Documentary about author Roald Dahl, produced for the British television series Imagine.
Social & External
Self - Presenter
Self (archive footage)
Self
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.
After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.
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.
An examination of the life of great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, who penned the 1877 novel Anna Karenina.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 the Species," which goes on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology.
Travel back to Victorian Britain and wander the cobbled streets of Haworth to the sites that inspired the great Brontë sisters’ classic novels.
The English novelist, John Le Carré discusses his life as a secret agent and writer in this documentary about spies in fact and fiction, produced for British television.
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.
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?"
A poignant biography of one of the most successful and wildly-read writers of the 20th century. Her stories enthralled children everywhere but her personal struggles often proved too much.
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.
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.
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 man who invented James Bond: The story of Ian Fleming, real-life spy, ladies' man and sportsman, who was there at the birth of MI-5 and the CIA, and gave the world one of its most enduring and iconic heroes: Bond. James Bond.
A visually stunning film on acclaimed author David Adams Richards and his connection to one of Canada’s most overlooked yet breathtaking regions.
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