Tolkien: The True Story of the Rings

An analysis of the sources of inspiration that fed the imagination of the British writer, poet and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), great master of epic fantasy.

Henry Miller Is Not Dead

In this artistic exploration of the life and work of writer Henry Miller, filmmaker Joe Kishton skillfully weaves clips of films and interviews of Miller with the music of Laurie Anderson. From Miller himself we hear of his difficult relationship with his parents, and of his need to create, even (or especially) when his message abrades social mores.

Heckler

HECKLER is a comedic feature documentary exploring the increasingly critical world we live in. After starring in a film that was critically bashed, Jamie Kennedy takes on hecklers and critics and ask some interesting questions of people such as George Lucas, Bill Maher, Mike Ditka, Rob Zombie, Howie Mandel and many more. This fast moving, hilarious documentary pulls no punches as you see an uncensored look at just how nasty and mean the fight is between those in the spotlight and those in the dark.

Samuel Beckett: Silence to Silence

The elusive author of Waiting for Godot cooperated in the production of this portrait, which traces Beckett’s artistic life through his prose, plays, and poetry. Billie Whitelaw, Jack McGowran, and Patrick Magee—Beckett’s great dramatic interpreters—appear in selected extracts from the plays; Beckett specialist David Warrilow narrates a variety of texts.

Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.

Perfect on Paper

Portland book editor Natalie Holland has chosen the wrong guy – another underachiever – once again. With her life going nowhere fast, she accepts a job offer from publisher and friend Avery Goldstein and moves to Los Angeles. A woman of depth and principle, Portland chic Natalie is a fish out of water in LA. Things only get worse when she learns she’s been hired to edit the latest romance novel from bestselling author Beverly Wilcox, a powerful, glamorous and intimidating figure straight out of "The Devil Wears Prada".

What The Durrells Did Next

Hosted by Keeley Hawes, star of the popular television series The Durrells, this documentary reveals the adventures of the eccentric Durrell family once they left Corfu, Greece.

Thomas Hardy: Fate, Exclusion and Tragedy

A portrait of the British writer Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who, although he had radical instincts, hated hypocrisy, was of great poetic brilliance, had a tragic perception of life and a calm outward appearance, was at heart a man of seething and somber darkness.

The Wednesday Woman

Muriel Davidson, a successful mystery author in a vulnerable stage of her life, falls for a charismatic ex-con. As they begin to bond over their traumatic pasts, Muriel's life slowly begins to resemble one of her darker novels.

Juppé, forcément...

Check the Gate: Putting Beckett on Film

Follows the "Beckett on Film" project, which produced film adaptations of Samuel Beckett's nineteen plays.

Around Mr. Yasunari Kawabata

The day after Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a talk was held at Kawabata's residence in Kamakura. Yukio Mishima, who admires Kawabata, and Sei Ito, a literary critic, celebrate the first honor of the Japanese people, and this is a valuable opportunity for the three to meet and talk.

Katja Mann: A Life with Thomas Mann

The Post

A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events.

Thomas Hardy: A Haunted Man

Drama documentary from 1978 exploring the private feelings of novelist Thomas Hardy through the poems of love and remorse that he wrote after the death of his first wife, Emma.

Genius

New York in the 1920s. Max Perkins, a literary editor is the first to sign such subsequent literary greats as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. When a sprawling, chaotic 1,000-page manuscript by an unknown writer falls into his hands, Perkins is convinced he has discovered a literary genius.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.

The Glory of Life

Because of the power of love, the last year of Franz Kafka's life becomes his happiest. The well-known writer has never before been able to allow himself to experience intimacy, he suffers from tuberculosis and is dependent on his overbearing family. In the summer of 1923, he met Dora Diamant in the seaside resort Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea coast, where he is convalescing and she is working in a Jewish Volksheim. He is a man of world, the 14 years younger woman is from the deep East, he can write, she can dance. She has both feet firmly on the ground, he is always hovering a little above it. She embraces the indicative, he gets tangled up in the conjunctive. But the worldly wise Dora accepts him as he is. And he accepts her. Together they go to Berlin and when Franz's health deteriorates rapidly, to a sanatorium in Austria. They are granted a single year together until Franz Kafka's health deteriorates incurable. However their year together allows them to feel the glory of life.

Limonov: The Ballad

A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.

Rosamunde Pilcher: Meine Cousine, die Liebe und ich

Holly Shaw wants to prove her writing talent in a reading of her romance novel. But she achieves the exact opposite with the cynical reporter Aaron Kingsley. On the way to her car, Holly is attacked. Her papers, her books, her coat and her shoes are found by the police on the riverbank.