Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

A documentary 33 years in the making. A director and friend of Kurt Vonnegut seeks through his archives to create the first film featuring the revolutionary late writer.

Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens

Armando Iannucci presents a personal argument in praise of the genius of Charles Dickens. Through the prism of the author's most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, Armando looks beyond Dickens - the national institution - and instead explores the qualities of Dickens's work that still make him one of the best British writers. While Dickens is often celebrated for his powerful depictions of Victorian England and his role as a social reformer, this programme foregrounds the elements of his writing which make him worth reading, as much for what he tells us about ourselves in the twenty-first century as our ancestors in the nineteenth. Armando argues that Dickens's remarkable use of language and his extraordinary gift for creating characters make him a startlingly experimental and psychologically penetrating writer who demands not just to be adapted for television but to be read and read again.

Philip K Dick: A Day in the Afterlife

A poetic look at the life and legacy of legendary author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982), who wrote over a hundred short stories and 44 novels of mind-bending sci-fi, exploring themes of authority, drugs, theology, mental illness and much more.

Brontë Country: The Story of Emily, Charlotte & Anne Brontë

Travel back to Victorian Britain and wander the cobbled streets of Haworth to the sites that inspired the great Brontë sisters’ classic novels.

Tolstoy: The Man Behind Anna

An examination of the life of great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who penned the 1877 novel Anna Karenina.

Rumer Godden: An Indian Affair

Rumer Godden the 88 year old author is taken back to India, where she lived from 1908-1945 to revisit her unconventional life there and to share with her daughter the experiences which inform all her writing.

Fantastic Mr. Dahl

Documentary about author Roald Dahl, produced for the British television series Imagine.

Richard Wright: Native Son, Author and Activist

RICHARD WRIGHT was an African-American author of novels, short stories and non-fiction that dealt with powerful themes and controversial topics. Much of his works concerned racial themes that helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century. Born on a plantation in Mississippi, Wright was a descendent of the first slaves who arrived in Jamestown Massachusetts. This program follows his arduous path from sharecropper to literary giant. Through authors like H.L. Menken, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, he discovered that literature could be used as a catalyst for social change. In 1937 Wright moved to New York and his work began to garner national attention for it's political and social commentary. Much of Wright's writing focused on the African American community and experience; his novel Native Son won him a Guggenheim Fellowship and was adapted to the Broadway stage with Orson Welles directing in 1941.

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.

Sex, Lies and Jerzy Kosinski

The making of Jerzy Kosinski. The BBC documentary on the life and art of enigmatic novelist Jerzy Kosinski. Through interviews with his second wife Kiki von Fraunhofer-Kosinski, friends and fellow authors, and Polish villagers who knew Kosinski when he was a child hiding from the scourge of Nazism, this program attempts to assess the verity of Kosinski's "autobiographical" fiction, the need for him to maintain a nebulous mystique about his early life, and to understand his obsession with S&M sex clubs in Manhattan during the 1970s and 1980s.

Best of Enemies

A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"

J.R.R.T. : A Study of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1892-1973

J.R.R.T.: A Study of J.R.R. Tolkien is a 1992 documentary, narrated by Judi Dench, produced to celebrate the centenary of J.R.R. Tolkien's birth. It is sometimes called "J.R.R. Tolkien: A Portrait" and "J.R.R. Tolkien - An Authorized Film Portrait". It features archive footage and audio recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien, and interviews with three of his children Priscilla, John, and Christopher. It also includes interviews with Baillie Tolkien, Robert Murray, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Rayner Unwin, Tom Shippey, and Verlyn Flieger.

The Geographies of DAR

A visually stunning film on acclaimed author David Adams Richards and his connection to one of Canada’s most overlooked yet breathtaking regions.

Ed McClanahan: Kentucky Muse

Unable or unwilling to conform to the rigid atmosphere of Washington and Lee College as a freshman, Ed bailed out after a brief stint there to attend—and graduate from—Miami of Ohio. After graduate work at UK, he left for the Left Coast, and it suited him just fine. The first stop was a writing instructorship at Oregon State, then enrollment into the Stanford Writing Program, a move shared by Jim, Wendell, and Gurney. There he cultivated, among other things, relationships with Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and—most importantly—Ken Kesey. Ed didn’t just experience the 1960s; he wallowed in them. Also, a bonus interview from 1996 program, Signature Live.

Orchard House: Home of Little Women

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

Animals, Whores & Dialogue: Breakfast with Hunter Vol. 2

Animals, Whores & Dialogue is more than just a sequel to Wayne Ewing's 2003 Breakfast with Hunter which Variety declared to be a movie "that captures the essence of his [Hunter Thompson's] jazzy pop journalism." This new feature length documentary goes even deeper into Gonzo journalism with intimate scenes of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson at work writing, editing, and recounting the creation of classics like Hells Angels and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Animals, whores & dialogue were metaphors and an element Hunter almost always wove into his writing, and the words were emblazoned on his typewriter.

The Mindscape of Alan Moore

The Mindscape of Alan Moore is a psychedelic journey into one of the world's most powerful minds; chronicling the life and work of Alan Moore, author of several acclaimed graphic novels, including "From Hell," "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta." It is the only feature film production on which Alan Moore has collaborated, with permission to use his work. Alan Moore presents the story of his development as an artist, starting with his childhood and working through to his comics career and impact on that medium, and his emerging interest in magic.

No Maps for These Territories

On an overcast morning in 1999, William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of the cult-classic novel Neuromancer, stepped into a limousine and set off on a road trip around North America. The limo was rigged with digital cameras, a computer, a television, a stereo, and a cell phone. Generated entirely by this four-wheeled media machine, No Maps for These Territories is both an account of Gibson’s life and work and a commentary on the world outside the car windows. Here, the man who coined the word "cyberspace" offers a unique perspective on Western culture at the edge of the new millennium, and in the throes of convulsive, tech-driven change.

Ardisson, l'Homme en Noir : l'hommage

La face cachée de l'homme en noir