"Poets of the Dark: MOVIETELLING" arrives in Miami LIVE INTERPRETIVE NARRATIONS OF FILM, inspired by the Asian tradition Presented by UM Poet and Scholar Walter K. Lew With the participation of poet/performers: Jen Nellis, dennis M. somera, and Kate Ann Heidelbach A fascinating, oft-neglected fact of world film history is that nearly everywhere movies have been regularly shown there was an era in which they were screened with live speech by orators or voice actors. The katsuben of Japan and pyônsa of Korea were the most celebrated forms of this once-global practice. Sometimes praised during their heyday as “poets of the dark,” in Korea the most iconoclastic “movietellers” risked imprisonment or worse to share their interpretations of films with local communities. Perhaps they would have approved of the wit and freedom with which this evening’s poets have chosen to recast the 20th century’s most powerful and oppressive artistic form. After an introduction with archival footage and slides by Walter K. Lew, Tonight’s performances… convey the drama and poetry of past movietelling while smoothly integrating their own new uncanny sense: Jen Nellis transforms episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents into a snake-bitten fable of Dada and Surrealism feuding over the birth of yet another new movement ca. 1958 (“Poison”) and a wittily queered “Dip in the Pool” inspired by the fiction of Yi Sang and Natsume Soseki and the Korean shaman film Iodo (1977). dennis M. somera’s “WEstsiDESTROY” re-narrates Jerome Robbins’ masterful choreography in West Side Story (1961) to reveal the history of U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico. Walter K. Lew presents excerpts from a longer piece (“The Movieteller: Ch’unhyang”) created with Lewis Klahr that collages together Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948), the Submariner cartoon series, and an early version of Ch’unhyang (S. Korea, 1976). Kate Ann Heidelbach rapturously pursues to new visions Jennifer Jones’ exalted gaze in The Song of Bernadette (1943). Saturday, November 17, 2007 at 8:30 PM Miami Beach Cinematheque 512 Espanola Way Miami Beach, FL 33139 Phone: (305) 673-4567 Website: www.mbcinema.com E-Mail: info@mbcinema.com Map & Directions

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