Well-known Croatian author Pero Kvesić, who has been struggling with a severe lung disease, documents his death from his own point of view. Recording his everyday struggle, the picture resembles a peculiar blog filled with self-irony and witty comments about life and death. Although the world around continues to shrink, the hero and the director in one does not cease to fill it with sense.
This film is an attempt to disclose if Raul Brandão has left any trace, in Nespereira, Gumarães.
A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.
The documentary story of Harlan Ellison
An analysis of the sources of inspiration that fed the imagination of the British writer, poet and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), great master of epic fantasy.
In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.
Aslı Erdoğan, world-renowned author and activist, has fallen into silence after she fled to Germany. Incomplete Sentences is a feature documentary on her literature and life, leading to exile in Frankfurt, after the Turkish regime’s oppression results in her unlawful imprisonment. Now, she struggles in exile while everybody is waiting for her to write again. Right after getting out of prison Aslı starts telling her story to the director, wandering in the streets of Istanbul she recites parts from her books and explains the stories behind. When Aslı goes to Germany to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Award she cannot return; thus her exile, which she likens to a semi-open prison, begins. As her health deteriorates and keeps her from writing, the tragedy in her books becomes her own reality.
Drama documentary from 1978 exploring the private feelings of novelist Thomas Hardy through the poems of love and remorse that he wrote after the death of his first wife, Emma.
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?
Elmore Leonard, author of more than 40 novels, is renowned in the literary community. From his westerns and early novels of crime based in Detroit and South Florida, right through his complex and virtually plotless later work, Elmore Leonard dissected an America whose founding sins have continued to haunt it all the days. Leonard’s depiction of America is as real as Twain’s Hannibal, Faulkner’s Mississippi and Steinbeck’s Monterey. The new documentary ELMORE LEONARD: “But don’t try to write” explores the prolific author’s legacy and his influence on generations of writers. The documentary features exclusive images and previously unseen home movie footage, family photographs, and in-depth interviews with both literary experts and those who knew him well, including colleagues, family, and childhood friends.
Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.
A portrait of the brilliant American writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and the New York high society of his time.
Quentin Crisp was a writer, raconteur, social rebel, and "professional being". He was nearly 91 when he died of heart failure in 1999, and his death powerfully affected those who loved him. In this portrait, Tim Fountain (Crisp's biographer, and author of the play RESIDENT ALIEN) interviews friends and family of Crisp, to learn something of the significance of his death, and the "enigma of his life".
Recorded readings of Swiss writer Robert Walser's late texts and micrographs join with documentary tableaux of his long array of residences, leaving behind a disembodied image.
One of the most controversial writers of our times, join Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh as he undergoes a remarkable trip to find new meaning in his work, life and legacy.
Watching My Name Go By is a 1976 BBC documentary on the birth of graffiti in New York City, and the fight to both prevent it, and expand it's artistic value. In 'Watching my name go by' kids in New York have a unique kind of occupation - sitting on the subway stations ' watching my name go by'. Eleven to 17-year olds compete to see how many times they can 'get their names up ' in a colorful way - a kind of graffiti cult game which has its own rules and regulations. It's illegal and dangerous-some New Yorkers think it's a kind of ' art others think it's disgusting.
A fragmented biography, inconclusive, partial, of the brilliant Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, based on different testimonies: his links with Leonor de Acedevo —his mother— and María Kodama —his second wife—; his vast culture and devout dedication to literature, his and that of others; his country: the politicians and the disloyal military. Borges gradually builds his own impersonation of Borges.
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.
One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.
Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne.