Prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates has remained intensely private. Until now. Through a long-standing friendship, and persistent inquiry, director Stig Bjorkman is granted unprecedented access to document her mornings of longhand writing, her walks with her husband—to visit her within her solitude.
Julien and Celeste are living together, barely functioning in a relationship as Julien incurs mysterious seizures which is tearing their relationship apart. An opportunity to baby sit Celeste's twin sister's new born baby and Julien is tasked with controlling his erratic behaviour caused by unknown reasons.
Lila, a famous retired singer, loses her memory after suffering an accident, just as she planned her return to the stage.
Eddie, Dov, and Yvan are back, still working in Paris' Sentier textile district, This time they're confronting the high-stakes world of large distribution after striking a deal with Eurodiscount, a European hypermarket chain.
David, a struggling comedy writer fresh off from breaking up with his boyfriend, moves from New York City to Sacramento to help his sick mother. Living with his conservative father and much-younger sisters for the first time in ten years, he feels like a stranger in his childhood home. As his mother’s health declines, David frantically tries to extract meaning from this horrible experience and convince everyone (including himself) that he's "doing okay.”
Following a twinning between the national fire brigade and the special forces of the Canadian firefighters, Captain Carter arrives in Rome.
A middle-aged man’s relationship with a young model is questioned by his daughter, who’s dating an older man herself.
Molière, a down-and-out actor-cum-playwright up to his ears in debt. When the wealthy Jourdain offers to cover that debt so that Molière's theatrical talents might help Jourdain win the heart of a certain widowed marquise, hilarity ensues.
A successful film composer falls in love when he travels to India to work on a Bollywood retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
In the 1800s frontier, Missie Davis is a bright and beautiful schoolteacher whose love for the prairie is matched only by her passion for books. When Missie encounters Grant, a handsome New England railroad executive, she feels as though she's met a hero from one of her novels.
Two women -- a restaurateur and an architect -- have a seemingly idyllic romantic relationship, until the latter encounters a man she had a fling with.
Purl, an earnest ball of yarn, gets a job at a fast-paced, male-centered startup company. Things start to unravel as Purl tries to fit in with this tight-knit group, but she must ask herself how far is she willing to go to get the acceptance she yearns for and if, in the end, it is worth it.
Emma is an attractive girl in her 20s who has been blind for 20 years. A new type of eye operation partially restores her sight, but she is having problems: sometimes she doesn't "remember" what she's seen until later. One night she is awakened by a commotion upstairs. Peering out of her door, she sees a shadowy figure descending the stairs. Convinced that her neighbour has been murdered she approaches the police, only to find that she is unsure if it was just her new eyes playing tricks on her.
Lawman Wyatt Earp and outlaw Doc Holliday form an unlikely alliance which culminates in their participation in the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
A mysterious Dark Horseman slays young girls near the village of Dikanka, and he has already butchered 11 ladies. Nikolai Gogol, a scribe from Saint Petersburg has to take charge of the investigation, but the closer he gets to solving the case, the more fits he has, causing macabre visions. When he learns the next victim is his beloved, Liza, he doubts that he can protect her and resist the murderer. Fortunately, he meets somebody who can help him: Khoma Brut, the witch hunter, martial artist and philosopher. Together they spend three dreadful nights in an old chapel reading the funeral service for Ulyana, the witch, and calling upon the ghastly evil spirit Viy.
Etienne, an often out of work but endearing actor, runs a theater workshop in a prison, where he brings together an unlikely troupe of prisoners to stage Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. When he is allowed to take the colorful band of convicts on a tour outside of prison, Etienne finally has the chance to thrive.
The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina, in this screen adaptation of the beloved Mozart opera. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive.
Kit, a troubled girl, is sent to the exclusive Blackwood boarding school, where she discovers that only four other female students have been admitted to learn the four pillars of knowledge under the ominous wing of the mysterious headmistress Madame Duret.
A portrait of the man behind the greatest fraud in sporting history. Lance Armstrong enriched himself by cheating his fans, his sport and the truth. But the former friends whose lives and careers he destroyed would finally bring him down.
Narrated by Linda Hunt, this documentary examines the life of the late author and gay rights activist Paul Monette. Born in 1945 to a well-off Massachusetts family, Monette grows up unable to accept his homosexuality, for years hiding it from his loved ones while struggling to develop as a writer. In 1978, Monette publishes his first novel, which allows him to come out to his parents. After losing one lover to AIDS in 1986, he becomes a ferocious advocate for awareness of the disease.
Bill Drummond, once the most notorious man in pop music, now travels around the world baking cakes, building beds and shining shoes as part of a twelve year World Tour which is his final art project. This film follows him as he does his work in India and the United States.
Portrait of Marceline Loridan-Ivens, a writer and filmmaker who survived the Holocaust.
Umberto Eco, the author of best-selling novels who passed away in February 2016, unveils the secrets behind his undertakings and novels.
Bosnian Croat writer Miljenko Jergović and Serbian writer Marko Vidojković replace one another by the steering wheel of Yugo, a symbol of their common past while driving on the Brotherhood and Unity Highway that stretched across five of six republics of Yugoslavia.
Traces the Beats from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's meeting in 1944 at Columbia University to the deaths of Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs in 1997. Three actors provide dramatic interpretations of the work of these three writers, and the film chronicles their friendships, their arrival into American consciousness, their travels, frequent parodies, Kerouac's death, and Ginsberg's politicization. Their movement connects with bebop, John Cage's music, abstract expressionism, and living theater. In recent interviews, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey, Ferlinghetti, Mailer, Jerry Garcia, Tom Hayden, Gary Snyder, Ed Sanders, and others measure the Beats' meaning and impact.
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.
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.
Chanda Chevannes follows scientist Dr. Sandra Steingraber as she makes speeches against fracking and gets arrested protesting “the industrialization of the Finger Lakes.”
Documentary about the life and work of Jorge Luis Borges, from his own memories and reflections.
This film is not a classic portrait but a documentary using fiction to bring Martin Suter’s novels to life while introducing us to the author behind the stories on a whole new level. ‘Fantasy is usually more true than reality itself’ says Suter.
Part documentary, part drama, this film presents the life and work of Jack Kerouac, an American writer with Québec roots who became one of the most important spokesmen for his generation. Intercut with archival footage, photographs and interviews, this film takes apart the heroic myth and even returns to the childhood of the author whose life and work contributed greatly to the cultural, sexual and social revolution of the 1960s.
Interviews and archival footage weave together to tell the story of the Master of Suspense, one of the most influential and studied filmmakers in the history of cinema.
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.
How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.
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?
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.
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.
Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor.