This Is Joan Collins

L'acte de la beauté

November 2021 •French

Play Like an 8 Year Old

February 2024 •English

Youth footballers and professional players are asked the same set of interview questions in this documentary that explores mental health, the academy system and childhood ambition in the world of football.

La Bréa

Invalid date •Portuguese

Documentary about Brazilian actress Sandra Bréa.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

August 2008 •English

Louisa May Alcott, author of "Little Women," leads a literary double life, writing under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, an identity that remains until the 1940s.

Lindisfarne’s Geordie Genius: The Alan Hull Story

November 2021 •English

Brit Award-winner Sam Fender goes in search of a musical hero from another era - the late, great, Alan Hull of Lindisfarne, in this one-off BBC Four documentary.

Meryl Streep: Mystery and Metamorphosis

August 2020 •French

Meryl Streep is one of the most versatile and successful actresses of all time and is still considered a superstar after 50 years of career. She fascinates filmmakers and audiences alike with her broad range of expression.

Greta Garbo: Leave Me Alone

Invalid date •English

An urgent, timely and compelling portrait of Hollywood icon Greta Garbo, whose fame, isolation and loneliness still captures us.

Alexander Pope: Rediscovering a Genius

October 2021 •English

Docudrama that recounts the astonishing life story of a forgotten genius, English poet Alexander Pope, who lived from 1688 to 1744.

Kathy Acker

January 1984 •English

Documentary about Kathy Acker where she talks about her writing and her life in New York.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

January 2010 •English

A documentary on the life and career of Joan Rivers, made as the comedienne turns 75 years old.

Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary

June 2008 •English

Xaviera Hollander, 'The Happy Hooker': Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary is a documentary about one of the world's most important sexual icons. Interviews with Larry King and commentary from America's foremost sexologists explore Xaviera's rise and fall, her deportation from the United States and Canada, and her political significance to the feminist movement.

Beatrix Potter with Patricia Routledge

January 2016 •English

Patricia Routledge, as patron of the Beatrix Potter Society, presents a documentary on the author's life and work.

The Man Who Drank the Universe

January 2005 •English

It is late 2004, and 34-year-old Englishman Alistair Appleton is about to fly from London to the Brazilian coast, where he will drink ayahuasca for the first time. With wit, insight, and sensitivity, Alistair shares this experience with us, and chats with some fellow participants before and after the ayahuasca ceremonies. For the past few years, Alistair had been working as a television presenter. In 2000, he started making trips to the Centre for World Peace and Health in Scotland to learn how to meditate. When clinical psychologist Silvia Polivoy opened an ayahuasca healing center in Bahia in 2004, Alistair faced his fears and seized the opportunity to attend.

The Geographies of DAR

November 2023 •English

A visually stunning film on acclaimed author David Adams Richards and his connection to one of Canada’s most overlooked yet breathtaking regions.

Joan Crawford's Home Movies

January 1942 •English

The private Joan Crawford fought as hard to create a normal family life as she did to establish her career. She forged her own path and to that end became a single parent, eventually adopting and raising four children. Like many parents, she picked up a 16mm camera and began filming both the special and the ordinary events of her family’s life. These home movies (ca. 1940–42) present that which one rarely gets to see: a larger-than-life personality at home, unadorned, just being herself—and often in color, at a time when her feature films were black and white. Crawford filmed most of the home movies herself; when she is on camera, it is unclear who is behind it.

Beecham

January 1990 •English

1990 TV adaptation of a 1979 biographical play by Ned Sherrin & Caryl Brahms, based on the life of conductor and impresario Sir Thomas Beecham. With Timothy West as Beecham.

Richard Wright: Native Son, Author and Activist

January 2009 •English

RICHARD WRIGHT was an African-American author of novels, short stories and non-fiction that dealt with powerful themes and controversial topics. Much of his works concerned racial themes that helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century. Born on a plantation in Mississippi, Wright was a descendent of the first slaves who arrived in Jamestown Massachusetts. This program follows his arduous path from sharecropper to literary giant. Through authors like H.L. Menken, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, he discovered that literature could be used as a catalyst for social change. In 1937 Wright moved to New York and his work began to garner national attention for it's political and social commentary. Much of Wright's writing focused on the African American community and experience; his novel Native Son won him a Guggenheim Fellowship and was adapted to the Broadway stage with Orson Welles directing in 1941.

Faye

May 2024 •English

Through honest reflection, complemented by insight from colleagues and friends, Faye Dunaway contextualizes her life and filmography, laying bare her struggles with mental health while confronting the double standards she was subjected to as a woman in Hollywood.

Something About Halfdan

February 2006 •Danish

A moving portrait of one of the most loved and read Danish poets, Halfdan Rasmussen. The film covers both the early years with poverty and wartime on to success and the humorous nonsense verses that has made Rasmussen one of the most read authors in Denmark.

No Maps for These Territories

October 2000 •English

On an overcast morning in 1999, William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of the cult-classic novel Neuromancer, stepped into a limousine and set off on a road trip around North America. The limo was rigged with digital cameras, a computer, a television, a stereo, and a cell phone. Generated entirely by this four-wheeled media machine, No Maps for These Territories is both an account of Gibson’s life and work and a commentary on the world outside the car windows. Here, the man who coined the word "cyberspace" offers a unique perspective on Western culture at the edge of the new millennium, and in the throes of convulsive, tech-driven change.