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Poetry and Film Updates by Vittorio Carli
The 20th Annual Films from Iran series is going on right now at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago (it’s conveniently located at 164 North State Street near State and Lake).
The featured film that should have the most appeal to poets is Shirin, which was made by the Iranian film master, Abbas Kiarostami. He is considered as one of most significant contemporary film makers in much of the world, but oddly enough he is less revered in his native land (The same was true of Kurosawa).
Shirin was made in 2008, and it is an experimental film shot as if it were a documentary (many of Kiarostami’s works blur the line between documentary and fiction). The premise is that an audience is watching a film adaptation of a 12th century poem titled Kherson e Shirring (Kiarostami is a poet and his classic “The Wind Will Carry Us” was named after a poem). We see close-ups on the faces of female faces (including Juliet Binoche) in the audience as the film’s story of female sacrifice unfolds.
The film will be screened this Saturday, October 24rth at 8 pm and Sunday, October 25th at 3 pm, and the esteemed film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum and the Columbia College professor/Kiarostami scholar, Mejhrnaz Saeedvafa will be speaking at the Saturday showing.
One of the finest Iranian films that I have seen this decade, Kandahar, is also playing as part of the festival on October 31st and November 1rst. The year it came out, it placed second on my best films of the year list that I did for the late, lamented The Star newspaper (it got swallowed up the Daily Southtown.)
There is a very striking visual adaptation of a Baudelaire poem that someone sent me on facebook. Gabriel del Gotto‘s “Delphine” can be found at http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=80395170283# and it includes some very striking images (I am a sucker for orangutans). The entire translation of the poetry text in English can be found the following link, but it sounds wonderful in French even if you don’t know the language.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.feelingsurfer.net/garp/Poesie/Baudelaire.FemmesDamnees.html&ei=rb_gSsaMA5CSMYXLocMI&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=3&ct=result&ved=0CBQQ7gEwAg&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddelphine,%2Bbaudelaire%26hl%3Den.
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