Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro to screen "Go South for Animal Index"

 

Poetry Scores was excited to learn that our movie "Go South for Animal Index" has been accepted to screen at the 2014 Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It is one of 53 movies involving uranium that will screen May 14 to May 24 in the Cinemateque of Rio de Janeiro´s Modern Art Museum. It will be considered for a 2014 "Yellow Oscar" Award; winners will be announced at the awards ceremony May 24.

We owe this honor to Dan Cross, who edited our movie and is one of its directors of photography and cinematographers. Dan spotted the festival, went through the trouble of subtitling our movie so it would be eligible, submitted it, and managed the submissions process. A big thanks to Dan, who is a volunteer on our projects, like everyone else in Poetry Scores.

We hope to raise funds to send Stefene Russell to Rio for the screening. Stefene wrote the poem "Go South for Animal Index," which was set to post-punk rock music by Matt Fuller and Chris King. Chris then imagined and directed a silent zombie movie to that post-punk rock score, and our movie is the result. Stefene also provides voice on the score and plays a major part in the movie.

This will be "Go South for Animal Index"'s second appearance at an international film festival - it played November 2013 at the St. Louis International Film Festival - but its first screening overseas and Poetry Scores' first screening at an international film festival outside of the U.S.

Our first movie, "Blind Cat Black," has screened at independent public screenings in Istanbul and Cannakale, Turkey.

The Uranium Film Festival organizers asked for a director's statement, so we provided one, even though Poetry Scores' collective way of making movies doesn't square very well with the auteur notion of filmmaking by a director who gets sole credit for a film.

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"Go South for Animal Index"
Director's Statement

I directed "Go South for Animal Index," a cinematic fable of Los Alamos, with the St. Louis (Missouri, U.S.)-based arts collective Poetry Scores, which translates poetry into other media. Our movie started as a poem about the Bomb by Stefene Russell, who grew up downwind of the Nevada Test Site. We scored Stefene's poem for post-punk rock music, and then shot and edited a feature-length silent zombie movie to that post-punk rock score. Stefene's poem is really about the psychic burden of the Bomb's existence and encodes the Bomb's history from the infancy of nuclear physics to the present day. Our movie uses many of her poem's ideas, especially its Navajo cosmogony, but narrows the narrative to Los Alamos and adopts the primitive storytelling style of the fable. Our movie was shot on no budget and directed by an amateur. The editor, Dan Cross, assembled the 90-minute movie from director's notes that have the brevity of a folk tale, so the end visual result was a surprise to all of us. It reminds me somewhat of Michael Jackson's narrative videos, the American television classic "Gilligan's Island" (Gilligan's Alamos) and low-budget Turkish adaptations of "Star Wars."   -- Chris King

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Here are all the films selected for the 4th International Film Festival Rio de Janeiro.

