Journeys and Songs

The filmed letter can take the form of dedication, song, offering, celebration, postcard. “Correspondences: Films as Letters”, Punto de Vista’s cycle for 2018, takes as its starting point the idea that, in cinema, an exchange of letters does not have to be sent, and even admits the possibility of making a film letter without a recipient in mind.

Just one of the films in this session, dedicated to journeys and songs, contains the word letter in its title. The rest of the programme proposes a poetic redirection of these works to the terrain of correspondence, based on the polysemy of their titles. This prompts a hypothesis: what would have happened if these films had been shared or sent to family, friends or lovers? We suddenly become the new ideal spectators of these filmmakers.

While Jonas Mekas condenses a day in the port of Cassis by filming a frame or two every second, or every minute, according to the variations in atmosphere and light (the appearance of a sailing boat, the beam of a lighthouse that indicates that the day and the film have come to an end), Rose Lowder, who filmed some of her Bouquets a few kilometres away, composes her scores to then create the music, quickly combining cold and distant with warm and near colours, and alternating small movements. In Sri Lanka, Mark Lapore finds his own music in the travel diary, with kilometre-notes marked by the sounds of the train. Memories shared with a friend and the meetings prompted by Paris organise the movements and cuts in Letter to D.H. in Paris, by David Brooks, while Warren Sonbert, from Morocco, Turkey, Rome, Russia and India, in a return to sound after 20 years, sets the words of four pop songs to dancing with the images, relating with them, mingling with and separating from them.

Cassis, Jonas Mekas, 1966, United States, 4 min 30 s

Bouquets 11-20, Rose Lowder, 2005-2009, France, sin sonido, 14 min

A Depression in the Bay of Bengal, Mark Lapore, 1996, United States, 28 min

Letter to D.H. in Paris, David Brooks, 1967, United States, 4 min

Friendly Witness, Warren Sonbert, 1989, United States, 22 min

16 mm screenings.