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.

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

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker...
Poetic stroll in the work of Jean Genet.

How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.

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

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

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

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

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after f...
After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pur...

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

Five gay Black men who are HIV-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding...

Portrait of the writer Elsa Triolet, wife of poet Louis Aragon. The tile is a play on a famous poem ...

Song is a story of the last Finnish rune singer and his pupil, and the comforting power of singing.

Award winning documentary by Joslyn Rose Lyons exploring the relationship between spiritual connecti...

A chronicle of legendary Native American poet/activist John Trudell's travels, spoken word performan...

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex...