In 1244, Jelaluddin Rumi, a Sufi scholar in Konya, Turkey, met an itinerant dervish, Shams of Tabriz. A powerful friendship ensued. When Shams died, the grieving Rumi gripped a pole in his garden, and turning round it, began reciting imagistic poetry about inner life and love of God. After Rumi's death, his son founded the Mevlevi Sufi order, the whirling dervishes. Lovers of Rumi's poems comment on their power and meaning, including religious historian Huston Smith, writer Simone Fattal, poet Robery Bly, and Coleman Barks, who reworks literal translations of Rumi into poetic English. Musicians accompany Barks and Bly as they recite their versions of several of Rumi's ecstatic poems.
The Sufi and the Scientist is the collective story of Sufi healer Sayyid Arif Hussain, the medieval ...

Cacaso, a Brazilian poet, lived in Rio de Janeiro. Born Antonio Carlos de Brito (1944-1987) he was o...

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social critici...

The documentary is titled after Arkadaş Z. Özger’s poem “Hello My Dear” which had caused much contro...

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker...

Eldar Ryazanov reads his poetry. An introspective movie on his multifaceted work.

Documentary video journey in search of the missing Tatar poet Rahim Sattar. The path from the presen...
It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, mu...

This documentary highlights the evolution of Brazil's Circo Voador venue from homespun artists' perf...

Using the author's personal estate, current images of places where she lived or were dear to her, an...

A film that immerses its audience in subjective states of consciousness they might experience when t...

How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.
Poetic stroll in the work of Jean Genet.
A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introdu...

A biography of the poet W. B. Yeats and his contribution to the Irish independence movement as a Pro...

A lowly bookkeeper (me), shot entirely on videotape (Sony Hi8), recites a poem about Tuesdays (deriv...

In this portrait film, we meet Inger Christensen in her apartment in Østerbro, Copenhagen, where she...