Catalog Search Results
1) Mark Twain
Summary
Recounts Mark Twain's life told primarily through his own words. Includes interviews with Hal Holbrook, Arthur Miller, William Styron and many others.
2) Hemingway
Summary
Examine the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers: Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work. The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure.
3) Wild
Summary
After years of reckless behavior, a heroin addiction and the destruction of her marriage, Cheryl Strayed makes a rash decision. Haunted by memories of her mother Bobbi and with absolutely no experience, she sets out to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail all on her own.
Summary
Transgender-dyke. Reluctant-Polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering-Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. - Meet Auntie Kate. Trailblazing performance artist-theorist-activist, Kate Bornstein, takes us on a mind-bending quest through her world dismantling gender and seeking answers to the age-old question: What makes life worth living? Kate Bornstein is... captures rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations bearing witness to...
Summary
A dazzling, worthy tribute to Vonnegut and a compelling introduction for the uninitiated. The feature documentary - the first of its kind on Vonnegut - is a deep, immersive dive into the author’s upbringing and his creative output. It spans his childhood in Indianapolis, his experience as a Prisoner of War in World War II, his marriage, family, and divorce, his early careers as a publicist for General Electric and a car salesman, and his long years...
6) E.B. White
Series
Summary
Presents great authors that are integral to school literature requirements. In this program, meet E.B. White.
Summary
A unique look at the life of celebrated American author Patricia Highsmith based on her diaries and notebooks, and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends and family. Focusing on Highsmithb2ss quest for love and her troubled identity, the film sheds new light on her life and writing. Most of Highsmithb2ss novels were adapted for the big screen; the best known of these are Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Carol, a partly...
8) American Oz
Summary
L. Frank Baum was 44 when he published the first book about Oz, having spent most of his life reinventing himself with each new career in pursuit of the American Dream. When in Chicago, his observations of an uncertain nation during the Gilded Age informed his magical tale of survival, adventure, and self-discovery which went on to become a quintessential classic.
Summary
The Twain Legacy offers students and teachers an insight into the life and writings of Mark Twain, a significant 19th century American literary icon. ‘The Twain Legacy’ is divided into five chapters intended for class and individual learning and discussion. Knowledgeable scholars explore themes, ideas and narrative style in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. By examining and exploring why his historical and moral concerns were important, the...
Summary
Explore the life and work of author Flannery O'Connor, whose distinctive Southern Gothic style influenced a generation of artists and activists. Winner of the first-ever Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film, O'Connor includes conversations with Mary Karr, Hilton Als and others. Through never-before-seen archival footage, examine the life and legacy of an American literary icon.
Summary
"Little House on the Prairie: The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder" is a one-hour documentary that goes beyond the famed "Little House" book series to the behind-the-scenes, true life story of one of America's most iconic authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Despite the fame and the popularity of her novels, Wilder's personal story as a writer, wife and mother is a compelling narrative that has never been told ... until now" --container back cover.
Summary
Edgar Allan Poe: buried alive draws on the rich palette of Poe's evocative imagery and sharply drawn plots to tell the real story of the notorious author. Featuring Tony Award-winning actor Denis O'Hare, the film explores the misrepresentations of Poe as an alcoholic madman. It reveals the way in which Poe tapped into what it means to be a human in the modern and sometimes frightening world.
Summary
This is a deeply moving portrait of Maurice Sendak, a seminal talent who is conflicted with his success, and whose lifelong obsession with death has subtly and ironically influenced his work. Now 81, Sendak is best known for his first book, Where the wild things are, which he wrote after spending ten years as an illustrator. Through his own words, firsthand photos, and illustrations, Sendak offers a rare, intimate, and unexpected look at his exceptional...
Summary
An unvarnished look at the unlikely author whose autobiographical fiction helped shape American ideas of the frontier and self-reliance. A Midwestern farm woman who published her first novel at age 65, Laura Ingalls Wilder transformed her frontier childhood into the best-selling Little House series.
15) Beat hotel
Summary
1957, Paris. A cheap no-name hotel becomes a haven for a new breed of artists struggling to free themselves from the conformity and censorship of America. Called the Beat hotel, it soon became an epicenter of the beat generation. This revelatory new documentary delves deep into this amazing place and time. Fleeing the obscenity trials surrounding the publication of Howl, Allen Ginsberg, along with Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, happened upon the...
Series
Summary
Like many of August Wilson's plays, this story is told in two acts, revealing how Wilson grew up to be one of the most influential American playwrights.
August Wilson (1945-2005) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who had a particular talent for capturing the authentic, everyday voice of Black Americans. As a child, he read off soup cans and cereal boxes, and when his mother brought him to the library, his whole world opened up. After...
Summary
Born to Chinese immigrant parents into 1950's America, it would be decades before Ms. Tan would come to fully understand how her mother's self-destructive tendencies were rooted in watching her own mother kill herself after being forced into the former marital system of concubinage. This painful family legacy inspired her stories of women without the power to choose their lives. An interweaving of archival imagery, artful animation and live performance...
Summary
Both heartfelt and entertaining, My Depression uniquely illuminates the symptoms, emotions and side effects of depression using animation, comedy and music.The film helps to make a difficult and sometimes taboo topic more understandable, both for those who may be suffering from depression as well as family and friends of people with the disorder.My Depression takes viewers through an individual's journey from the early symptoms through the darkest...
19) Capote
Summary
In 1959, Truman Capote was a popular writer for The New Yorker. He learns about the horrific and senseless murder of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas. Inspired by the story, Capote and his partner, Harper Lee, travel to the town to do research for an article. However, as Capote digs deeper into the story, he is inspired to expand the project into what would be his greatest work, "In Cold Blood." He arranges extensive interviews with the convicted...
20) Big Sur
Summary
In an attempt to heal from the deterioration caused by the pressures of sudden fame and too much alcohol, famous Beat author Jack Kerouac escapes to an isolated, mist-shrouded cabin in the primitive landscape of the Big Sur woods. Instead of finding the peace he desires, he is foiled once again by his own inner demons and sets off on a visceral collision course of paranoia, sex, delirium tremens, misery and madness.
