Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Poetry Scores opens for Luis Bunuel at The Pulitzer



Poetry Scores is opening for Luis Bunuel!

This Friday, June 24, a scene from our first movie Blind Cat Black (2007) will screen at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts before a Bunuel double feature: Un Chien Andalou (1928) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974).

Aaron AuBuchon, lead editor on Blind Cat Black, is in a bewildered state of ecstasy. A movie project he took on based on a pharoah he had tattooed on one of his biceps is now the opening act for two of his favorite films ever made.

Aaron edited the segment from our movie, "This monstrous traveler in hashish," that will screen Friday at the Pulitzer. It was selected by Cinema St. Louis as one of the locally made "short, silent films which include dream-related content" that will screen between 8 and 9 p.m. Friday, "projected in loops on surfaces outside at the Pulitzer".

It was a contest, actually. At 9 p.m. the winner (Brendan Leahy, for “The Tower”) will be awarded $500, then it's on to the masterworks of Bunuel.

I entered this scene from our movie as a short with "dream-related content" because it could work a stand-alone short (at 2:02) and Aaron did edit it as a dream. The contest form I filled out called for a "Description". I filled in: "Dream -- or zombie orgy?"

As a Poetry Scores movie, Blind Cat Black was written, shot and edited to a poetry score we already had produced to the Turkish poem of that name (presented in the elegant English translation by Murat Nemet-Nejat). We produce our scores as a sequence of stand-alone songs, and the music to "This monstrous traveler in hashish" was licensed from Latif Bolat.

Aaron took several hours of footage shot by the ever-alusive Chizmo on Super Bowl Sunday, 2006, at CBGB on South Grand and edited it into this piece all on his lonesome. My shooting script was simple, in its own way, and made no mention of a dream.

The script called for our protagonist, The Absent Minded Tightrope Walker (the hip-hop grinder Toyy Davis), to wake up on a pile of corpses. Her lover (the R&B star Bradd Young) finds her on the pile of corpses. They make love. As their lovemaking becomes more intense, the corpses gradually come alive in a zombie orgy.

I don't know why Aaron edited the scene to look like it could have been a dream. Maybe his pharoah tattoo knows. But I like what he did with my concept, and his decision made it possible for this scene to become one of 22 local movies that will open for two of his favorite-ever films on Friday night.

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Dream Sequences: Film Night at the Pulitzer with Cinema St. Louis goes down (and around and around, at least the local short loop) 8 p.m. Friday, June 24 at Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3716 Washington Blvd. Like dreams, it's free.

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