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Directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s a City features the return of sardonic writer and public speaker Fran Lebowitz in conversation with the director as she shares anecdotes about her early life and career in New York City in the 1970s. The Netflix series continues the partnership of the longtime friends, who worked together on the 2010 HBO documentary Public Speaking.
“A good bookseller absolutely is another kind of discoverer and thinker of history,” says Kevin Young in this trailer for The Booksellers. The documentary, directed by D. W. Young and executive produced by Parker Posey, explores the history, personalities, and business of bookselling in New York City.
“Ultimately I knew that words have power.” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary about Toni Morrison is an exploration of the author’s life story, her values and challenges, and her creative work. The film includes engaging interviews with Morrison, as well as notable peers, colleagues, and admirers such as Hilton Als, Russell Banks, Angela Davis, Walter Mosley, Sonia Sanchez, and Oprah Winfrey.
“This poem is not a cry for help. This poem is not my broken pieces. And we are not done yet.” In this HBO documentary, a group of veterans and active-duty service members come together to write a collaborative poem and turn it into a stage performance. The film is directed by Sareen Hairabedian and coproduced by Jeffrey Wright and David Holbrooke.
“I’d like us not to be resigned but to be rebellious—I want to see science fiction step over the old walls and head right into the next wall and start to break it down too.” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is a crowdfunded documentary directed by Arwen Curry, who was able to collaborate with the late author before her death. The film features interviews with Le Guin, as well as authors including Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, and Theodora Goss.
This independent documentary film directed by Oscar Corral explores Tom Wolfe’s writing life and his fourth novel, Back to Blood (Little, Brown, 2012), which is set in Miami and focuses on the subject of immigration. Wolfe died at the age of eighty-seven on May 14, 2018.
“She’s a fearsome critic, essayist, a voice of moral authority, and a deeply intimidating figure.” Joan Didion’s nephew, Griffin Dunne, speaks about Didion’s life and legacy, the subject of a documentary he is codirecting, which is currently being funded through Kickstarter.
“Poetry gave me something that school didn’t,” says CJ Suitt, one of three subjects in this documentary, directed by Garret Warner, that follows spoken word poets from North Carolina. In front of live audiences they search for what is personal and universal, what Maya Angelou called “a brave and startling truth.”
Poet Ron Silliman recently drew attention to this footage of Frank O’Hara from the 1966 TV series USA: Poetry. O’Hara died a few weeks after the filming was completed.
A newly released two-DVD set, One Tough Mother, combines the films made of Charles Bukowski’s last two readings—in Vancouver in 1979 and in Redondo Beach, California, in 1980. The author of more than sixty books, Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994.
