Strange way of living

Dreams Are Colder Than Death(en)

What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.

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.

Les vendredis d'Apostrophes(fr)

Hours and historical meetings, Pierre Assouline has composed an anthology of the best extracts presented in the form of a primer, which he had commented on by a surprised Bernard Pivot.

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.

I Am Joke, Said Joke(nl)

Documentary about the Dutch author, illustrator and performer Joke van Leeuwen, who has won various awards for her literature for children which sometimes uses a quest as a theme.

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”.

Strijdmakker(nl)

VPRO icon Wim Brands died on April 4, 2016. He was known to the general public as a presenter of the VPRO Boeken program and also closer, with six collections of poetry to his name. This documentary about his life and work, built entirely from archive material, pays tribute to this television personality. A portrait in which attention is also paid to his complicated relationship with death. With a.o. Karl Ove Knausgård, David Sedaris, Ellen Deckwitz and Pieter Boskma. Brands' work merges with his rich inner life and that he chose death at the age of 56 casts a shadow over everything.

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.

Tunisian Literature at the French National Library(fr)

Commemorating the 1986 Tunis-Paris exhibition Privileged Spaces and Times: French-Speaking Intellectual Production in Tunisia, Sarah Maldoror’s film points the way toward a more polyvocal understanding of the role of France’s National Library worldwide.

Dobroslav Chrobák(sk)

Hana Zelinová(sk)

Provocando con Sampedro(es)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pod hasprunskou slivkou(sk)

Refugis de paper(es)

In a world that spins faster and faster, bibliomaniacs take refuge from the rush and the noise inside the library. Amid whispers, they confess the meaning of life. A celebration of thought and obsession, where libraries reveal their inhabitants

Beatriz Portinari. A Documentary on Aurora Venturini(es)

Beatriz Portinari is not only the name of the inspiring muse of Dante Alighieri, but also the pseudonym with which the Platense writer Aurora Venturini was presented in 2007 to the Nueva Novela contest, organized by the newspaper Página 12, in which she won the grand prize for their work The bonuses. Full of mischief and grace, vitality and mystery, with great character and lucidity, this woman who throughout her ninety-one years never stopped writing, had a life totally linked to the literature and history of the twentieth century: she knew , was a friend and worked with Eva Perón in a minority center; in his exile he became associated with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others; and received a prize from Jorge Luis Borges, among many other things.

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.