From her home in Blackhawk Island, Wisconsin, the poet Lorine Niedecker traded lively and impactful letters with numerous peers, most notably Louis Zukofsky and, later, Cid Corman. After a brief sojourn in New York, she lived alone in a one-room cabin for much of her adult life, often walking several miles into nearby Fort Atkinson to work as a copy editor at a dairy industry trade journal until failing eyesight reduced her to menial labour. Niedecker connected to the outside world by post, and among the small shelf of books she kept for herself in later years were several collections of letters, including those of the composer Franz Liszt and his lover, the scholar Marie Catherine Sophie, Comtesse d’Agoult.
Mourner’s Bench is from the 1947 solo by choreographer Talley Beatty. It refers to a prayer bench in churches where people go to grieve, and the inseparable relationship between hope and grief. Set at a Detroit bus stop, this work considers grief in relation to place and mobility. Conceived, directed, and edited by bree gant, in collaboration with choreographer Celia Benvenutti and cinematographer Devin Drake.
Spontaneous communication between two people transects geographic and psychological terrain indicating a co-habitation of the mind. Three picnickers reconfigure across time, forms hover at the fringes of consciousness, and bills go unpaid as the story spans remote coastlines and re-forested roadways.
Serving as a self-portrait, evidence illustrates an authentic insight on navigating mental health. Reciting ineffective personal mantras to missed calls from therapists, this collected “evidence” is a testament that everything is not okay. The film plays between abrupt imagery and measured moments, pushing the chaos mental health can bring.
The lovesick Jelena spends her afternoons strolling among the tombs and leafless trees at Père-Lachaise cemetery. As she sings Françoise Hardy’s “Tous les garçons et les filles”, one old grave depicting a couple draws her attention.
After years away from his family, Eduardo returns to decide his mother’s future but ends up having to confront his father and brother about issues from his past.
Launa, a beautiful and cheerful girl, falls in love with Karang, a man with two personalities. Struggling between his shattered identity and sadness, Karang tries to escape from his true self, haunted by a traumatic past with his mother, Andira, who was harsh and never showed him affection. While Launa fights to bring him back to his true self, will she be able to open the heart of a man who only longs for his mother's embrace?
In the 2000s, Isa, a 15-year-old, wakes up and sees the lavender flower that Tania, the girl she is in love with , gave her. Isa excitedly writes a letter confessing her feelings, planning to give it to Tania during break. Upon arriving at school, with the help of her friend Monse, Isa faces several obstacles in delivering the letter to Tania, turning her perfect day into the worst.