Narnia's Lost Poet: The Secret Lives and Loves of C.S. Lewis

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.

Sarah Thankam Mathews: After All This

Following the success of her debut novel, All This Could Be Different, author Sarah Thankam Mathews embarks on her second novel, drawing from her adolescence between India and Oman. As Sarah excavates lost place and time, she must contend with the weight of truthful representation and the contradictions within her childhood memories.

Odd Børretzen: Mer enn helt all right

A portrait of Norwegian poet Odd Børretzen in his own words, featuring musical highlights from Børretzen's work with musicians Alf Cranner and Lars Martin Myhre.

Tove Ditlevsen – jeg har altid villet alting

Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats

Jack Kerouac's life is examined through interviews with his contemporaries and friends including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William S. Burroughs. The film also employs dramatic recreations of Kerouac's life beginning with his early childhood.

Tolstoy: The Man Behind Anna

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

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.

Things That Go Bump in the Night: Tales of Haunted New England

Things That Go Bump in the Night: Tales of Haunted New England takes you on a journey throughout historic New England collecting tales of the supernatural, the unexplained, and the mysterious — spooky stories of ghosts, spirits, witches... and even a vampire!

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.

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.

Grid

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dian Fossey: Ihr Leben für die Gorillas

She was the first to study gorillas in their natural environment: the high mountains of Rwanda, where she settled in 1967. For nearly twenty years, Dian Fossey lived with the gorillas, observed their behavior, and changed the way people viewed them. Her relentless fight against poaching prevented the species from becoming extinct. But in December 1985, the primatologist was murdered, and the mystery surrounding her death remains unsolved. Former colleagues, scientists, and biographers shed light on the impact of her work, but also on the darker sides of her personality and her uncompromising commitment.

Nicolas Maury, ceux qui l'aiment prendront le train

Between the nostalgia of resurfacing roots and the desire to venture into song to experience a rebirth, Nicolas Maury reveals himself unguarded before Didier Varrod, with a deeply moving sincerity. Nicolas Maury released his first album, La porcelaine de Limoges, in January 2023—a new experience for this unique, demanding, and multifaceted actor. It is an opportunity to paint an intimate portrait of him through an extended interview on a train between Paris and Limoges. In this specific setting, which was also that of his first (silent) film role with Patrice Chéreau in Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, Nicolas discovers archives and hears from close acquaintances who speak about him. A documentary film, like a kind of initiation rite, it moves back and forth between memories of France and childhood, and his condition as a man and artist today, taking on a new identity through music.

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.

Anny Duperey, artiste en équilibre

A popular actress, Anny Duperey lived a precarious life for many years until she found a place to settle down in Creuse. It is there that she keeps her photos, writes, and recharges her batteries. In this portrait, she breaks with convention by playing with her image and openly questioning the desires of an actress as her career is revisited.

The Grim & The Dark

When looking for a gift for his kid, Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) is introduced to the world of Grimdark. In that moment he starts down a journey that will take him all over the world and through interviews with prominent Grimdark authors, game developers, and dedicated fans, he delves into the themes that define the genre—all in an effort to find the man who started it all: John Blanche.