Course Info: HACU-0263

This advanced practice/theory course explores a poetics of word and image, a poetics of resistance, dream and revelation in film and text. Working with both visual and spoken text, we consider a series of questions: How do words fall on an image? How do we choose a certain word, a certain phrase in relation to an image? Does the image function as an illustration of the words or does it expand upon the words in a different visual direction and, if so, how is that operating? How does the choice of each word, each phrase, the music of how they are strung together, the degree of formality or edge or speed in the reading, how do all of these carry an energetic charge and meaning that comes from the relationship of the voice to the ideas in the poem to the image itself? How do poetry and film work together across cultures and languages, from early cinema to contemporary digital and analog works for single channel and installation? We study films by Shirin Neshat, Masayuki Kawai, John Akomfrah, and Andrei Tarkovksy. Readings include the poetry of Aracelis Girmay, Audre Lorde, Alice Notley, Lisa Jarnot and Wislawa Szymborska, as well as writings on the role of the poet in times of revolution and resistance. Students complete individual and collaborative projects combining poetry and still and moving images. Students work in 16mm, Super 8 or digital formats.