Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film

The elusive author of Waiting for Godot cooperated in the production of this portrait, which traces Beckett’s artistic life through his prose, plays, and poetry. Billie Whitelaw, Jack McGowran, and Patrick Magee—Beckett’s great dramatic interpreters—appear in selected extracts from the plays; Beckett specialist David Warrilow narrates a variety of texts.

As their bodies give way to Parkinson's disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final Off-Broadway production of Beckett's "Endgame," the play that posits, "there's nothing funnier than unhappiness."

Katja Mann: A Life with Thomas Mann

Hosted by Keeley Hawes, star of the popular television series The Durrells, this documentary reveals the adventures of the eccentric Durrell family once they left Corfu, Greece.

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.

A year in the company of Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, as he publishes a new novel, launches a record label, works on two television series and adapts his most famous work Trainspotting into a West End musical.

The Spanish author Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1901-1952) was one of the best comedy writers of all time, a novelist and newspaper columnist, misunderstood, even censored, both by the Second Republic government and Francoism, an outsider ahead of his time; also a filmmaker and screenwriter in Hollywood, architect of a revolutionary theatrical building and scenographer, cartoonist and illustrator. An implausible genius.

British author Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the world's most translated author: her heroes, private detective Hercule Poirot and amateur sleuth Miss Marple, are known the world over. But who is the woman behind her bestsellers? A biographical search for clues, the unraveling of an iridescent personality whose existence and works were shaped by the tragic history of the 20th century: the eventful life of the Queen of Crime.

A docu-drama portrait of the early-20th-century French author Marcel Proust, based on Alain de Botton's updated analysis of his work as a modern-day self-help guide. Ralph Fiennes plays Proust, with Phyllida Law and Donald Sinden as his contemporaries, while commentators including de Botton, Louis de Bernières and Doris Lessing explain their enthusiasm for his work.

While it may be universally acknowledged that she’s one of the great English writers, Giles Coren breaks down his many reasons for hating Jane Austen.

Louisa May Alcott, author of "Little Women," leads a literary double life, writing under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, an identity that remains until the 1940s.

Documentary about the staging of 'Waiting for Godot' in prison.

Biography and in-depth look of Beckett and his work.

The film focuses on the exciting life journey of Swiss writer Katharina Zimmermann. She follows her husband on a mission to the jungle in Indonesia where she raises their four children and five foster children and lives through the military coup. Back in Switzerland Katharina discovers her voice and finds her path. Now, at eighty, she is writing her life story. Yet suddenly she faces another battle because her publisher is threatening to let her go.

Emmy Award-winning chronicle of the history of Orchard House, the home in Concord, Massachusetts where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set Little Women.

With precisely articulated turns of phrase, Sibylle Berg - celebrated novelist, playwright and columnist known for her provocations and the sharpness of her comments - takes the film's two directors on an anecdotal and humorous foray through her eventful life.

Dorothy Johnson was a Western writer ahead of her time. Women saved men, heroes died unwept and unsung, whites lived with Indians and benefited from the experience. Three of her stories were made into films and many critics consider "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" to be the cornerstone of the modern western. This documentary looks back on Dorothy's life, and her place in history.

John Irving's literary worlds are satirically exaggerated, socially critical, unexpectedly magical. But how do these dazzling, sometimes bizarre, narrative worlds emerge? A unique insight into his writing workshop and a search of the places and people who have become part of his stories.

Writers, publishers, fans, and friends share their perspectives and memories of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick. In his career, Philip Kindred Dick (1928–82) published dozens of science fiction novels and short stories. His work has reached a wider audience due to such film adaptations as BLADE RUNNER (1982), TOTAL RECALL (1990), MINORITY REPORT (2002), and A SCANNER DARKLY (2006).

Documentary about Kathy Acker where she talks about her writing and her life in New York.