A one-minute poem film that offers a meditation on time, memory, the spectral, the animistic, and the presence and absence of faith. Directed, written, filmed, read, edited, and produced by Adam E. Stone. Filmed in Carbondale, Illinois, August and September, 2020. Painting by Saribenne Evesong (1931-2009). Text of poem:

Only spirits, if any, stay forever,
the corporeal always pivot away.

A raucous goodbye, or a misunderstanding,
"Good luck, old friend!" or "Good riddance, old fool!"

I pedal faster, to a hum on a breeze,
a flutter along a long-darkened hallway.

I name the ghosts, as if I can still see them,
a crush ... a friend ... an inspiration.

You called me silly, poked at my gloom,
said "There's no such thing as being alone!"

And even today, I want to believe you,
but I fail every test, again and again.

Use "CC" button on Vimeo to enable closed captions in English. Download web vtt file from Vimeo when downloading film.

HD Apple pro res 422 version available for download upon request.

Copyright 2021 by Adam E. Stone. All rights reserved.

[technopoetics] is composed of object-poems and graphic poetry by the brazilian visual artist Alexandre Dacosta. These works are part of the book [tecnopoética] (Editora 7 Letras / 2011). Writer, narrated, composed music and directed by the author himself.

A film-poem exploring the physical aspect of the very
last moments as life becomes death.

We are little miracles. Tiny ones, even, who never stop shedding our skins, over and over. The world settles in our sweat. Alone, though, with no memory of what drove us into this life that jealous people claim is ours. Forgotten, skins fall one after another, like caresses that—much moreso than our cells, in truth—create them, these skins, which are neither ours nor those of others, regardless of the energy that we spend, at night, exchanging them.

Our home turned to ice one bitter cold night, winter rattling the door before we knew it.

A Cinema poem by Russ Camarda...
A journey of a soul awakening to its true nature... The Universe, through the seasons of its experience of itself.
Filmmaker Russ Camarda creates a Cinematic poem using one small camera , no crew and a handful of actors... shooting through different seasons over the course of a few years.
Narrated by various performers, featuring the voice of Rosalyn Coleman Williams (Broadway’s to Kill A Mockingbird), the poem is at once a personal journey and a Universal one.
Death, Birth, Renewal and Return... it is the tale of the Immortal.. dreaming of mortality.

"Legacy," in collaboration with poet Fiona Tinwei Lam and based on her poem, creates a memory space using symbolic objects, evocative tableaux, and a variety of digital effects to concretize the wisdom that comes with temporal and emotional distance, creating a fanciful, wry, and occasionally bittersweet postmortem of a relationship that founders on the rocks of cross cultural differences.

Biography of Fiona Tinwei Lam

Fiona Tinwei Lam is a writer, editor, and educator from Vancouver, Canada. She has authored three poetry collections: Intimate Distances (finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize), Enter the Chrysanthemum, and Odes & Laments. as well as a children’s book. Her poetry and prose appear in over 40 anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry (2010 and 2020 editions). She has co-edited two anthologies of nonfiction and edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poetry about Facing Cancer. Her award-winning video poems have been screened at festivals locally and internationally. www.fionalam.net


Text of the poem:

Legacy

Each summer, your mother’s hands
transformed heaped bowls of ripe fruit
into glistening fillings.
Her deft persuasion of dough into pastry
through the white silted air
Rhubarb, blueberry, peach, apple --
desserts for a year’s worth of holidays.


I tried to make pie
the way I tried to be a wife:
four pyrex pie plates, a battle
to bind flour, fat and water
into elusive tenderness.

You gave me a yearning
for homemade pie
that lingered longer than love,
then left with the pie plates

and what you learnt --
congee breakfasts,
the intricate textures of dim sum,
how to eat shark's fin
with a spoonful of vinegar,
never to forgo the good luck
of red bean soup, and always
to rest your chopsticks
parallel across the bowl
at a meal's end.

From Fiona Tinwei Lam, Intimate Distances (Nightwood Editions, Canada, 2002) Copyright © Fiona Tinwei Lam 2002