Cinema

Word to Image: Cinema inspired by poems
curated and notes by Konrad Steiner


Cinema is used here in a response to poetry. These tapes and films were chosen out of the American experimentaltradition to exemplify various techniques of marrying the two arts. Poetry as the art of utterence and cinema the art of showing, both whole on their own, don't easily make a good couple. But these filmand videomakers have taken up the challenge anyway by responding to the spirit and the letter of the poet, creating an original cinematic writing. Cinema and language meet head on, not unified as inconventional film, but remaining distinct and dancing, stepping on toes, wooing each other with the charms of mouth and eye and mind. You'll see images' own syntax shuffled, blended, chafing anddovetailing with language, you'll hear and read poets' work while seeing and hearing filmmakers' work. It's like having two extra senses!

Peter Herwitz, Songs of Degrees: With a Valentine (the 12February) As To How Much
Super 8mm, 5min color/sound on cassette (1990)
Thad Povey, Under a Broad Gray Sky
16mm, 5min, color/sound (1995)
Rick Hancox, Waterworx
16mm, 6min,color/sound (1986)
Marcus Nascimento, Video Haikai
video, 8min
Nathaniel Dorsky, excerpts from "What Happened to Kerouac?"
video transfer, 8min

I N T E R M I S S I O N

AbigailChild, Prefaces
16mm, 10min, color/sound (1981)
Henry Hills, Kino Da!
16mm, 4min, color/sound (1981)
Martha Colburn, What's On
16mm, 2min, color sound (1997)
Jim Flannery,Photoheliograph
16mm, 12min, color/sound
Stan Brakhage, First Hymn to the Night -- Novalis
16mm 3min color/silent (1994)"To write 'purely visual perception' is to write a meaninglessphrase. Obviously. Because every time we want to make words do a real job of transference, every time we want to make them express something other han words, they align themselves in such a way as to...