Writing Poems at the End of the World

CountryCorea del Sur Year2024 Duration30 min. Projection formatDCP Languagekorean DirectionWonwoo Kim

World premiere

 

We stand at the edge of the world each day. After the world ends, a new day and world begin. The days lost their connections long ago—there is no tomorrow or yesterday, only fragmented todays. What lies at the end of the path through these fragments?

D-102, D-88, D-96, D-89… This is a film made of filmed poems. Of poems made of images, sounds and words. Each of those poems is preceded by the letter D and a number. D for day, we might think. As if each poem were the crystallisation of a day in miniature form. Fragments of video or photos, on-screen texts or voices in off, men singing in a tomb or a mobile phone screen turning off; it matters not. Everything finds its place; anything can inspire emotions. With each new poem comes a new form, a new rule of the game. The fragments echo back and forth, but freely; without revealing which part is random and which part is intended. It’s like the world has come to an end after many centuries and we have a very old poem book in which pages are missing. The numbers that precede each poem make us think about the numbers that are not here. We imagine the absent poems, the days lived but now lost. We intuit that, even if all the poems were written, others would still be missing, the unwritten poems. We sense that the poems are just the tip of an iceberg, the iceberg of experiences lived. At the end, just before the last poem, the text “D-1” appears on the screen. That number, 1, is not just any old number. It is the first... or the last. The start of it all... or the end. Therein the film creates its synthesis, one of many possible syntheses. We see fleeting images appear and disappear. We hear a rhythmic sound we do not recognise. At first, we do not even ask ourselves where it could be coming from because the rhythm works. And when a rhythm works, we feel freer to not comprehend it. Is a poem not exactly that to a large degree? Rhythm? However, in the end, the film shows us where that sound is coming from. They are dried petals falling from a Tupperware dish being shaken by a hand. Eventually, the Tupperware dish is left empty. We might ask ourselves whether a film is filled or emptied by that which it shows us. We might also wonder whether the poems we have seen and heard are like dried petals that preserve in fragile form that which was once alive. And that we, the audience, are here so they are not lost. To collect them, with great care.

Pablo García Canga

In the same program

Promoted by
Gobierno de Navarra
Organized by
NICDO
With the aid of
Con la financiación del Gobierno de España. Instituto de la Cinematografía y las Artes Audiovisuales Acción Cultural Española Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia Financiado por la Unión Europea. NexGenerationEU
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