Directed by Sedat Pakay • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1973 • 12 minutes

Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits o...

Directed by Terence Dixon • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1970 • 27 minutes

Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the B...

Directed by Alexandre Rockwell • Drama • With Alexander Alexeieff, Kim Marie Radonovich • 1982 • 92 minutes

An adaptation of George Buchner's novella, "Lenz", chronicling the poet Jakob Lenz's slide into insanity and madness. The setting is transposed from 18th century Germany to New York in the...

Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2013 • 57 minutes

After decades of working in relative obscurity, author and memoirist Violette Leduc exploded onto the French literary scene in 1964 with the publication of her taboo-breaking memoir The Bastard. Engaging frankly with her experience ...

Directed by Jerry Aronson • Documentary • With Joan Baez, William F. Buckley, William S. Burroughs • 2005 • 84 minutes

This documentary chronicles the life of American beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Born and raised in New Jersey, Ginsberg attends Columbia University alongside fellow beats Jack Keroua...

Directed by Daniel O'Connor, Neil Ortenberg • Documentary • With Barney Rosset, Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Ferlinghetti • 2007 • 97 minutes

OBSCENE is the definitive film biography of Barney Rosset, the influential publisher of Grove Press and the Evergreen Review. He acquired the then fledgling Gro...

Directed by Peter Sillen • Documentary • With Jesse Bernstein • 2012 • 89 minutes

'I Am Secretly an Important Man' is a portrait of writer and poet Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated and troubled voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh and lyrical writings ...

Directed by Nora Jacobson • Documentary • 2022 • 77 minutes

After tragedy strikes, acclaimed poet Ruth Stone retreated to the margins of the literary world, working tirelessly to provide for her children, and transforming her intense grief into poetry, using simple, startling language.

Using a ...

Directed by Harry Watt & Basil Charles Wright • Documentary • 1936 • 23 minutes

A cornerstone of British documentary, Harry Watt and Basil Wright's NIGHT MAIL, with music by Benjamin Britten and verse by W.H. Auden, stands as a beacon for John Grierson's original purpose for documentary - to mak...

Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • 2013 • 53 minutes

What happens when a nursing home decides to throw out the bingo boards and take on the Odyssey instead? Amazing things — that’s what.

Penelope follows the story of residents of a midwestern care facility, some with severe dementia,...

Directed by Andrès Jarach • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

On the 31st of July 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea. With this mystery, a myth was born.

Who was the man whose book The Little Prince was translated into more than 250 languages and dialects? Draw ...

Directed by George Hoellering • Drama • With Leo McKern, T.S. Eliot • 1952 • 114 minutes

George Hoellering’s powerful adaptation of T.S. Eliot's classic verse drama is a stark and highly atypical example of British historical cinema. Little-seen despite winning a top prize at the Venice Film Fes...

Directed by Mark Blottner, Ilko Davidov & Denis Mueller • Documentary • 2015 • 85 minutes

This in-depth portrait of notorious American author Nelson Algren uses interviews, rare archival footage, and the gritty voice of Algren himself to capture the elusive and unique literary figure whose fame ...

Directed by Dominique Auvray • Documentary • With Marguerite Duras, Jeanne Balibar • 2003 • 61 minutes

Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) - best-known as the author of The Lover and for the screenplay for Hiroshima, Mon Amour (the classic 1960 New Wave film directed by Alain Resnais) - was one of the ...

Directed by Chet Pancake • Documentary • 2019 • 115 minutes

Queer Genius explores the remarkable lives and work of five queer female artists: Barbara Hammer, Eileen Myles, Black Quantum Futurism, Moor Mother, and Dynasty Handbag / Jibz Cameron. Deep, affectionate and intimate portraits resonate ...

Directed by Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega • Documentary • 2016 • 55 minutes

EL POETA tells the story of renowned Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who ignited mass protests and an ongoing movement for peace after the brutal murder of his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco—collateral damage in a ...

Directed by Margaret Tait • Drama • With Celia Imrie, Jack Shepherd, Gerda Stevenson, James Fleet • 1992 • 84 minutes

Margaret Tait's tale of three generations of women in a Scottish family swirls out through a series of interlinking stories and recollections, taking place in Edinburgh and the O...

Directed by St. Clair Bourne • Documentary • 1983 • 60 minutes

IN MOTION: AMIRI BARAKA profiles the outspoken representative - formerly LeRoi Jones - of the Black consciousness movement who has been a major figure on the American literary and political landscape for three decades. Set in Newark,...

Directed by Michael Caplan • Documentary • 2021 • 85 minutes

The new feature documentary ALGREN is a journey through the gritty world, brilliant mind, and noble heart of Nelson Algren. Exploding onto the national scene in 1950 after winning the first-ever National Book Award for The Man with the...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1992 • 38 minutes

Through music, poetry and quiet, at times, chilling self-disclosure, five positive black gay men speak of their individual confrontation with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey black men throughout America have made in coping with ...

Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 2007 • 76 minutes

O AMOR NATURAL is a documentary film about the erotic poetry of one of the greatest Latin American poets of the 20th century, the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987).

The erotic poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a hou...

Directed by Chivas DeVinck • Documentary • 2018 • 99 minutes

Syl Cheney-Coker (author of The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) and Niyi Osundare (recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest recognition for distinguished academic an...

Directed by Terence Davies • Drama • With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle • 2017 • 126 minutes

Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death. Acc...

Directed by Tina Leisch • Documentary • 2013 • 85 minutes

It was once illegal to read books by Roque Dalton, one of El Salvador's most celebrated poets, in his own country. A descendant of legendary outlaws the Dalton Gang, he devoted his life to the cause of socialist revolution in Latin Americ...