I Place You Into the Fire(2024)

Voices & Visions: T.S. Eliot(en)

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.

The Centuries Surround Me with Fire(en)

A documentary, originally produced for Dutch television, on the life and works of Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), the groundbreaking Soviet poet and dissident.

Refugee Poetry(ku)

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

Dread Beat an' Blood(en)

Follows dub poet master Linton Kwesi Johnson out of the recording studio onto the Brixton streets.

Angel of the Night(da)

Michael Strunge and other young Danish poets, accompanied by images of night-time Copenhagen.

Do Útero Ao Túmulo(pt)

Khamsin(fr)

Lebanon today. The traces of the civil war are all too tangible as government corruption becomes unbearable. In a country where conflict and peace are caught in an endless cycle, musicians from different backgrounds pool their talents to create an underground music scene. Each evokes his or her representation of Lebanon: its shifting geographical, political, historical and social borders, its painful passage through conflict and instability. A touching portrait of a young generation trying to build an oasis in a hostile environment where the forces of destruction continue to wreak havoc.

Nice Chinese Girls Don't!(en)

Kitty Tsui, Chinese American writer, poet, body builder, and lesbian activist, tells of her arrival as an immigrant to San Francisco and, amidst the anti-Vietnam war protests, finding her way to San Francisco State, which influenced her on her path as an activist and poet. In this first ever documentary about a Chinese American Lesbian, Tsui brings to life her coming of age in San Francisco in the 1970s, her challenges, and her continued rise to celebrity by being re-discovered by a whole new generation of Feminists.

Searching Eva(de)

This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.

My Love Awaits Me By the Sea(ar)

Hasan Hourani, a Palestinian poet and illustrator, died aged 29 in Jaffa while trying to rescue his nephew from the sea. Shortly after, the filmmaker Mais Darwazah discovers his drawings and poems and feels drawn to Hourani's world— a universe outside space and time; a place of wonder, discovery, and freedom. Motivated by this kinship, Darwazah embarks on a journey to her homeland, Palestine: a place she has never known.

Catalan Poets(ca)

At underground film of the 1st Popular Festival of Catalan Poetry filmed in the Proce Theater in Barcelona on May 25, 1970, in solidarity with political prisoners. The participating poets were: Agustí Bartra, Joan Oliver (Pere IV), Salvador Espriu, Joan Brossa, Francesc Vallverdú and Gabriel Ferrater.

The Voyage of Bashô(fr)

A fictionalised documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644–1694), the spiritual father of haiku poetry. A monk, portraying the poet, journeys through Japan, following Bashô's journal and writing many of his haikus. A ruminant, poetic, Zen Buddhist observation of nature – a return to the lost paradise of unspoilt nature.

BURNING OUT(ru)

A short film, based on a series of poems, about childhood, the break with parental, and war.

The Waters of the Bug River(fr)

Dedicated to the poet Paul Celan, the film traces the itinerary of the deportation of Jews from Czernowitz and Bucovina to Mikhailovka camp on the banks of the river Bug during WW2. Among them was the poet’s mother.

WARM PLACE LIVE AT GULLIVERS, 22/02/24(en)

Documentary featuring the debut performance of WARM PLACE, the Manchester based four piece. Feature also contains samples of spoken word poetry by Lara Morton.

Sénac, Jean. Algérien, Poète(fr)

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.

A Passion for Churches(en)

Sir John Betjeman visits and explains the architecture of various churches in the Diocese of Norwich. Among those visited: Sandringham church on the Queen's private estate, the Holy House of Our Lady of Walsingham and Norwich Cathedral.

I Will Dance(en)

Follows the young people of Selma, Alabama's RATCo (Random Acts of Theatre Company) as they journey to New York City to share their story of hope, resilience, and overcoming.

Se dice poeta(es)

Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri(en)

The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews recorded in the late '90s.