Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
In the wake of a freak accident, Lance suffers the worst tragedy and the greatest opportunity of his life. He is suddenly faced with the possibility of fame, fortune and popularity, if he can only live with the knowledge of how he got there.
Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth, Carmelo Bene returns to the verses of the poet from Recanati. In this film the most beautiful poems by Giacomo Leopardi (La Ginestra, Il Canto Notturno, Le Ricordanze, A Silvia, L'Infinito ...), but also some passages from the Moral Operettas, as well as the unfinished Project for a hymn at Ahrimane, follow one another with deep and moving simplicity, with a quiet immediacy that causes the void of every other voice: therefore the listenere is ensnared in the pauses, bewitched by the unexpected descents of silence. The voice assumes a dark and ancestral tone in which the words seem to find their original nuances.
Relationship issues arise between a researcher with a theory to explain away all his failed dating experiments, a player who wants out of the game, a deejay whose head spins with thoughts of God, a hoodrat with no street cred, a poet not-so-well-versed in the art of love, and a womanipulator of men.
At the Blue Iguana, L.A.'s most notorious strip club, the lives of five exotic dancers converge, clash and ultimately bond over the course of one week.
A theatrical documentary about Hrytsko Chubai, a genius of Ukrainian poetry, a connoisseur of literature, art and music and the brightest representative of Lviv underground culture of late 60s early 70s.
A three-chapter (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) meditation on the city of Sarajevo in the wake of the Bosnian war, on Palestine and Israel, and on war itself.
Almost a decade since larger-than-life glam-rock enigma Brian Slade disappeared from public eye, an investigative journalist is on assignment to uncover the truth behind his former idol.
The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute and schemes to raise money so he can spend time with her. Additionally, a young women begins harvesting lotuses for a writer suffering from leprosy, and a child trinket seller loses his traveling case.
“Poussières de Juillet”, produced in 1967 by Hachemi El-Chérif, is taken from a poem by Kateb Yacine. "We made a film on the return of the ashes of Emir Abdelkader, to Algeria. It was the opportunity to make a film on the ancestors with M'hamed Issiakhem. He designed glass plates on the basis of my texts. Then we had actors collaborate. It was a film which cost us a total of 300 dinars, proof that we could do work for television without too much money. We won two first international prizes at the Belgrade festival. We left the original of the film with the Egyptians in Alexandria and they lost it. We kept a copy but over time I wonder what happened to it, because there is no not even had a screening, they say it still exists, but I don't know in what state." Kateb Yacine, July 28, 1986, interview with Arlette Casas.
The tumultuous life of Arthur Rimbaud, the cursed poet, who completed his masterwork at the age of twenty, became an arms dealer and died at thirty-seven; and his passionate relationship with Paul Verlaine, full of wanderings, storms and falling out.
Trapped in routine, a Jeju poet finds himself drawn to a boy—and to emotions he’s never dared name.
Qingyan Yu confronts confusion and self-identity problems as she gets to the point where romance starts to take place in her adolescence.
William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.
Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelinos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other's stories. Through poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers.
Zooni Ali Beg is a blind Kashmiri girl who travels without her parents for the first time with a dance troupe to Delhi to perform in a ceremony for independence day. On her journey, she meets Rehan Khan, a casanova and tour guide who flirts with her. Although her friends warn Zooni about him, she cannot resist falling in love with him and he takes her on a private tour of New Delhi. But there is more to Rehan than meets the eye and Zooni will have to make a heartbreaking decision.
A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.
A popular high school girl is harassed by a delinquent boy until they are placed in creative writing class together. Through written words, they create a bond, but tragically a bond that cannot withstand her social pressures or his brutal home life.