Movies: Poetry

The residents of Ho Chi Minh City face modernization amid widespread poverty. A retired American Marine arrives on a search for his daughter, whom he abandoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Elsewhere, a cyclo driver falls for a troubled prostitute a...

Enraged, a teacher murders a young female pupil. Over the years, another boy is bred for one sole purpose: to avenge his sister’s death....

Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's Bohemian friends crash the par...

Seeking US citizenship, a Viennese refugee arranges a marriage of convenience with a struggling writer....

Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike is Zefier's third film....

Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelinos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other's stories. Throu...

17-year-old Asher is split between his charismatic teacher and his brash father, who wants him to take over his scaffolding business....

The Angelic Conversation is a lyrical, haunting film about a young man’s search for love in a dreamlike landscape. Its tone is set by the juxtaposition of slow moving homo-erotic images and opaque landscapes through which two men take a journey into...

A popular high school girl is harassed by a delinquent boy until they are placed in creative writing class together. Through written words, they create a bond, but tragically a bond that cannot withstand her social pressures or his brutal home life....

For Michael Shiver, life as an easy-going cab driver in New York suddenly changes when he picks up supermodel Sarah Easton and falls head over heels in love. But Sarah has more than just passion on her mind; she also has a husband and a glamorous lif...

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

Images and poems of the celebrated couple Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Elsa’s youth as recalled by Aragon, with commentary by Elsa....

A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures....

Amiran is sold to a brothel by a corrupt cop after her father testifies against him. Many years later, she grows up to be an accomplished poetess and a renowned courtesan, Umrao Jaan....

A quiet killer is looking for a room. The real state agent, shy and expressionless, guides him through Tokyo, towards the ruins the decadent economy has left behind, in hopes of finding The Room....

Rosie Ming, a young Canadian poet, is invited to perform at a Poetry Festival in Shiraz, Iran, but she’d rather be in Paris. She lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents and has never been anywhere by herself. Once in Iran, she fin...

An account of the life and work of the Spanish poet Luis García Montero; a journey through his experiences, his mentors, his influences and his contact with other artists, both from the literary world and from other disciplines....

Duras narrates a short story while the camera travels through the streets of Paris with short interludes of solemn music....

James Broughton's creation myth, THIS IS IT, places a 2-year-old Adam and a bright apple-red balloon in a backyard garden of Eden, and works a small miracle of the ordinary. And since that miracle is what his film is about, he achieves a kind of casu...

When Tess Kelley realizes her daughter Jenny Kelley still isn't over her divorce from musician Rick Meadows, the irresponsible, ever-absent father of her little boy Jesse, and thus fails to make progress with friend and promising potential fiance Mil...