Stefan Zweig - Histoire d'un européen(2013)

In Search of Dracula(en)

Mark Gatiss explores and celebrates Dracula, an icon of popular culture, asking just why we keep coming back to the count.

Jean de la Fontaine and His Fables(fr)

An account of the life of the French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95), author of more than one hundred fables and a model for many other European fabulists of later times.

The Last Bookshop of The World(fi)

The documentary is a true story of four real intellectual Europeans from different cultures who are worried about the decline of literature’s life and the destiny of the street level bookshops in every country. That is why they have a mission to save symbolically “the world's last quality books”.

Cartoneras(pt)

Cartoneras is a documentary that grapples with Latin America’s urban realities, and the cardboard publishing movement that has emerged from these in the 21st century. Reflecting on the different contexts that propelled this form of community publishing, like Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, the independent art scene, and the movements which formed around waste-pickers, the film’s narrative is developed through conversations with important actors from the cartonera world.

Hello My Dear(tr)

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.

Dobroslav Chrobák(sk)

Hana Zelinová(sk)

Dangerous Liaisons: A Feminist Manifesto?(fr)

Well known for its exploration of seduction and revenge, the “Dangerous Liaisons” by Choderlos de Laclos caused a scandal from its first publication in 1782. Despite – or because of the scandal – the book was a top-seller. Since then, it stood the test of time. Combining eras, continents and people, the novel is adapted around the world. Marvelous tool for reflection on the female condition, social satire announcing the Revolution, remarkable work on the conflicting nature of love but also of the gender war, consecration of the power of the words, a libertine manual… “Dangerous Liaisons” is all of these at once.

Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story(en)

This documentary contains dramatized episodes about the lives of Erika and Klaus Mann, the brilliant children of German writer Thomas Mann.

Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson: Life is a Novel(ru)

A two-part documentary about the fraught relationship between Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky and émigré linguist Roman Jakobson.

The Night(en)

An installation film that consists of a six-hour-long monologue performed by Edith Clever, who reads texts by Syberberg and many different authors, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Plato, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Mörike, Richard Wagner, William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, and Chief Seattle.

The Emma Bovary Trial(fr)

On January 31, 1857, the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) took his place in the dock for contempt of public morality and religion. The accused, the real one, is, through him, Emma Bovary, heroine with a thousand faces and a thousand desires, guilty without doubt of an unforgivable desire to live.

Killer, Trader and Psychopath: The America of Bret Easton Ellis(fr)

In 1991, American Psycho, the third novel by controversial writer Bret Easton Ellis, provoked heated discussions among critics and readers alike; an extraordinarily disturbing book that transported its readers into the mind of Patrick Bateman, a cynical mergers and acquisitions executive obsessed with brands, inconsequential details, pop culture and brutal murder.

Alejandra(es)

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.

Autism and the Arts: Poetry with Peter Street(en)

Born in 1948, Peter Street struggled at school with epilepsy and illiteracy in Bolton, Lancashire, and, later in life, as a slaughterman, a gravedigger and a war poet. At 66 years old he was then diagnosed with autism, and his world changed forever.

Divas(fr)

The Writer Who Hated the Swedish Language(sv)

A documentary about Antti Jalava, a Swedish-Finnish writer who was among the first to write about the immigrant experience in Sweden.

Mare Kandre: I Am the Genius!(sv)

Swedish/Estonian writer Mare Kandre (1962-2005): "It's about life and death and it must always be." "She brought her the truth," says Johan von Sydow, referring to the rock mythos and artistic romantic law that is about to die young.

I, Of Whom I Know Nothing(es)

John Calder, Samuel Beckett’s British publisher, moved to Montreuil, a town to the east of Paris, where Calder met with Billie Whitelaw, the muse, so to speak, of Beckett’s stage work, who is now relegated to a nursing home for actors.

They Are Here(en)

Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.