Samuel Beckett: Silence to Silence

Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive

April 2017 •English

How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.

Albert Camus, la tragédie du bonheur

March 1999 •French

What Was Virginia Woolf Really Afraid of?

November 2020 •English

A look back at the troubled life of genius British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).

Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?

January 2007 •English

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.

What The Durrells Did Next

May 2019 •English

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.

Merton: A Film Biography

January 1984 •English

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.

Hello My Dear

May 2021 •Turkish

The documentary is titled after Arkadaş Z. Özger’s poem “Hello My Dear” which had caused much controversy in the period it was first published. Considered to be in defiance of heteronormativity, the said poem includes references to the poet’s personality, his family, his relationship to the society, and his “unexpected” death, which came three years after its publication. Today, 50 years after it was written, the documentary follows these same lines in the poem utilising cinematic elements. The documentary also rediscovers the poetics; reaches out to the family, the comrades, the friendships, departing from the official historical accounts, cognizant of his experience of otherness, in pursuit of the “lost” portrait of Arkadaş Z. Özger.

A Choice

October 2012 •Vietnamese

Refuse to compromise to choose freedom

Harto the Borges

September 2000 •Spanish

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.

Voices & Visions: T.S. Eliot

Invalid date •English

T. S. Eliot has been considered by many to be the leading American poet of this century. His contemporaries in the 1920s recognized in “The Waste Land” an expression of the exhaustion and fragmentation that afflicted so many in that post-war era. They also recognized the originality of Eliot’s poetic technique and admired his insistence on the need for spiritual values in an age of popular kitsch.

Prisoners of Beckett

October 2005 •French

The meeting of two worlds that never met. One of poetry and freedom, and the other of silence and darkness. A story that begins in a maximum security prison in Sweden where a young actor, Jan Jönson, decides to stage " Waiting for Godot "with five prisoners as actors.

Nin E Tepueian: My Cry

January 2020 •French

NIN E TEPUEIAN - MY CRY is a documentary tracks the journey of Innu poet, actress and activist, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, at a pivotal time in her career as a committed artist. Santiago Bertolino's camera follows a young Innu poet over the course of a year. A voice rises, inspiration builds; another star finds its place amongst the constellation of contemporary Indigenous literature. A voice of prominent magnitude illuminates the road towards healing and renewal: Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.

Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough

September 2025 •English

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.

The Eyes of Dante

March 2021 •Italian

He is considered the greatest European poet of the Middle Ages and his work unfolds the whole panopticon of occidental education – theology, philosophy, sciences, politics and literature. But who has really read it, the “Divine Comedy”? Who knows more of its creator Dante Alighieri than that he had an eagle-like profile and was in love with a woman named Beatrice? 700 years after Dante’s death, the filmmaker Adolfo Conti travels through Italy with Dante’s words in mind and eyes to see the world as Dante did. As the film encounters the beauty of arts and the Tuscan landscape, the forces of nature, a dramatic life story is unfolded.

Nostalgies of the Far West

July 1987 •Spanish

Short documentary on Chilean poet Jorge Teillier (1935-1996), who comes back to Lautaro, on the south of Chile, the place where he was born.

L'Arbre et le Soleil

January 1990 •French

This film is dedicated to Mas-Félipe Delavouët, the poet discovered by Lawrence Durrell, who wrote 14,000 verses in Provençal over a period of thirty years, and who died on November 18, 1990. "The sky, history and Mediterranean and Provençal myths are the inexhaustable wellspring of this man rooted down there, near Salon-de-Provence" (J.-D. Pollet). "Mas-Félipe Delavouët wrote five books in Provençal, 14,000 verses. A sort of "Odyssey". Of myths. What is stunning in him is that he always talks of disappearances. Cities, works, men, writings, television, etc., everything has to disappear. In order to be reborn. No pain. A sort of hand-to-hand of man and nature. During the filming, I would simply throw out some words... For example, one time I said "creation" and he said: "creation doesn't exist..., creation is before me..., I can only read creation"; this sentence describes Delavouët perfectly (J.-D. Pollet, 1989 and 1993).

Orchard House: Home of Little Women

May 2018 •English

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

Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait

August 2024 •English

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex and personal portrait of Margaret’s life, from the perspective of a fellow artist sensitive to the potential Margaret envisaged for film as a poetic medium.

The Last Book

October 2019 •German

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.

Dans les yeux d'Elsa Triolet

September 2022 •French

Portrait of the writer Elsa Triolet, wife of poet Louis Aragon. The tile is a play on a famous poem by Louis Les yeux d'Elsa.