LOOK UP

A young woman fights her MS-related fatigue and finally steps outside to practice shinrin-yoku (forest bathing)

  • Tamara Kaye Sellman
    Director
  • Tamara Kaye Sellman
    Writer
  • Tamara Kaye Sellman
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Web / New Media, Other
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 37 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 10, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    100 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Tamara Kaye Sellman

Tamara Kaye Sellman is a poet, writer, and amateur photographer and filmmaker living in Kingston, WA. Her book, INTENTION TREMOR (2021; MoonPath Press) chronicles the five years following her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2013 in a wide range of poetry and prose forms. LOOK UP is her first film.

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Director Statement

LOOK UP is a spinoff of the concept behind INTENTION TREMOR: to explore the intimate challenges one must overcome when living with a chronic, incurable disease.

I made LOOK UP as a "sandbox" project, learning how to create video collage using an accessible tool like Canva. I incorporated some original footage and voiceover recordings quilted together with other royalty-free images, music, and sound effects.

Readers of INTENTION TREMOR, many with visual or hearing disabilities, have asked me to make an audio version of the book to make it more accessible. While the idea is a good one, I feel poetry as a performance art deserves a more media-rich encasement. Those with visual limitations can listen to poetry films to hear the poet's original voice and hear the poet's intentions in the choices they make using sound. Those with hearing limitations can read the poem and watch the film to experience the poet's intentions not only through the written word but through all manner of imagery--still, moving, even animated.

LOOK UP is my first attempt to make a poetry film. My next step is to recreate each of the poems in my book, INTENTION TREMOR, as video collage, one by one, eventually re-visioning the entire collection as a film of linked short films. It's going to take forever but while I'm in remission, I will do everything I can to create.