silenced, the native tradition in the Irish language was her stage to explore the depths of female sexuality and experience without shame. Featuring the movement poetry of performance artist Maureen Fleming, interview by Louis de Paor, poetry voiced by Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, autobiography script voiced by Olwen Fouéré.
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.
Inspired by the poetry of Robert Frost, this short primarily aims to capture the dynamic nature of the world around us; the ego and the id; the past and the present; everything that has, as of yet, diluted the course of life as we know it.
A fascinating exploration of the literary — The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, by English playwright William Shakespeare (1604) — and lyrical — Othello, by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (1887) — myth of Othello, the desperately tragic story of a Moorish general in the army of the Venetian Republic whose absurd jealousy poisons his love for his wife Desdemona.
WINHANGANHA (Wiradjuri language: Remember, know, think) - is a lyrical journey of archival footage and sound, poetry and original composition. It is an examination of how archives and the legacies of collection affect First Nations people and wider Australia, told through the lens of acclaimed Wiradjuri artist, Jazz Money.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous American authors. And probably the most abysmal. In his texts, he deals with the dark side of humanity like no other. And was himself scarred by this throughout his life. The writer not only shaped the genres of horror literature and science fiction novels, but today seems more popular than ever.
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.
Orson Welles reads the poem especially for this film by Larry Jordan, which is dedicated to the late Wallace Berman, and is made possible by a grant from The National Endowment Of The Arts.
A dramatic recreation of Dylan Thomas' last tour of America, starring actor Bob Kingdom as the Welsh poet. Originally a successful stage production, the show was adapted for this recorded version by renowned actor Anthony Hopkins (in his directorial debut). Dylan Thomas was one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. He was born in the Uplands district of Swansea in 1914 and died in New York in 1953 at the age of 39. Towards the end of his life, Dylan Thomas toured America, performing his works before sell out audiences across the country. The film features the poems "Fern Hill"; "Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night"; "A Poem in October"; "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"; "A Story (The Outing)" and "Return Journey" .