11:02 DE 1945. Brasil/Argentina, 2014, 31 min, Director Roberto Fernández
25 JAHRE TSCHERNOBYL, Germany/Ukraina, 27 min, Director Rainer Ludwigs
A WOMAN FROM FUKUSHIMA. Japan, 2014, 56 min, Director Yumiko Hayakawa.
A2-B-C. Japan, 2013, 71 min, Director Ian Thomas Ash.
AFTER ALL. Poland, 2013, 5 min, Director Bogna Kowalczyk.
ANOTHER CHERNOBYL. Ukraine, 2011, 56 min, Director Andrii Mykhailyk.
ATOMIC AFRICA. Germany, 80 min, Director Marcel Kolvenbach.
ATOMIC AUSTRALIA. Italy, 2006, 6 min, Director and Producer Ricardo Russo.
BEYOND THE CLOUD.France/Japan, 2013, 94 min, Director Keiko Courdy.
BEYOND THE WAVE. Germany/Japan, 2013, 83 min, Director Kyoko Miyake.
ETERNAL TEARS. Ukraine, 2011, 11 min, Director Kseniva Simonova.
EVOLUTION OF BEASTLINESS. Russia, 2014, 4 min, Director Collective Work Chidren’s “Detective”.
EXPLOSIONS BRING US CLOSER TOGETHER. USA, 2010, 2 min, Director Jonathan Johnson
FALLOUT . Australia, 2013, 86 min, Director Lawrence Johnston
FIGHT FOR THE ISLAND – PUNSU NO TAO. Taiwan/China, 2013, 65 min. Directors Kolas Yotaka, Chang, Jia-Wei
FINAL PICTURE. Germany, 2013, 92 min, Director Michael von Hohenberg
FLASHES OF HOPE: Hibakusha Traveling the World. Japan/Costa Rica, 2009, 61 min, Director Erika Bagnarello
FOUR STORIES ABOUT WATER. USA, 2012, 37 min, Directors Deborah Begel and David Lindblom.
FUKUSHAME. THE LOST JAPAN. Italy, 2013, 64 min, Director Alessandro Tesei
GO SOUTH FOR ANIMAL INDEX. USA, 2013, 90 min, Director Chris King
HIBAKUSHA. AT THE END OF THE WORLD.Japan, 2003, 116 min, Director Hitomi Kamanaka.
HOGAR, HOGAR. Spain, 2013, 17 min, Director Carlos Alonso Ojea
IN MY LIFETIME: The Nuclear World Project. USA, 2011, 109 min, Director Robert E. Frye
INHERITANCE. UK, 2013, 10 min, Director Margaret Cox
JOURNEY TO THE SAFEST PLACEE ON EARTH. Switzerland, 2013, 100 min, Director Edgar Hagen
KERN. Germany, 2013, 9 min, Director s Szu Ni Wen and Yichen Huang
LA FUGA B. Mexico, 2012, 2 min, Director Adrian Regnier Chavez
LA FUGA H. Mexico, 8 min, Director Adrian Regnier Chavez
MINING ON THE SWELL . USA, 2012, 18 min, Director and Producer Michael T. Searcy
NUCLEAR WASTE IN MY BACKYARD.Germany, 2012, 29 min, Director Irja Martens
NUCLEAR WINTER . Ireland, 2012, 5 min, Director Eimhin McNamara
POISON DUST. Armas DU radioativo em Irak. USA, 2005, 56 min, Director Sue Harris
RADIATION STORIES. India, 2010, 54 min, Director Amudhan R.P.
RARE EARTH. USA, 2014, 54 min, Director Elizabeth Knafo
REMOTE VIEWING. France, 2012, 5 min, Director and producer Cris Uberman
ROCK FLATS: LEGACY. USA, 2011, 23 min, Director Producer Scott Bison
SARDINIA’S DEADLY SECRET. Italy/Germany, 2012, 30 min, Director Birgit Hermes
SONG N°14. France, 2011, 5 min, Director Céline TROUILLET.
THE CLOUD HAS PASSED OVER US. Turkey, 2012, 15 min, Director Arif Karagulle.
THE HORSES OF FUKUSHIMA. Japan, 2013, 64 min, Director Yojyu Matsubayashi
THE NUCLEAR BOY SCOUT. UK, 2003, 24 min, Director Bindu Mathur.
THE RACE FOR URANIUM. France, 2009, 52 min, Director Patrick Forestier
THE UNIVERSITY OF NUCLEAR BOMBS. USA,2010, 55 min, Directors Mohamed Elsawi and Joshua King Ortis.
THE MYTH OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE – IMAGE FILM by Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
TO DIG OR NOT TO DIG/THE BATTLE FOR GREENLAND. Norway, 2013, 8 min, Director Espen Rasmussen.
U - A STORY ABOUT URANIUM AND US. Canada, 2008, 9 min, Directors Shawn Arscott and Darlene Buckingham.
URANIUM: THE NAVAJO NUCLEAR LEGACY. USA,1997, 13 min, Directors and Producer Doug Brugge
WAKE UP. Australia, 12 min, Director Tony Barry
WARM – GLOW. Switzerland, 2013, 50 min, Director Marina Belobrovaja
WHEN THE DUST SETTLES ICBUW | ICBUW and IKV Pax Christi – Short Animation
WYHL? NAI HAEMMER GSAIT! - Der Widerstand gegen das Atomkraftwerk am Kaiserstuhl, Germany, 2013, 44 min, Director Goggo Gensch
YELLOW FEVER. The Uranium Legacy. USA, 56 min, Director Sophie Rousmaniere.
ZEITBOMBE. USA, 2010, 27 min, Director Edward Saint Pe’.