Michael Ondaatje

More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.

The whole story of how the books about Martin Beck came to be is told here. It's a love story. A young couple wanted to talk about the injustices in society. Thus was born the modern detective story. It has been over 50 years since the first book in the series came out and it would only be in the fall of the age that Sjöwall Wahlöö was celebrated as the creator of the entire modern detective genre.

The story of Canada's leading poet and the A-Frame cabin he built. Now Canada's leading musicians and artists come together to tell the tale of Al Purdy.

Paris Stories explores the force of fiction for a woman who left Canada and her "good job for a girl" to live in a city where writers weren't viewed with suspicion and asked for three months rent in advance. Considered by both critics and her literary peers to be one of the most talented women writing in the English language, this film offers an intimate glimpse of a fiercely private woman devoted to the compact elegance of the short story.

"Michael Ondaatje called Gwendolyn MacEwen 'the last of the bardic poets'. In the early 60s, she astonished the nascent beat scene at Toronto's Bohemian Embassy with her exotic looks and her accomplished writing style. During her lifetime MacEwen travelled to Greece and Egpyt, married twice, wrote novels, translated Greek verse, took lovers and wrote radio scripts. Above all, she wrote luminous poetry, some of which is sensitively visualized in this thoughtful, pensive work which features insights from Margaret Atwood, Judith Merrill and Rosemary Sullivan." -- Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival

An overview of the life and career of Canadian folk musician Bruce Cockburn.