Cecilia Vicuña, Still from ¿Qué es para usted la poesía? / What is Poetry to You?, 1980
This film is accessible for the screening period only
¿Qué es para usted la poesía? / What Is Poetry to You?
by Cecilia Vicuña
Year: 1980
Language: Spanish. English subtitles.
Duration: 23 minutes 20 seconds
Chilean artist, poet, filmmaker and activist Cecilia Vicuña made her first documentary while residing in Colombia after the 1973 coup d’état. Through this fundamental inquiry: ¿Qué es para usted la poesía? / What is poetry to you?, Vicuña unravels the role and substance of poetry in people’s lives. Speaking with school children, street performers, policemen, sex workers, fellow artists and a scientist, the all embracing character of poetry emerges – its transformative role in personal relations, as a basis of oral history and the revolutionary imagination.
Edited by Chris Borkowski. Photography by Peter Goodhew.
This film is presented in the context of ‘Reading in Tongues’, a four-part virtual programme organised in partnership with Colomboscope as part of the festival’s seventh edition Language is Migrant. For more information, click here.
