This selection of films unite works based upon or inspired by pieces of literature and poetry by local filmmakers and poets.

Lowell Blues: the words of Jack Kerouac video, 30min, 2000
Director: Henry Ferrini

Conceived as a 30 minute film poem, what distinguishes this Lowell Blues from other Kerouac films is its non-linear approach to the writer, his words, and his formative experiences. Lowell Blues fuses language, music and image to explore Jack Kerouac¹s childhood, in a fashion similar to Koyaanisqatsi meets Jack Kerouac. It speaks to the Beat definition put forth by Kerouac as Beat as beatitude. Lowell Blues represents Kerouac¹s awe that he experienced in the world around him. Lowell Blues melds today with Kerouac s Depression Age childhood to evoke a timeless sense of place. The text is excerpted from Kerouac s phantasmagoric novel, Dr. Sax which is set in Lowell. Readers include: Robert Creeley, Gregory Corso, David Amram, Carolyn Cassady, Roger Brtmelle, Willie Alexander Johnny Depp and Joyce Johnson. The soundtrack is improvised by jazz legend, Lee Konitz.

Henry Ferrini has been making films from his home in Cape Ann, Massachusetts for over 20 years. His first film The Light, the Quality, the Time, the Place is a meditation on environmental responsibility in Gloucester. It was produced with a CETA grant from the Carter administration. Thoughout the years his work has "crossed the cut" from his hometown to focus on the place Jack Kerouac calls "the great continent of New England." His films have won numerous awards, played in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts and been broadcast on PBS. Among works completed are Witch City, a cautionary tale about Salem, MA; Poem In Action, "a heartfelt glimpse into the life of a poet; Radio Fishtown, called by the Boston Globe "a piece of poetic silver"; and Letters, a series of short films made in the former Yugoslavia. http://www.artsgloucester.com/ferriniproductions

Muktikara S8/16mm blow-up, b&w and color, silent, 11min, 1999

From the Sanskrit, 'gentle gazing brings liberation', the title is also the name of the particular body of water which is the image-subject of the film. Landscape as 'inscape', not inertly present but beckoning an active perception; a seeing and a seeing into. "...as if my eye were still growing..." --Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jeanne Liotta, experimental filmmaker and artist; work exhibited at New York Film Festival, MoMA, Whitney Museum, Exit Art, Rotterdam Film Festival, and London Film Festival; archivist, Joseph Cornell Collection at Anthology Film Archives; founder, Firefly Cinema, public outdoor screenings at 6-B Community Garden on the Lower East Side; has taught at SUNY-Binghamton and Pratt Inst.

Earthly Possesions S8, b/w, sound, 25min, 1992
Director: Pelle Lowe

Earthly Possessions is a meditation on the eroticism of grief. I wanted to make something that worked with the emotional logic of a dream or nightmare. The film cycles and recycles on itself, searching for closure. To fall apart, to come unglued in sorrow, is to be in a strangely charged state - possessed, as if by a demon lover. A fever dream inspired by Wuthering Heights, Grimm's fairy tales, and the paintings of Fuseli and Balthus. "Risky and purely dazzling ...." - Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice

In 1998, Pelle Lowe was named one of the top ten experimental filmmakers in the United States, when her films were screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a retrospective exhibition of 8mm Moviemakers. She is currently Visiting Professor of Film and Performance at the San Francisco Art Institute. She taught film and performance at The Massachusetts College of Art from 1990-1997. Her films include Smoke and Bottom Line (1995), Work (1994), Earthly Possessions (1992), Chintz (1990) and Nor (1987), among others.

and...

Alberto Roblest is a poet and video artist, whose visual poetry, experimental documentaries and art pieces frequently explore worldwide environmental and social themes. He has shown video installations and single channel work in museums and galleries in his native Mexico, the United States, Canada and in several European countries. He received a degree in Communications Science at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and later worked as a professor at the university. He has produced more than four dozen videos and published five volumes of poetry. His poems often play a central part in his visual art.

and...

poetry readings between the films by local poets:

Mark Lamoureux is a poet who lives in Cambridge, Massachusettes. His works have appeared in Agni, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, and numerous 'zines. He has work forthcoming in the journal 6x6 in the fall of 2001.