Using the author's personal estate, current images of places where she lived or were dear to her, and archival images of television and film; using parts of her prose and poetry always with first-person testimonies; from Porto to Lisbon, from Granja to Lagos, from the Atlantic Sea to the Mediterranean, from Greece to 25 April: the passions and disappointments of a life and work dedicated to the search for the real, freedom and justice.
Sophia de Mello Breyner AndresenHerself (archive)
Miguel Sousa TavaresSelf (archive footage)
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).
In this short documentary, Canadian poet Andrew Suknaski introduces us to Wood Mountain, the south central Saskatchewan village he calls home. In between musings on his poetry, which is tinged with nostalgia and the vast loneliness of the plains, the poet discusses the area’s multicultural background and Native heritage, as well as the customs and stories of these various ethnic groups.
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.
Smoky little clubs, late nights, late nights of conversation over a glass of beer and a guitar. The lyricist Géza Bereményi and the composer-performer Tamás Cseh are the creators of the most topical and accurate songs of the 70s and 80s, expressing the mood of the "30s and 40s" of that time - a mood that was their own destiny. This stunning recording from 1980 includes songs like Tangó, Álomfejtés, Szabó Kálmán tegnap este..., A 100. éjszaka, A legjobb viccek, Születtem Magyarországon, A dédapa dala, Egy bogár, Krakkói vonat, Az ócska cipő, Filmdal.
An account of the life and work of the Spanish poet Luis García Montero; a journey through his experiences, his mentors, his influences and his contact with other artists, both from the literary world and from other disciplines.
A short documentary about the rapidly disappearing era of heritage movie palaces and the film going experience once offered within those hallowed walls.
A docu-drama depicting the life and work of celebrated North Georgia poet and novelist Byron Herbert Reece.
Documentary about Charles Olson, exploring his life and the significance of Gloucester, Massachusetts.
On 19 July 1965, the South-African poet Ingrid Jonker walked into the sea near Drieankerbaai in Cape Town at the age of 31. She left behind a little daughter and an oeuvre of three laurelled collections of poems. Jonker's work fell into oblivion, until on 25 May 1994 president Nelson Mandela opened the very first session of the first democratically elected parliament of South Africa with Jonker's poem Die kind wat dood geskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga, a poem from 1960 that refers to the demonstrations near Sharpeville. Mandela chose the poem for good reason; he called Jonker 'both an African and an Afrikaner'. A white person in South Africa cannot get a bigger compliment. In the documentary Korreltjie niks is my dood, director Saskia van Schaik reconstructs the poet's eventful life, making her powerful poetry with its South-African rhythm tell part of the story. (filmcommission.nl)
This landmark documentary reveals the tragic life of a gifted young woman who was executed for speaking out during the height of Chairman Mao’s rule.
Made for Italian national television, Ellis Donda’s Il Corpo Rubato (The Stolen Body) is an experimental documentary on psychoanalisis in 70s/80s Italy, its analytical practices and forms of suggestion.
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.
This documentary shows the life and work of the Galician poet from O Courel, Uxío Novoneyra, from a double perspective: the intimate and familiar analysis of his work, both poetic and artistic, and that of his ideological commitment, and a reinterpretation of a selection of his poems for signify the living mode of his verses. The documentary is directed by one of his sons, Uxío Novo Rey, and different artists, biographers, politicians and neighbors collaborate in it, showing the different aspects of the poet, from his origins, the life of the Courel, the Brais Pinto group, the thought politics and even the Galician language. The story establishes a parallelism with the most outstanding events that have occurred in Galicia and in the world in the second half of the 20th century and how the poet was affected by these events.
The film tells the story of Alejandra Pizarnik: mythic Argentine poet who committed suicide at the age of 36. Her personal diaries, letters, poems, as well as accounts by close friends and family, offer us hints about the mysterious path that led her to her self-destruction. Years after its writer’s death, the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik has been rediscovered by new generations of writers and readers, making her the most read Argentine poet in the world.
A lost chapter in black British film: extraordinary rushes from a documentary showcasing talented members of the black community.
Jean Sénac, born in Béni Saf in Algeria in 1926 and died in Algiers in 1973, is today considered one of the great French writers and poets and the only one of his reputation to have accompanied the Algerian revolution before November 1954. part of all the debates and got involved, very early and with immense enthusiasm, in a work of commitment which ended badly. His poetry, his sexual preferences and his political lyricism work against him: rejected as much by the Pieds Noirs as by the FLN activists then by the power in place in Algiers, Jean Sénac was assassinated in 1973 at his home in Algiers, in circumstances never clarified.
Documentary video journey in search of the missing Tatar poet Rahim Sattar. The path from the present to the past runs through a polylogue of experts, folk music, works by contemporary artists, musical and creative interpretation of poems by Rahim Sattar and unique archival newsreels shot at the dawn of cinema.
In 1244, Jelaluddin Rumi, a Sufi scholar in Konya, Turkey, met an itinerant dervish, Shams of Tabriz. A powerful friendship ensued. When Shams died, the grieving Rumi gripped a pole in his garden, and turning round it, began reciting imagistic poetry about inner life and love of God. After Rumi's death, his son founded the Mevlevi Sufi order, the whirling dervishes. Lovers of Rumi's poems comment on their power and meaning, including religious historian Huston Smith, writer Simone Fattal, poet Robery Bly, and Coleman Barks, who reworks literal translations of Rumi into poetic English. Musicians accompany Barks and Bly as they recite their versions of several of Rumi's ecstatic poems.
A Thousand Years of Joy charts poet/activist Robert Bly's journey from Midwestern farm boy to global troubadour, bestselling author of Iron John and leader of the men's movement.