Bad Rhyme/Duel Lament

Usually Jack is the poet in the Outlier outfit. But this time, Pam wrote a poem of her own in response to one of Jack's, which interweave and explain the dual title of their new film poem, "Bad Rhyme/Duel Lament." Those who have read our director statement know that we met in graduate school, made films together when we were young, went our separate ways, reconnected years later, and began making films together again. This experimental film is the story of love and loss behind that statement, triggered by the poem Jack wrote in memoriam, about some songs of Leon Russell's, marking the occasion when he learned about the death of the music legend, that loss triggering a displaced telling of his own. Pam's poem appears in subtitles, since her poem comments on Jack's, as well as referencing other lyrics from Leon Russell's songs, key intertexts not always cited directly or left out of Jack's poem, which is recited on the audio track. The two versions of the story are complicated, an experimental and elliptical collage akin to but distant from the alienated yet heartbreaking Brechtian melodramas of Douglas Sirk, whose "All That Heaven Allows," another key intertext, hovers above and behind our crazy whirlwind of a love story that spans more than 30 years.

  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Director
  • Jack Cochran
    Director
  • Jack Cochran
    Writer
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Writer
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Producer
  • Jack Cochran
    Editing/sound design
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Production design
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    poetry film, personal story
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 48 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 1, 2019
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K video
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Lisbon Film Rendezvous
    Lisbon
    Portugal
    May 15, 2020
    International Premiere
    Official selection, Semi-finalist and Finalist
  • Kosice International Monthly Film Festival
    Košice
    Slovakia
    May 16, 2021
    Slovakia premiere
    Official Selectioni
  • High Tatras Film & Video Festival
    Dolný Smokovec
    Slovakia
    March 26, 2022
    Semi-finalist
  • MicroActs Artist Film Screenings
    London
    United Kingdom
    January 27, 2022
    European premiere
    Official selection
  • Kinodrome
    Cleveland, OH
    United States
    September 25, 2022
    U.S. premiere
    Official selection, Award winner
  • Film Festival Senior Movie
    Szczecin
    Poland
    September 22, 2022
    Polish premiere
    Official selection
  • Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival Vienna
    Vienna
    Austria
    November 14, 2023
    Austrian premiere
    Official selection
Director Biography - Pamela Falkenberg, Jack Cochran

Pam's bio:

Pam is an independent filmmaker who received her PhD from the University of Iowa and taught at Northern Illinois University, St.Mary's College, and the University of Notre Dame. She directed the largest student film society in the US while she was at the University of Iowa, and also ran films series for the Snite Museum of Art in South Bend, IN. Her experimental film with Dan Curry, Open Territory, received an individual filmmaker grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as grants from the Center for New Television and the Indiana Arts Council. OT screened at the Pacific Film Archives, as well at numerous film festivals, including the AFI Video Festival, and was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her other films include museum installations, scholarly/academic hybrid works shown at film conferences, and a documentary commissioned by the Peace Institute at the University of Notre Dame. She wants to make lots of different kinds of films with Jack, but she is especially proud to have been the one who suggested that Jack's poems should be made into films.

Jack's bio:

Jack is an independent filmmaker who has produced, directed, or shot a variety of experimental and personal projects. As a DP he has extensive experience shooting commercials, independent features, and documentaries. His varied commercial client list includes BMW, Ford, Nissan, Fujifilm, Iomega, Corum Watches, and Forte Hotels. His features and documentaries have shown at the Sundance, Raindance, Telluride, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Chicago, Houston, and Taos film Festivals, winning several honors. His commercials and documentaries have won Silver Lions from Cannes, a BAFTA (British Academy Award), Peabody Awards, and Cable Aces. Some notable credits: Director of Photography on Brian Griffin's Claustrofoamia, Cinematography for Antony Thomas’ Tank Man, Director/Cinematographer of Viento Nocturno, and Cinematographer of Ramin Niami’s feature film Paris. Jack was trained at the University of Iowa Creative Writers Workshop as well as the University of Iowa film studies program. He has written poetry all his life, but he never knew what to do with it until he shared his notebooks with Pam, who said, "You're a filmmaker -- shouldn't your poems be films?"

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg are making personal films together again under the name Outlier Moving Pictures. They hope their new films will be worthy of the name -- avoiding the usual patterns and approaching their subject matter from the margins (which sounds better than saying that as filmmakers they're oddballs and cranks). Pam and Jack met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack went on to become a professional cinematographer working out of LA and London, while Pam stayed in the Midwest, where she was a college professor and independent filmmaker before dropping out to work in visual display. Their first film together, "The Cost of Living," based on some of Jack's short poems, was accepted by several film festivals, including the Queens World Film Festival (2019), the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Denver Underground Film Festival, and the Cornwall Film Festival; was nominated for two awards at the 2017 Jim Thorpe Film Festival; and took the award for best experimental film at the 2016 WV FILMmakers Festival. Other short poetry films have screened at the Ò Bhéal Poetry Film Festival (2016, 2018), the Juteback Poetry Film Festival (2017, 2018), the Festival Silencio (2017) , the Filmpoem Festival (2017), the 6th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival (2017), the 6th and 7th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens Greece, 2018), the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (2018), the REELpoetry Festival (2019), and the Newlyn Film Festival (2019). Recently completed is an experimental documentary essay about the North Dakota landscape and Teddy Roosevelt, "Teddy Roosevelt and Fracking," which showed out-of-competition as a work-in-progress at the WV FILMmakers Fest in October 2017 and premiered at the Queens World Film Festival in March 2018, where it was nominated for three awards (Best Cinematography, Best Director, and Best Documentary Short), taking the award for Best Documentary Short. "Teddy" has also screened at the 2018 Ekofilm Festival in Poland, the 2018 Buffalo International Film Festival, the 2018 Go West Film Festival, and the American Presidents Film and Literary Festival at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Museum and Library in October 2018, where it was nominated for two judges awards and won the Audience Choice Award. Along with that, a series of shorts about photo opportunities and roadside attractions in Texas (the first installment of which, "Prada Marfa," premiered in the True Texas Travel category at the Thin Line Festival in April 2018), and some brief experimental romantic comedies based on Craigslist's Missed Connections, a compilation version of which, "Missed Connections Anthology," premiered at the Austin Spotlight Festival in April 2018, and screened for the second time at the KinoDrome Festival in Cleveland, OH in September 2018. Their other most recent poetry films are collaborations, with Dave Bonta on "In West Virginia," from his book, "Failed State," and with Lucy English on "The Shadow," and "The Names of Trees," for her Book of Hours project (http://thebookofhours.org/). Their most recent and upcoming festival appearances include Carmarthen Bay in Wales, the Ozark Foothills Film Fest, the Lisbon Film Rendezvous, the Riga Digital Forum, Small Axe @Tolpuddle, Mister Vorky, DEA, All Together Now, VASTLAB, the Dallas Medianale, and the Hombres Videopoetry Competition Short List screening.