Legacy
"Legacy," in collaboration with poet Fiona Tinwei Lam and based on her poem, creates a memory space using symbolic objects, evocative tableaux, and a variety of digital effects to concretize the wisdom that comes with temporal and emotional distance, creating a fanciful, wry, and occasionally bittersweet postmortem of a relationship that founders on the rocks of cross cultural differences.
Biography of Fiona Tinwei Lam
Fiona Tinwei Lam is a writer, editor, and educator from Vancouver, Canada. She has authored three poetry collections: Intimate Distances (finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize), Enter the Chrysanthemum, and Odes & Laments. as well as a children’s book. Her poetry and prose appear in over 40 anthologies, including The Best Canadian Poetry (2010 and 2020 editions). She has co-edited two anthologies of nonfiction and edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poetry about Facing Cancer. Her award-winning video poems have been screened at festivals locally and internationally. www.fionalam.net
Text of the poem:
Legacy
Each summer, your mother’s hands
transformed heaped bowls of ripe fruit
into glistening fillings.
Her deft persuasion of dough into pastry
through the white silted air
Rhubarb, blueberry, peach, apple --
desserts for a year’s worth of holidays.
I tried to make pie
the way I tried to be a wife:
four pyrex pie plates, a battle
to bind flour, fat and water
into elusive tenderness.
You gave me a yearning
for homemade pie
that lingered longer than love,
then left with the pie plates
and what you learnt --
congee breakfasts,
the intricate textures of dim sum,
how to eat shark's fin
with a spoonful of vinegar,
never to forgo the good luck
of red bean soup, and always
to rest your chopsticks
parallel across the bowl
at a meal's end.
From Fiona Tinwei Lam, Intimate Distances (Nightwood Editions, Canada, 2002) Copyright © Fiona Tinwei Lam 2002
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Jack CochranFilm by
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Pamela FalkenbergFilm by
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Fiona Tinwei LamWriter
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Fiona Tinwei LamNarration by
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Tinjun NiuNarration recorded by
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Vern BeamishDigital piano
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Linda Ye Rur WangPipa music
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Bruce LamPipa music recording
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Ted BelchAdditional sound recording
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Hanna KimCast (failed dough rolling)
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MPB Bonsai StudioBonsai trees
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Project Type:Experimental, Short, Other
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Runtime:2 minutes 3 seconds
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Completion Date:February 28, 2021
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Country of Origin:Canada
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:4K digital video
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Cadence Video Poetry Festival (English version screened)Seattle, WA
United States
April 16, 2021
World premiere
Official selection -
Film and Folklore Festival (English subtitled version screened)Chaguanas, Caronit
Trinidad and Tobago
May 27, 2021
Caribbean premiere
Official selection -
MicroActs Artist Film Screenings (English version screened)London, England
United Kingdom
June 24, 2021
UK premiere
Official selection -
ABI Film Fesstival (English subtitled version screened)Bucharest
Hungary
July 9, 2021
Hungarian premiere
Official selection -
Alternating Currents (English version screened)Davenport, IA
United States
August 19, 2021
Iowa premiere
Official selection -
KinoDrome: International Motion Picture & Screenplay Festival (English version screened)Cleveland, OH
United States
September 26, 2021
Ohio premiere
Official selection, Award winner, Best Experimental Short (Best Alternative Media) -
CREATE: Flash Film Fest (English version screened)Catskill, New York
United States
September 30, 2021
New York premiere
Official selection, rare finds category -
Munich Music Video Awards (English subtitled version screened)Munich
Germany
September 30, 2021
German premiere
Official selection, finalist -
Midwest Video Poetry Festival (English subtitled version screened)Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin
United States
October 8, 2021
Midwest premiere
Official selection -
FECIBogota International Independent Film Fair of Bogota (Spanish subtitled version screened)Bogota
Colombia
October 16, 2021
Latin American premiere
Official -
Sanctuary International Film Festival (English version screened)Sanctuary Cove, Queensland
Australia
November 12, 2021
Australian premiere
Official selection -
O Bheal Poetry Film Competition (English version screened)Cork
Ireland
November 28, 2021
Irish premiere
Official selection, short list of 30 films -
Veracruz World Film Festival (Spanish subtitled version screened)Veracruz
Mexico
December 1, 2021
Mexico premiere
Official selection -
Festival Internacional de Cine con Medios Alternativos FICMA (Spanish subtitled version screened)Mexico City
Mexico
December 7, 2021
Mexico City premiere
Official selection -
Versi Di Luce (Italian subtitled version screened)Monica, Sicily
Italy
December 16, 2021
Italian premiere
Official selection -
Festival Angaelica (English version screened)Pasadena, CA
United States
December 21, 2021
Southern California premiere
Official selection -
5th International Folklore Festival 2022Thissur, Kerala
India
January 1, 2022
India premiere
Official selection; Finalist, Best Short Film -
Balkan Can Kino (screening delayed until Nov. 2022)Athens
Greece
February 1, 2022
Greece premiere
Official -
REELpoetry (English version screened)Houston, TX
United States
February 25, 2022
Texas premiere
Official selection -
