Oddball Films and guest Curator Landon Bates
bring you Visions of Verses: Poetry in the Dark, a screening intended to
initiate National Poetry Month the Oddball way, with a batch of films, both
brainy and bizarre, celebrating the baddest of bards, those conjurers of the
subconscious whose wizardry with words stirs up a little something in the darker
reaches of the psyche or soul. The films
in this program alternate between those about
poets (and their often-turbulent processes) and those adapted from
particular pieces. We’ll begin in the
very veins where verses first course--that is, in the Blood of a Poet (1932),
Jean Cocteau’s inimitable cinematic meditation on the muse. In particular we’ll look at the second
episode—“Do Walls Have Ears?”--wherein the titular artist spies through strange
keyholes at the behest of a statue in his studio (played by photographer Lee
Miller), discovering hallucinatory images that linger in the mind’s eye. The next film gratifies eye and ear alike, as
Richard Burton’s sonorous voice does full justice to the rhythms of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s spectral Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977), brought to dreamy visual life
by director John Ryan with a lucid style of stop-motion animation using layered
paper cutouts. In a Dark Time (1964), a contemplative portrait of the
mid-20th Century poet Theodore Roethke--whose influence is felt in
poets like Sylvia Plath and W.S. Merwin (and whose face recently appeared on a
postage stamp)--not only showcases Roethke’s personal views on poetic craft,
but also features the man himself performing (he sort of dances while he reads)
a number of his most interesting pieces.
Lastly, we’ll see (or rather experience)
a section of Mary Ellen Bute’s little-seen vertiginous interpretation of James
Joyce’s impenetrable opus, Finnegan’s Wake (1966). So, set aside your
book for a couple of hours, crawl out of your bohemian hovel, and feast your
eyes and ears at Oddball.
Date: Thursday,
March 28th, 2013 at 8:00pm
Venue:
Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission:
$10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to programming@oddballfilm.com or
(415)
558-8117
''Such
is the role of poetry. It unveils…it lays bare, under a light which shakes off
torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record
mechanically.''
- Jean Cocteau
Featuring:
Blood of a
Poet: Episode 2: “Do Walls Have Ears?” (B&W, 1932)
80 years after its release, Cocteau’s landmark film,
a sort of abstract allegory of artistic inspiration and the often-painful
process of creation, still feels fresh.
We’ll look at the second of the four episodes, in which our poet,
prompted by a statue come to life (photographer Lee Miller in her only
cinematic role), steps through a mirror and into a corridor of locked doors, peeping
through keyholes to stare at the strangest of spectacles, sights perhaps better
left unseen.
Says Julia Levin in Senses of Cinema: “For Cocteau, poetry was the foundation of all
the arts: he published his first volume of poetry at the age of 19, and
remained consistently faithful to writing poetry throughout most of his life.
Essentially, Cocteau created a visual poem with this film, a tribute to the
artistic process and the pain and self-reflecting doubt it causes. The young
poet’s journey to a mysterious hotel becomes an exploration of the artistic
process. In the hotel, the young poet voyeuristically witnesses – while looking
through a keyhole – a serious of shocking, uncomfortable scenes. Cocteau presents artistic effort as a
dangerous, dark, self-inflicting act of suffering…”
Rime
of the Ancient Mariner (B&W, 1977)
Sir Richard Burton narrates this animated
adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime
of the Ancient Mariner, directed by John Ryan. The weathered sailor of
the poem’s title tells that nightmarish tale involving the curse of the albatross,
spectral seamen, and uncharted waters teeming with malevolent creatures. The hypnotic rhythms of Coleridge’s masterful
verse are complimented by the film’s peculiar animation style, combining
drawings that imitate woodcuttings in stop-motion, deep contrast shading, and meticulous
camera movement.
In a Dark Time (B&W, 1964)
A film about the mid-20th Century poet
Theodore Roethke in which he imparts his philosophical views on the sources and
functions of poetry, his approach to writing poetry and biographical
information of interest. Mr. Roethke
reads some of his works, which illustrate the author’s conviction that a poet
should reveal every aspect of his nature.
Beautiful black and white photography is interspersed with shots of
Roethke among the cluttered paraphernalia of his home, and in the classroom
responding to his students. This film
includes readings of beloved Roethke poems such as “The Waking,” “My Papa’s
Waltz,” and “In a Dark Time,” as well as a number of profound little insights
and observations. “Adolescence is…a time
of being blurred, or fuzzy or uncertain of what’s going on…so much of
adolescence is an ill-defined dying. We
are always dying into ourselves and then renewing ourselves…”
Finnegan’s Wake – selections -- (B&W, 1966)
Upon its initial publication, Finnegans Wake
alienated a great many readers, including even some of the author James
Joyce’s own friends and supporters (one of whom said, “I do not care much
for...the darknesses and unintelligibilities of your deliberately entangled
language system”). Director Mary Ellen Bute pulls out all the stops here in
this, the only filmic adaptation of an infamous literary experiment. The film is visually remarkable, but it also
provides an opportunity to hear Joyce’s hybrid dream language (culled from
sundry tongues) spoken aloud.
Curator’s Biography:
Landon Bates is a UC Berkeley graduate of English
literature and is the drummer for the two-piece band Disappearing People.