Movies Similar to The essential word

Alternate Spaces(2022)

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area.

0.0

Voices in Wartime(2004)

Voices in Wartime is a 2004 documentary that explores the human experience of war through poetry. Combining interviews with soldiers, journalists, and historians, it reveals how war affects individuals and societies across time and place. The film features poets from around the world – from Homer and Wilfred Owen to Shoda Shinoe and modern writers in Iraq and Nigeria – showing how poetry expresses the pain, trauma, and truth of conflict. By linking verse with real-life accounts, Voices in Wartime highlights how poetry helps us understand the emotional and moral impact of war.

4.0

Broken Palace(2014)

A short documentary about the rapidly disappearing era of heritage movie palaces and the film going experience once offered within those hallowed walls.

9.0

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A Life Together: Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon(1993)

Performance and conversation with husband-and-wife poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon at a New Jersey festival, in their Wilmot (N.H.) hometown and their Eagle Pond farmhouse.

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Chubai. Speaking Again(2023)

A theatrical documentary about Hrytsko Chubai, a genius of Ukrainian poetry, a connoisseur of literature, art and music and the brightest representative of Lviv underground culture of late 60s early 70s.

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A World Is Turning(1948)

A lost chapter in black British film: extraordinary rushes from a documentary showcasing talented members of the black community.

0.0

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Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds(1979)

After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.

6.5

The Language of Trees(1983)

An exploration on Paz's poetry by Paz himself, his childhood, his ideas about love and the nature of art

8.0

Inger Christensen - The cicadas exist(1998)

In this portrait film, we meet Inger Christensen in her apartment in Østerbro, Copenhagen, where she tells of her life and work, and reads excerpts from her major works.

9.0

Tuesdays: (A Poem!).(2024)

A lowly bookkeeper (me), shot entirely on videotape (Sony Hi8), recites a poem about Tuesdays (derived from Old English Tiwesdæg, meaning ‘day of Tiw’ (the Norse god of law)). More info here: https://en.tuespedia.org/wiki/Tuesday

0.0

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Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) - Muse of Keening(2011)

A short film by Barry Lowe and Dino Mahoney, starring Pauline Burton as Anna. The film is an introduction to the great Soviet era modernist poet, Anna Akhmatova; shot in winter in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), it contains rare interviews with people who knew her, academics, and dramatized readings of some of her poems.

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Richard Hugo: Kicking the Loose Gravel Home(1976)

Filmed on location in Montana and Washington State, this 1976 biography of poet and teacher Richard Hugo features readings of some of his most famous poems as well as interviews with his family and friends.

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No Regret(1993)

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

4.7

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These Heathen Dreams(2014)

Once described by the press as "one of the most controversial figures on the Australian art scene", avant-garde poet and playwright Christopher Barnett achieved a level of notoriety in the Melbourne underground theatre scene during the ‘70s and ‘80s, before self-exiling to France. He remains there today, running an experimental theatre lab working with the marginalised and underprivileged, applauded by the establishment (including former French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault) and faithful to his belief that art can change the world. These Heathen Dreams is an intimate portrait of Barnett's life and revolutionary philosophy. Combining archival footage dating back to the ‘60s with contemporary observational documentation and text from Barnett's writings, it is a poignant and inspiring study of the power of both art and political activism.

3.0

BURNING OUT(2022)

A short film, based on a series of poems, about childhood, the break with parental, and war.

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A Fanatic Heart: Geldof On Yeats(2016)

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

1.0

Great Spirit

Documentary video journey in search of the missing Tatar poet Rahim Sattar. The path from the present to the past runs through a polylogue of experts, folk music, works by contemporary artists, musical and creative interpretation of poems by Rahim Sattar and unique archival newsreels shot at the dawn of cinema.

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Manic Magic: a Poem in Four Parts(2025)

A poem about mania written by Omar Zefier. His second film.

8.0

Miguel Ramón Utrera(1991)

Documentary about the poet Miguel Ramón Utrera.

0.0

Cacaso(2016)

Cacaso, a Brazilian poet, lived in Rio de Janeiro. Born Antonio Carlos de Brito (1944-1987) he was one of the leaders of the marginal poetry movement. Cacaso filled notebooks not only with poems but reflections, drawings and collages. He also became a lyricist and partner of celebrated songwriters such as Tom Jobim, Edu Lobo, Toninho Horta, João Donato and Sivuca.

5.0