SXSW Austin Film Society Community Short CaseAustin, TX
United States
March 13, 2022
Austin Premiere
Official selection -
Texas Short Film FestivalSan Antonio
United States
April 30, 2022
San Antonio premiere
Official selection, Finalist -
5th Annual Jim Thorpe Independent Film FestivalJim Thorpe, PA
United States
April 21, 2022
Pennsylvania premiere
Official selection -
Shorts @ Fringe (Azores Fringe Festival)Azores
Portugal
June 1, 2022
Portuguese premiere
Official selection -
Tranas At the FringeTranas
Sweden
July 2, 2022
Swedish premiere
Official selection -
Swindon Independent (International) Film FestivalSwindon
United Kingdom
July 18, 2022
Swindon premiere
Official selection -
Austin Film Society Members Monday SXSW Community ShortcaseAustin, TX
United States
July 18, 2022
Reprise screening
Official selection -
ELO(KUVA)KUU (English subtitled version)Tampere
Finland
August 4, 2022
Finland premiere
Official selection -
Helios Sun Poetry Film Festival (Spanish subtitled version)Mexico City
Mexico
August 19, 2022
Mexico City premiere
Official selection -
Drumshambo Poetry Film FestivalLeitrim County
Ireland
August 26, 2022
Leitrim County premiere
Official seleciton -
Vesuvius International Film Fest (Italian subtitled version screened)Campania/online
Italy
July 31, 2022
Campania premiere
Micro short award winner, Micro short nominee, and official selection -
streetside cinemaWinston-Salem, NC
United States
September 1, 2022
North Carolina premiere
Official selection -
MicroMania Film FestivalBuffalo, NY (and online)
United States
September 3, 2022
Official selection -
Wales International Film FestivalSwansea, Wales
United Kingdom
September 15, 2022
Wales premiere
Official selection -
Hell Chess Festival (Spanish subtitled version screened)Madrid
Spain
October 31, 2022
Spanish premiere
Official selection -
OtherMovie LuganoLugano
Switzerland
December 27, 2022
Swiss premiere
Official selection -
MARXE — International Video Poetry FestivalVigo, Pontevedra
Spain
November 10, 2022
Vigo premiere
Official selection -
VideotitlanCallao
Peru
November 8, 2022
Peruvian premiere
Official selection -
Down East Flick FestGreenville, NC
United States
November 17, 2022
North Carolina premiere
Official selection -
Hyperreal Film ClubAustin, TX
United States
December 1, 2022
Official selection -
Ferrara Film Corto Festival (Italian subtitled version)Ferrara
Italy
October 21, 2023
Ferrara premiere
Official selection -
AniMateNewtown
Australia
March 30, 2023
First Australian recognition
Semi-finalist
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 is an occasional contributor to Moving Poems Magazine (http://discussion.movingpoems.com/).
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.
For over five years, Jack Cochran and Pamela Falkenberg have been making personal films together again under the name Outlier Moving Pictures. They hope their work will prove 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, screened at several film festivals, including the Buffalo International Film Festival and the Cornwall Film Festival, was nominated for two awards at the 2019 Queens World 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, 2019), the Juteback Poetry Film Festival (2017, 2018), the Festival Silencio (2017), the Filmpoem Festival (2017), the 6th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival (2017), the 6th, 7th, and 8th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens Greece), REELpoetry (2019, 2020), and the Hombres Videopoetry Award screening of shortlisted films, 2020. Their most ambitious film, "Teddy Roosevelt and Fracking," about environmental threats to the wild landscapes of North Dakota, premiered at the 2018 Queens World Film Festival, where it was nominated for three awards and took the award for Best Documentary Short, followed by awards at the Go West Film Festival, the Ozark Foothills Film Festival, and the American Presidents Film and Literary Festival at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museum. Their most recent poetry films, "In West Virginia," and "Flag Country," based on poems by Dave Bonta, have already screened at the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Small Axe Radical Film Festival, the Newlyn Film Festival, the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival, and the Show Me Justice Film Festival. Pam and Jack have just completed a new triptych with Lucy English on climate change, "I Want to Breathe Sweet Air" and another about the dystopian city, "Scary Places/Shapes & Sizes," from Jack's erasure poem. "Legacy," in collaboration with Fiona Tinwei Lam, and based on her poem, is their most recent film.
Jack and Pam co-direct the films they make together, and they collaborate fully, even when they divide up the credits. Their poetry films usually start with a poem (often, but not always, one of Jack’s poems), which they think of as analogous to a script. However, when collaborating with Lucy English on “The Shadow” and “The Names of Trees,” the process was more dialectical: some images and sounds came first, then Lucy wrote the poems; the poems inspired more images, and eventually the edited film poems. For us, the exact process depends on the project and remains open to experiment, so our body of work is somewhat disparate and hard to categorize. Some of our eclectic interests include collage, found footage, and repurposing; the film essay and film poetry; image capturing and post-production techniques that reveal what cannot be seen with the eyes alone (e.g., high shutter speeds, moving cameras, infrared photography, green screen and digital layering); landscapes and the ways humans mark them; human rights/social justice; and postmodern melodrama.
Jack 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?” Pam and Jack both want to make lots of different kinds of films together, but Pam is especially proud to have been the one who suggested that Jack’s poems should come to life as films. They are both delighted that making films of Jack's poems has led to interesting collaborations with other poets and filmmakers.