Moving Poetry

In the Moving Poetry program you will see four short films that, in their visual language and effect, say something about poetry or the poetic attitude, as well as about man in all his/his/their physical vulnerability. Each of the four films does so in its own unique way, using different cinematographic elements. Successively you will see: The Machine (Marieke van der Lippe), The Exquisite Corpus (by Peter Tscherkassky), The Poetry in Reflections (by Marinus Groothof) and Riot (by Frank Ternier). In conversation with host Hassnae Bouazza programmer Jan Baeke explains the films.

The Machine, by Marieke van der Lippe
The basis for the film The Machine is a radio play by George Perec in which Goethe's Wanderer's Night Song is analyzed by a computer in an attempt to reveal the inner mechanism of poetry. The film is a visually ironic commentary on that analysis. It is precisely this strongly accentuated clinical-mechanical exercise, with text in the image and a German voice-over, that makes the viewer extra aware of the non-clinical character and, precisely, essence of poetry rooted in human reality.

The Exquisite Corpus, by Peter Tscherkassky
Experimental filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky usually draws on existing film material (footage) for his films. Through editing and image manipulation he builds up a new film that not only tells a new story, but also makes implicit statements about what film is and how film works. For The Exquisite Corpus, Tscherkassky chose various rushes from commercials, from amateur film material and various erotic films mainly from the 60s and 70s. With the title he refers to the so-called "Cadavre exquis technique" a method invented by the surrealists in 1925 to create text and image with several creators but in such a way that the one who adds something does not see what the previous creators have made.

Tscherkassky himself wrote about The Exquisite Corpus: I concentrated mainly on these erotic films; they are related in the sense that each film tells a completely insane story that is totally irrelevant, but is solely intended to show naked human bodies. I respond to this attitude by bringing the film body itself to the forefront, which thus becomes the central theme of The Exquisite Corpus.

The poetry in Spiegelingen, a dance film by Marinus Groothof
The poetry in Spiegelingen, a dance film by Marinus Groothof, is in the movements of the two dancers who meet in an empty building. Their movements, distancing and intertwining, go through a series of charged confrontations and show how a particularly rich poetic grammar can be recognized in dance. 

Riot, by Frank Ternier
What sets Frank Ternier's Riot in motion is the accidental (because in passing) racist murder of a black man and the drama of that event as it plays out in the social upheaval that follows and the feelings and thoughts of people around the man who became a victim. IN a mix of techniques and a strong musical framework, Ternier shows the impotence and incomprehensibility of what we now know so well from the reality that Black Lives Matter denounces. 'Words are dead' it sounds in Riot, 'only the body speaks'.