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Neighborhood (August 2022)

Our poetry film based on Fiona Tinwei Lam's prescient 2002 poem, "Neighbourhood," and in consultation with the her, is an eerie look at modern life in the suburbs as the world courts disaster. Our film was mostly shot in Austin, TX, as the city was in the middle of a drought, which put the whole metro area in danger of wild fires. and under water and power conservation orders. Austin in July 2022 was heading towards the hottest and driest summer on record, but somehow the Austin suburbs still looked green and “bucolic.” Your city can be in a crisis, but it can be hard to see the truth of that outside your own windows. In that context, the news stories and images of disasters elsewhere in the world that reach our homes via satellites, cable, and the internet become a strangely disconnected spectacle. Our film's soundscape imagines what could be heard inside the blocks of houses we track past, and our film ends inside one of them, created from whole cloth, with the filmmakers watching a barrage of disaster footage as we hear Fiona deliver her prophetic news report in poetic form. It was Fiona's idea to have her reading of the poem emanate from the TV (what a great idea!), and we doubled down, accompanying her reading with footage from another of our films, about climate anxiety.

Text of the poem:

Neighbourhood

these geometric days
bounded by brushcut grass

amputated maples
lean lopsided into a sky
incised by wire grids
nets for ephemeral
connection

a satellite platter
funnels a particled world
into a cubed glowing

we huddle before it
avid for evidence
of life outside our
intricate caves

  • Jack Cochran
    Director
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Director
  • Fiona Tinwei Lam
    Writer
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Producer
  • Fiona Tinwei Lam
    Key Cast
    "Narrator"
  • Jack Cochran
    Editing and sound design
  • Pamela Falkenberg
    Cinematography and producion design
  • Fiona Tinwei Lam
    Consultant
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    Poetry film
  • Completion Date:
    August 25, 2022
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    4K digital video
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Ostia Film Festival (English subtitled version screened)
    Rome
    Italy
    November 29, 2022
    Official selection
  • Living with Buildings
    Coventry
    United Kingdom
    November 23, 2022
    UK premiere
    Selected
  • Vesuvius
    Castellammare di Stabia, Campania
    Italy
    November 30, 2022
    European premiere
    Finalist, Award for best video poetry
  • Lisbon Film Rendezvour (English subtitled version)
    Lisbon
    Portugal
    November 26, 2023
    Portugal premiere
    Official selection/finalist
  • International Migration & Environmental Film Festival
    Toronto
    Canada
    March 23, 2023
    North American premiere
    Official selection
  • Absurd Arthouse Film Festival
    Blue Town, Kent
    United Kingdom
    April 15, 2023
    Kent premiere
    Finalist
  • Apex Film Awaards
    Worthing, West Sussex
    United Kingdom
    Season 1, 2023
    Official selection
  • New West Film Fest
    New Westminster, BC
    Canada
    October 20, 2023
    British Columbia premiere
    Official selection
  • MINA
    Melbourne, Victoria
    Australia
    November 12, 2023
    Australian premire
    Official selection
  • Vancouver Independent - International Film Festival
    Vancouver, BC
    Canada
    October 5, 2023
    Vancouver premiere
    Official selection
  • Festival Internacional de cine de Norte de Santander (Spanish subtitled version screened)
    Norte de Santander
    Colombia
    August 22, 2023
    Latin American premiere
    Official selection
  • KinoDrome International Motion Picture & Screenplay Festival
    Cleveland, OH
    United States
    September 24, 2023
    U.S. premiere
    Official selection
  • Black Rock City Film Festival @ Burning Man
    Black Rock City, NV
    United States
    August 27, 2023
    Mountain states premiere
    Official selection
Distribution Information
  • Outlier Moving Pictures, Austin, TX
    Country: United States
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Jack Cochran, Pamela Falkenberg

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.

Biography of poet Fiona Tinwei Lam

Fiona Tinwei Lam is a writer, editor, and educator from Vancouver, Canada, who was named the Vancouver Poet Laurate for 2022-2024. 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. She was recently named the Poet Laureate of Vancouver. Learn more at www.fionalam.net.

Shorter biography of Pam and Jack:
Pam & Jack met in graduate school and made films together when they were young. Jack was part of the Iowa Creative Writing Workshop and was working on a PhD in film studies when he left to pursue a career as a professional cinematographer, eventually working out of LA and London. Meanwhile, Pam stayed in school, got her PhD, and went on to become a film professor and experimental filmmaker, but eventually dropped out to work in visual display. They reconnected some thirty years later and formed Outlier Moving Pictures, honoring their new name by making technically innovative and poetic films about life, love, landscapes, social justice, and the environment. Jack has written poetry all his life, but he never knew what to do with it, until Pam said, “You’re a filmmaker — shouldn’t your poems be films?” Their eclectic films show all over the world, but Pam is particularly proud to have suggested making films of Jack’s poems, which has led to many interesting collaborations with other poets and filmmakers.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

For over seven 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, 2020, 2021), 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), the Hombres Videopoetry Competitition (2019 2020), and the Zebra Poetry Film Festival (2020, 2021). 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 acclaimed film, "The Names of Trees," in collaboration with Lucy English for her Book of Hours project, has screened in more than 40 film festivals in more than 15 countries, has been nominated for awards many times, named a finalist for best poetic film and best short film several times, and won the Lois Weber Pioneer Award at the 2020 Queens World Film Festival, for their complete body of work. Two of their more recent poetry films, "In West Virginia," and "Flag Country," based on poems by Dave Bonta, have screened at the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Small Axe Radical Film Festival, the Newlyn Film Festival, and the North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival, among others. Pam and Jack recently completed a new triptych with poet Lucy English on climate change, "I Want to Breathe Sweet Air,” which has already received recognition in the US and Internationally. They are currently at work on "Now and Then," an experimental film based on a new collection of Jack's poems; “The Loneliest Road in America” (their first feature together), an experimental road trip/documentary essay about transportation and travel in the American West; and another collaboration with poet Lucy English, about Louisiana’s “Cancer Corridor” and environmental injustice.

.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); the environment, 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.