It is said that Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez never allowed for a film adaptation of his singular masterpiece 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', arguably the most influential novel in any language of the second half of the twentieth century, to be produced. However, the prolific Colombian writer had strong ties to the movies.
Self
13 Oct 2017
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”.
06 Nov 2015
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.
15 Sep 2021
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.
01 Jan 2007
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.
10 Sep 2017
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.
07 Jun 2014
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.
08 May 1985
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.
Dangling from a high window, a young non-binary person is on the cusp of life and death. Flashes of film, literature, art (paintings) and cultural history pass them by, as if to tell a message. A postmodern treatise on connection to culture and the past.
25 Nov 2001
Poet, essayist, novelist and filmmaker, Michel Houellebecq has always had close ties with the cinema and the world of the visual arts, which have accompanied and extended his reflexions since the start of his career, as the frequent allusions to them in his novels attest. This portrait of Houellebecq is from his early days of bad boy provocateur stardom. Having just published Plateforme in french and enjoying the many translations of Les Particules élémentaires.
05 Apr 2001
This documentary contains dramatized episodes about the lives of Erika and Klaus Mann, the brilliant children of German writer Thomas Mann.
18 Mar 2020
England, 1960. The Crown sues the publisher Penguin Books in order to ban the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, a novel by the British writer D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), published privately in Italy in 1928, which celebrates nature and deals with sex without taboos.
18 Apr 2013
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.
01 Jun 1986
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.
03 Jan 2020
Mark Gatiss explores and celebrates Dracula, an icon of popular culture, asking just why we keep coming back to the count.
15 Sep 2021
In 1991, American Psycho, the third novel by controversial writer Bret Easton Ellis, provoked heated discussions among critics and readers alike; an extraordinarily disturbing book that transported its readers into the mind of Patrick Bateman, a cynical mergers and acquisitions executive obsessed with brands, inconsequential details, pop culture and brutal murder.
15 Sep 2021
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.
29 Jun 2010
An in-depth look at the Canadian rock band Rush, chronicling the band's musical evolution from their progressive rock sound of the '70s to their current heavy rock style.
01 Apr 1998
"Assisted Living", by Nikanor Teratologen, originally released in Sweden 1992 as "Äldreomsorgen i Övre Kågedalen" immediately caused an uproar, due to the book's endless "Satanic" parade of rape, murder, sacrilege.
01 May 2009
Swedish/Estonian writer Mare Kandre (1962-2005): "It's about life and death and it must always be." "She brought her the truth," says Johan von Sydow, referring to the rock mythos and artistic romantic law that is about to die young.
20 Dec 1970
The thoughts, words, and compelling presence of Gertrude Stein flows richly through this portrait of the author's Paris years from 1905 through the 1930s.