Writing AT the Movies
Tue, May 3, 7:00 – 9:30 pm
http://messhall.org/
As part of Mess Hall’s 2011: Year in Experimentation, the first 4-session series of Researchers-at-Large will be curated by filmmaker Irina Botea and framed by poet Gene Tanta.
Participants in this workshop will use as our point of departure Andre Breton’s surrealist montage technique of dropping in and out of a single linear film narrative: “Reenactment” by Lucian Pintilie. For the first half, we will screen the film. All are invited to imagine means, modes, and other multiplying factors of looking at flickering light on a screen. As filmic form hiccups on screen disrupting the illusion of intention, we describe what we see and hear.
We will write in response to these moving images and sounds, striving for a precise or even a phenomenological (suspending our assumptions) description of what we see and hear. For the second half, we will perform and discuss what we produced (no limits on theme or form). Free & open to the general public! Everyone is welcome to attend!
Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His first poetry book is called Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX, 2010). His second poetry book is called Pastoral Emergency and it is forthcoming. [