Zumiriki

Walt Whitman(en)

This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working-class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished family, then to his reckless pursuit of the attention and affection he craved for his work, to his death in 1892.

Incitatus(ru)

The film features the wonderful poet of the early 20th century, Count Vasily Komarovsky. The poets Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, among other celebrities, were not only his acquaintances but he had a considerable influence on their work. The poet’s extraordinary life gave birth to legends, whose plausibility will also be dwelt upon. Komarovsky’s niece will share her recollections with the viewer. The film is based on unique documents previously unknown to Russian and foreign scholars.

About the Possibility of a Life(bg)

This film is a documentary portrait of the great Bulgarian Writer and poet Valeri Petrov.

The Scars(eu)

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Películas(pt)

Películas is the name of a poetry book by Luís Miguel Nava, a homosexual poet, born in Viseu, who died in Brussels and whose magnificent poetic work remains widely unknown. Drawn from the filmmaker’s family super8 film archive, and excerpts from the film Un chant d'amour, by Jean Genet, the film builds a “body” marked by memories, by various skins, by Nava's films, by his poems and by its landscapes.

John Betjeman: A Poet in London(en)

Poet John Betjeman is shown visiting locations including Vauxhall Park, Aldersgate Street station, Camden Town and Hatfield, where he recites a handful of his poems.

Borges: A Life in Poetry(it)

A peculiar portrait of the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) drawn by the extravagant and original look of the Spanish writer Fernando Arrabal, who establishes a bold parallelism between Borges' work and opinions and his own creations, both literary and cinematographic.

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.

Pelota(eu)

A documentary view of the Basque ball-game in which a small hard leather ball is hit against a wall. The film gives an impression of the game itself and of those who play it, not only the star performers (and the myths that surround them), but also those who just play in the streets and alleyways. The film sees the game it its cultural context and conveys the emotions and stories that are peculiar to the Basque country.

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.

Le verbe incendié(fr)

Mother Earth(eu)

'Ama Lur' is a documentary, directed by Nestor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert, that premiered in San Sebastián in 1968, and it is considered the foundation of Basque cinema.

Sono Guido e non Guido(it)

Poets Against the Bomb(en)

An event organised by CND pits the bomb against poetry. Hear artists who hoped that words and rhymes could put an end to destructive times.

Se dice poeta(es)

The Lady in the Book - Sylvia Plath, portraits(en)

"The Lady in the Book" is Sylvia Plath, a major author of 20th-century American poetry and a feminist icon following her sudden death at the age of thirty. This film offers a glimpse into her world and work, through encounters with women who live today in the places where she grew up.

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.

sucking on words(en)

sucking on words is a documentary film that features interviews with, and extensive performances by, the American poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It also features critical commentary on his intense and ground-breaking conceptualist practice from three of North America’s leading voices on avant-garde poetics. Shot on location in New York in 2007, the lively conversations featured in sucking on words are an ideal introduction to Goldsmith’s witty and provocative works, which are already regarded as hallmarks of 21st-century literature. The film showcases readings from some of his notorious books: No.111 (found phrases ending in the ‘r’ rhyme and filtered alphabetically by syllable count); Soliloquy (a transcription of every word Goldsmith spoke for a week); Day (a retyping of one day’s New York Times newspaper); Traffic (one day’s worth of hourly radio traffic bulletins); and The Weather (one year’s worth of radio weather bulletins).

The Unanswered Question III : Musical Semantics(en)

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse:Semantics is the study of meaning in language, and Bernstein's third lecture, "musical semantics", accordingly, is Bernstein's first attempt to explain meaning in music. Although Bernstein defines musical semantics as "meaning, both musical and extramusical" this lecture focuses exclusively on the "musical" version of meaning.

To Stay Alive: A Method(en)

Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.