Bukowski: The Last Straw

In his second international bestseller, "Arc de Triomphe," author Erich Maria Remarque explores his own experience of exile and his decisive encounter with Marlene Dietrich. From Paris and Antibes to Los Angeles and New York, the documentary traces the moving genesis of this highly autobiographical novel, now considered a major work of European exile literature, and the literary legacy of the long-standing passion between two global stars.

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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.

Biography and in-depth look of Beckett and his work.

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.

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.

"This film explores how freedom of speech — including dissent — is afforded to all Americans, and shows freedom of expression in art, music, dance, architecture, and science. The film also emphasizes the importance of the individual’s contribution to the whole of society and demonstrates how a productive and creative society is formed by the open and respectful exchange of ideas. The film was written, produced, and directed by William Greaves" (National Archives).

A look back at the troubled life of genius British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).

Samuel Beckett has fascinated Adrian Dunbar since he was a young student. Now, 30 years after Beckett's death in Paris, Dunbar explores what made the man who made Waiting for Godot.

Emmy Award-winning chronicle of the history of Orchard House, the home in Concord, Massachusetts where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set Little Women.

The film focuses on the exciting life journey of Swiss writer Katharina Zimmermann. She follows her husband on a mission to the jungle in Indonesia where she raises their four children and five foster children and lives through the military coup. Back in Switzerland Katharina discovers her voice and finds her path. Now, at eighty, she is writing her life story. Yet suddenly she faces another battle because her publisher is threatening to let her go.

T. S. Eliot ends one of his most famous poems, "The Hollow Men", by repeating three times the sentence "This is how the world ends" - and then adding: "Not with a bang but a whimper."

Félix, a young, melancholic and secretive shepherd, leads a surprisingly timeless life. He lives alone and works along his father to raise the family herd. From autumn to spring, he looks after his animals, feeds them and keeps them in the dense forests of holm oaks of French Pre-Alps. In the summer, he travels on foot for more than two hundred kilometres, leaving his father to lead the herd to the mountains pastures, in the High Alps Ubaye valley. There, he lives far from everything for many long months, in a mineral and inaccessible world where an invisible being prowls: the wolf. Against the tide of his time, Félix has chosen a profession that isolates him and keeps him out of the world.

A docu-drama portrait of the early-20th-century French author Marcel Proust, based on Alain de Botton's updated analysis of his work as a modern-day self-help guide. Ralph Fiennes plays Proust, with Phyllida Law and Donald Sinden as his contemporaries, while commentators including de Botton, Louis de Bernières and Doris Lessing explain their enthusiasm for his work.

John Irving's literary worlds are satirically exaggerated, socially critical, unexpectedly magical. But how do these dazzling, sometimes bizarre, narrative worlds emerge? A unique insight into his writing workshop and a search of the places and people who have become part of his stories.

At the crossroads of Black literary consciousness and political struggle, the ideas of Claude McKay, Jamaican poet and novelist, laid the foundations for major literary movements, including Négritude. Proudly wandering, both bohemian and politically committed, a chameleon with a magnetic personality, he traveled across the globe: New York’s literary scene, Parisian aristocracy, Communist intelligentsia in Russia, and Black diasporas in the port of Marseille. Using archival materials and texts read in voice-over by Gaël Faye and Manon Azem, the film traces McKay’s journey as he crosses paths with major figures of his time, from George Bernard Shaw to W.E.B. Du Bois, Trotski, and many others.