The Lady in the Book - Sylvia Plath, portraits

Batouk(fr)

This uneven and uninspired documentary of Africa is a collection from various stock footage. Female dancers in mod clothes dance on the Eiffel Tower in comparison to the primitive dances of native Africans. A lone runner trains for a marathon, and a few animals are shown in their natural habitat. Commentary and modern jazz and pop music help to make this seem much longer than 66 minutes.

Hell Frozen Over(en)

Bernadette Corporation describes this work as "A fashion film about the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the color white." Produced for the 2000 Walker Art Center exhibition Let's Entertain, this short film employs a range of strategies to approach the idea of nothingness, emptiness, and vacuity, with an eye to how these notions relate to contemporary mass-cultural entertainment. Juxtaposing "documentary" takes on a fashion shoot with footage of semiologist Sylvère Lotringer giving an impromptu lecture on Mallarmé on a frozen lake, Hell Frozen Over maintains an ambiguous stance from which to both critique and celebrate the power of surface.

She(en)

She is a full-length documentary about writer Aimée Baker and her award-winning poetry collection Doe. Doe is her quest to give voice to the missing and unidentified women of the United States.

Spellbound(en)

Wingsuit BASE jumping is often presented as a thrill seeking adrenaline rush. Spellbound takes us deeper into the more contemplative aspects of jumping, as David Walden and friends venture into the mountains around his home in New Zealand. Beautiful scenery and hypnotic cinematography eject us from our daily lives into a world of air, earth and flight.

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.

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.

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.

Bert Schierbeek/The Door(nl)

A short portrait of poet Bert Schierbeek, who reads from his poetry.

Wordsworth Country(en)

A look at the Lake District and its famous poet.

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.

Bambi Hunter(en)

Lockdown, lack of green space, Don Quixote and video games.

Lejano Interior(es)

A "cinematic object" by Mariano Llinás, divided into 9 chapters, based on the poetry of Henri Michaux.

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) - Muse of Keening(en)

A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introduction to the great Soviet era modernist poet, Anna Akhmatova; shot in winter in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), it contains rare interviews with people who knew her, academics, and dramatized readings of some of her poems.

Chris, sous le pont Laënnec(fr)

Inger Christensen - The cicadas exist(da)

In this portrait film, we meet Inger Christensen in her apartment in Østerbro, Copenhagen, where she tells of her life and work, and reads excerpts from her major works.

Chubai. Speaking Again(uk)

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.

Wood Mountain Poems(en)

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.

Sono Guido e non Guido(it)

Rita Dove: An American Poet(en)

A series of in-depth conversations with Poet Laureate Rita Dove—conducted and recorded by Eduardo Montes-Bradley between September 2012, and October 2013. The film explores the poet's life, exposing fundamental facts of Dove's childhood and formative years growing up in Akron, Ohio in the 1950s and during the turbulent 1960s, supplemented by selections from hundreds of still images and several hours of home movies from the Dove family's collection.

How the Moon Conquered Pop(de)

Musicians inspired by the Moon. Since the Apollo landings, the Moon has entered popular consciousness like never before. A journey through pop music's lunar obsession.