Fantastic Mr. Dahl

An Angel at My Table

Based on the autobiographical work of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, this production depicts the author at various stage of her life. Afflicted with mental and emotional issues, Frame grows up in an impoverished family and experiences numerous tragedies while still in her youth, including the deaths of two of her siblings. Portrayed as an adult by Kerry Fox, Frame finds acclaim for her writing while still in a mental institution, and her success helps her move on with her life.

Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna von Hahn, called Madame Blavatsky, was an extraordinary personality of her time, regardless of how we decide to observe her philosophy. This film does not praise her work; nor does it defy and debunk what she stood for, in spite the fact that she was one of the most controversial figures of the 19th century.

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.

Creation

A psychological, heart-wrenching love story that provides a unique and inside look at Charles Darwin. Torn between faith and science, he struggles to finish his legendary book "On the Origin of Species," which goes on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology.

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.

Wilde

Oscar Wilde is a married playwright who has occasionally indulged his weakness for male suitors. After much toil, Wilde debuts 'The Importance of Being Earnest' in London, and a chat at the theatre with Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas leads to a full-fledged romance. However, this affair leads to a legal dispute with Lord Alfred's oppressive father, the Marquess of Queensberry, and, given the local anti-gay laws, Wilde is jailed. Wilde's vast intellect helps him survive until he regains his freedom.

Tolstoy: The Man Behind Anna

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

Becoming Astrid

When Astrid Lindgren was very young something happened that affected her profoundly, and this combination of both miracle and calamity came to shape her entire life. It was an event that transformed her into one of the most inspiring women of our age and the storyteller a whole world would come to love. This is the story of when a young Astrid, despite the expectations of her time and religious upbringing, decided to break free from society's norms and follow her heart.

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.

Lermontov. Doomsday

Pyatigorsk. The foot of Mount Mashuk. Morning of July 15, 1841. Two days ago – friends, overnight – irreconcilable enemies. A few hours remain until the duel between Lermontov and his friend Martynov. Relatives, friends, acquaintances of the duelists are trying to prevent the duel.

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.