Summary: As a child of the Spanish Civil War and the repressive post-war era, Carmen Martin Gaite found kindred spirits among the Madrid literati, led by her future husband Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, during the '50s. In her long and uninterrupted literary career, Gaite chose socially critical topics such as the relationship between the sexes and the differences between provincial and city life. Using...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Born in Cuba to Chinese parents, award-winning novelist Zoe Valdes has achieved worldwide recognition for portraying the struggles and dreams of women. This program highlights her upbringing, education, and influences, as well as examining several of her most important books, including La Hija del Embajador and Te Di La Vida Entera.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Raised within the socially restrictive mores of a transient middle-class family and troubled with a stammering problem, Ana Maria Matute took refuge in literature. At 17, she began to use her experiences to probe the themes of lost childhood, injustice, and the lives of the marginalized. She soon developed a fresh prose style that deftly blended fantasy and realism, revitalizing the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Chilean novelist Isabel Allende has sold 15 million books in 30 languages over the past two decades. Few living writers receive the critical acclaim, popular following, and consistent sales records that she has enjoyed since the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits, in 1982. And yet her own story of exile after the rise of the dictator Pinochet is, perhaps, the most...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Isabel Allende, the most recent Latin American novelist to bestride the world literary stage-and the first Latin American woman-describes the emotions that inform her fiction and the events that set them in motion. Niece of the deposed (and presumably assassinated) Chilean Marxist president Salvador Allende, she fled Chile in terror and blossomed in exile to write of the love, hate, and revenge...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Born in Barcelona, Rosa Regas has founded two publishing houses and two magazines, as well as written several award-winning novels. In this extended interview, the novelist and journalist discusses several of her books, including Azul, Luna Lunera, and Le Cancion de Dorotea.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as "The Einstein of the Theater" watches his plays and, away from the footlights, confronts the paradoxical nature of his life. Portions of Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; Right You Are, If You Think You Are; and The Rules of the Game are meticulously...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Ridiculed by some, admired by others, and ignored by no one, Yukio Mishima has remained a paradox in both life and death. This program combines extensive archival footage of Mishima; interviews with colleagues, including his biographer, Henry Scott Stokes, and two of his translators; and readings by actor John Hurt to portray Japan's immensely popular novelist, playwright, actor, and patriot of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer who developed the drama as a social and ideological forum is the subject of this program, in which those who knew him discuss his life and many works. Excerpts from plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Antigone highlight the development of Brecht's austere form of irregular verse....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Until recently, the serious works of Russian avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms-his absurdist pieces, the ones laced with irony and steeped in trenchant wit-were known only to the Soviet Union's literary underground. This production, reset in modern-day America, is the first film adaptation of Kharms' novella The Old Woman, a dark comedy about a man trying to get rid of a dead body.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: My role as a writer is to create positive myths, says Amin Maalouf. The Lebanese-born novelist and journalist also acknowledges "the material that history gives me." This program features conversations with Maalouf about his imaginative, historically grounded novels and his identity as a Christian Arab living in Paris. On-screen readings by the author present excerpts and themes from Leo...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Refuting any connection with overt political goals, Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk aims to create stories "as a child, not knowing where I am going next." Yet few writers in the Islamic world are more closely associated with political strife or have sparked as much street-level anger. This program features an interview with the world-renowned author in his Istanbul office,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In the early years of his dental practice, Alaa Al Aswany had an office in Cairo's deteriorating Yacoubian Building-eventually turning his experiences there into a successful novel by the same title. This interview with the Egyptian author highlights his views on social issues affecting the Islamic world as well as his attitudes towards literature and the West. Guiding viewers through his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This short adaptation of a play by Trinidad's foremost black writer is a metaphorical exploration of relations between black and white in the postcolonial world. The plot concerns a retired white actor and his black factotum; presumably they will perform a pantomime version of Robinson Crusoe, but roles become reversed, much to the white man's bewilderment and discomfort.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: A novel is a "map of contradictions," says German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann-an arena of clashing viewpoints, each with its own persuasive logic. This program presents an interview with Kehlmann in which he discusses his literary goals and his search for fertile soil in the dichotomous history of Western Europe. Specific topics include personal freedom, cultural and religious tolerance,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Her father was an ex-Nazi and alcoholic who clung to his fascist beliefs. For much of her life, she struggled against Nicolae Ceausescu's dehumanizing regime. But no matter how prolonged or alienating her hardships, they never crippled Herta Muller's spirit-and have, in fact, shaped and amplified her astonishing literary output. Commissioned by the Nobel Foundation, this program features...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Culture and multiculturalism are the dominant recurring themes in this program as Spanish writer Antonio Gala reflects on his heritage and the value of integrating immigrants into the fabric of society. The author of Poemas de Amor, Los Verdes Campos del Eden, El Manuscrito Carmesi, La Regla de Tres, and numerous other books also talks about how he first started writing and the process of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Forced to flee Chile after the military coup in 1973, Ariel Dorfman has focused his writing on the trials of tyranny and exile. This program looks at how he has fought for human rights as a novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist, and professor of literature and Latin American studies. Many of the works of this multi-genre author are examined, including Death and the Maiden, his successful...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The life of Boris Pasternak-crowned by a Nobel Prize he dared not accept-is a story of success soured by political oppression. Drawing on previously unavailable footage, this program parts what was the Iron Curtain to profile the renowned author, from his early achievements as an upcoming avant-garde poet to the humiliations and threats heaped upon him, late in life, as a result of writing the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This story captures a man's journey to the mystical house of a father, son, and daughter, where strange events bring the traveler to a better understanding of the redemptive power of Christ's suffering and death.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Addressing themes too often neglected in our technology-worshiping global culture, Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas exemplifies the complexity of 20th-century Latin American literature. This program records Rojas' musings on his life in poetry and the manifold settings and circumstances in which he has worked. The Cervantes Prize winner and author of The Misery of Man, Against Death, and Dark...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Jacinto Benavente-a member of the Generation of '98, the winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Literature, and one of the most influential Spanish dramatists of the entire 20th century-penned more than 170 plays. This program tells the story of Benavente's life and the turbulent times in which he lived as it sheds light on aspects of his writing. A critic of the bourgeois class, he nonetheless...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Probing the relationship between political and artistic identity, Spanish-born author Juan Goytisolo investigates rarely explored concepts at the heart of Spanish and Latin American culture. This program presents an overview of Goytisolo's outlook on past and present social dilemmas and their connection with his self-exile from his home country. The author of The Young Assassins, Marks of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: She was the sort of woman who spared neither herself nor others-and arguably qualifies as 20th-century France's greatest femme de lettres. In this interview, the late novelist and filmmaker talks openly about the hardship and the romance of her childhood in French Indochina, sharing how this period haunted her life and shaped her work. Excerpts from her films and readings from her books by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005