~ November 2023 ~
I See My World Shaking by Yuyutsu Sharma
This 2021 documentary poem by UK-based director Stephan Bookas uses a text from Nepalese-Indian poet Yuyutsu Sharma to portray the horror and aftermath of the 2015 earthquake with an intensity that would be hard to mimic in a standard narrative short.
Sharma is the first Nepalese poet we’ve featured on Wikipedia, and he has a fascinating background. Wikipedia notes that
In 2016 he published Quaking Cantos, a collection inspired by the 2015 Nepal earthquakes featuring Sharma’s poetry and photographs by Prasant Shrestha. In the Kathmandu Tribune, Arun Budhathoki wrote that it “immortalized the tragic event and captured the bitter memories of the Himalayan on a grand scale”. Andrea Dawn Bryant called it “stunningly heart-wrenching, albeit healing”.
a beach scene from ostend by Mola Clay
Mola Clay is the creative duo of film-maker and musician Yannick Mosimann, and vocalist and lyricist Selina Brenner, both in Switzerland. This recent video from them contains a deeply touching, poetic reverie, spoken by Brenner. Mosimann’s flickering images are ghostly, suggesting forgotten memories. The voice is calming in its subdued softness, in a soundtrack with silences, where intimacy is felt.
Mosimann’s brilliant earlier film Mrs. Bovary de Porrentruy was a couple of weeks ago awarded the international prize at Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Germany. His film-maker’s voice in both films is distinct and affecting.
From Selina Brenner’s bio…
Selinas work is transdisciplinary and interweaves art forms like music, dance, performance art and visual arts using the body, words/poetry, field recordings, song elements paired with extended vocal techniques and live electronics. Works are inspired by human behavior and perception, nighttime and feeling home, handled in a raw and expressive matter… Selina grew up in Maryland (USA) before moving to Switzerland when she was 12 years old. Selina has been living and working in Berne since 2016. (source)
