Programme: PoetryFilm event about “Strangers and Strangeness” at Curzon Renoir, July 2009

Below are the details of the PoetryFilm: Strangers and Strangeness event at Curzon Renoir Cinema in July 2009.

The programme included an important film by Beat poet Michael McClure, a BAFTA award-winning film about levitation, and a photographic art film by Marco Sanges. There was a Q&A after the screening.

The full programme description from the event is below.

Michael McClure and Nic Saunders: Curses and Sermons (poetry film)

This is the first time Michael McClure has ever allowed one of his poems to be turned into a film. With only the moon as his witness, a lone gunslinger digs an unmarked grave when an unknown stranger forces him to confront the man he has become and the man he could still be.

Michael McClure is a leading figure in both the Beat Generation and Sixties Counterculture. “His poetry is protoplasmic energy” – Allen Ginsberg. This rare film is a collaboration between Michael McClure and director Nic Saunders. There will be a Q&A after the screening with Nic Saunders and Kasia Halpin, actress.

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Esther May Campbell: September (poetry film)

Caught in a world of flyovers and dead-ends where the motorway hum serves as a constant reminder of the speed of other lives, Marvin is not going anywhere. He needs evidence that there are possibilities beyond what he
knows. An extraordinary girl arrives who changes his perception of the world.

The film has won a BAFTA award and was inspired by a journey on the M4 motorway.

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Tim Cumming: Radion Carbon (poetry film) followed by live poetry reading

When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere they create radiocarbon, with which we measure prehistoric time, and how our own time will one day be measured. Radio Carbon is a filmic journey in 24 poems from the abyss of deep time to the present moment. It’s a film with the eternity of time at its centre, the vastness of space at its core, and a reverie of images clustering to the lens like the flashing in a stranger’s eye.

Tim Cumming’s surreal poems have been published widely in Britain and America, and he writes regularly for The Guardian and The Independent.

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Marco Sanges and Alberto Bona: Circumstances (poetry film)

Hundreds of photographs evoke a decadent and strange lost world populated by eccentric glamorous characters.

Marco Sanges is an imaginative and innovative photographer who has exhibited worldwide. Marco’s clients include Vogue, Sunday Telegraph, Trace, Elle, Creative Review, Katalog, Dolce&Gabbana. Books include: Circumstances,Venus, Wild, and Erotic Photography.

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A Q&A with the poets, filmmakers and actresses followed the event.