Night Mind (The Adder)

a visual poem based on the poem, The Adder, by Melissa Ginsberg.

  • Miriam Joanna Bennett
    Director
  • Melissa Ginsberg
    Writer
  • Maya Rae Miller
    Key Cast
    "Maya"
  • Miriam Joanna Bennett
    Key Cast
  • Miriam Bennett
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    November 17, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    50 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    mixed formats
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • Invited artist, Homegrown Stories

    March 17, 2021
    Homegrown Stories "2021- Year of the Poet, the final posting"
    Invited Artist
Distribution Information
  • Moving Studio Productions
    Rights: Internet, Video on Demand, Airline
Director Biography - Miriam Joanna Bennett

Miriam Bennett is an American artist and filmmaker based in Akron, Ohio. Her creative works, which comprise theatrical, installation arts, narrative and documentary film explore obsession and metamorphosis, involve unexplained events and histories, and share a sensibility with science fiction and surrealism. Her current interests include making cyanotypes, stereoscopic photo cards, and studying night-pollinating insects.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Prompted by a request from curator, Sandra L. Dyas, I made a short film using "pocket technology" based on the poem, "The Adder" by Melissa Ginsburg. In reading the poem, I felt it connected to my experience of wandering around the Ohio landscape during the pandemic mixed with the mysteries of the urban world and the connections we form within both. I like the idea of the animals that can move between worlds, irrespective of human categories for nature or art.

The Adder
by Melissa Ginsberg

May the pond be free
from its companion pondwater
blackening the pond’s edges

slipping as it does
to the sides behind
below a swimming adder

May the air and the sky be excused
from one another as a child
from a table as a table

from its planes the house from
its frame Free
garden from dirt

garden
from sprouts waxing
white and long under layers
of mulch Part spring from cold part
wood from grain part grain part monstrous
shout Part splinter

from wood splinter from flesh
Toss it in the fire
divorce fire

from its color its tremble and
its burn
Divorce: does a door

need a wall to become itself
to separate
from to open to allow