''Poetry of Witness'' is a 2015 documentary film directed by Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo about the lives of six contemporary poets who have lived through, and survived, extremities such as war, torture, exile, and repression, using poetry to preserve their memories. It debuted October 16, 2015 at the
Buffalo International Film Festival
The Buffalo International Film Festival was founded in 2006, and takes place in October of each year in Buffalo, New York. It is also known as the Buffalo Film Festival.
History
The film festival became a 501c3 not-for-profit charity in January 20 ...
.
Synopsis
The film documents the struggle of six contemporary poets who have faced the duress of war, exile, and human rights violations to give voice to their experiences while wrestling with the complex moral quandaries of artistic production, memory, and trauma. The poets:
Carolyn Forché
Carolyn Forché (born April 28, 1950) is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate. She has received many awards for her literary work.
Biography
Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Michael Joseph and Louis ...
(
Salvadoran Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...
), Saghi Ghahraman (
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
),
Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems ''The Earth in the Attic''.
Life
Joudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian r ...
(
Doctors Without Borders
Doctor or The Doctor may refer to:
Personal titles
* Doctor (title), the holder of an accredited academic degree
* A medical practitioner, including:
** Physician
** Surgeon
** Dentist
** Veterinary physician
** Optometrist
*Other roles
** ...
), Claudia Serea (
Socialist Republic of Romania
The Socialist Republic of Romania ( ro, Republica Socialistă România, RSR) was a Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist state that existed officially in Romania from 1947 to 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian People ...
), Mario Susko (
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War ( sh, Rat u Bosni i Hercegovini / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started ...
), and
Bruce Weigl
Bruce Weigl (born January 27, 1949, Lorain, Ohio) is an American contemporary poet whose work engages profoundly with experience of both Americans and Vietnamese during and after the Vietnam war.
Biography
Weigl enlisted in the United States Arm ...
(
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
) offer first-person accounts of how their experiences as soldier, activist, doctor, and survivor imprint their poetry as evidence of those conflicts, rather than as representations of them.
Along the way, the poets read from their work and all poems are accompanied by original artwork by Jimmy Buitrago, as well as a musical score by Will Lewis.
Duncan Wu
Duncan Wu (born 3 November 1961 in Woking, Surrey) is a British academic and biographer.
Biography
Wu received his D.Phil from Oxford University. From 2000-2008, he was Professor of English Language and Literature at St Catherine's College, ...
(
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
) and Neil J. Kressel (
William Paterson University
William Paterson University, officially William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPUNJ), is a public university in Wayne, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education.
Founded in 1855 and was named after American ju ...
) help to contextualize these discussions throughout with historical and psychoanalytic perspectives.
The film can be seen as an extension of the decades-long work Forché has conducted in the subject, beginning with her anthology ''Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness'' (1993). Coinciding with the publication of a new anthology (co-edited by Forché and Wu), ''Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500–2001'' (2014),
this documentary aims to bring this work to a wider audience.
References
External links
* {{IMDb title, 3208416
Anthony Cirilo speaks with ''The Huffington Post''Carolyn Forché's Interview with Jane WellsSandra Beasley on Poetry of Witness and Documentary Poetics
2015 films
2015 documentary films
American documentary films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films