TRANSLATING EDWIN HONIG: A POET´S ALZHEIMER

Alan Berliner has been chronicling the final years of his friend, cousin, and former mentor, Edwin Honig – distinguished poet, translator, critic, and teacher – into the depths of Alzheimer's disease. Among many other honors, Honig received honorary "knighthoods” from Spain and Portugal for his seminal translations of Lorca, Calderón, and Pessoa that awakened English-speaking readers to the work of these literary giants. This suite of six short films reveals a poet and wordsmith who may have lost his memory and his command of language, but still retains his sense of rhythm, rhyme and sublime musicality. And through it all, his dignity.

Alan Berliner's uncanny ability to combine experimental cinema, artistic purpose, and popular appeal in compelling film essays has made him one of America's most acclaimed independent filmmakers. The New York Times has described Berliner's work as "powerful, compelling and bittersweet... full of conflict and contradiction, innovative in their cinematic technique... Alan Berliner illustrates the power of fine art to transform life."