Experiencing Interruptions?

America

This poetry film combines documentation of the protests immediately after Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, with Walt Whitman's own voice reciting lines from his poem "America."

  • H. Paul Moon
    Director
    Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty, Mining the Mother Lode
  • James S. Adams
    Music
    Escalators Become Stairs
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Poetry
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 16 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 7, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    0 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival
    Worcester, Massachussetts
    United States
    October 20, 2018
    World Premiere
  • Beeston Film Festival
    Nottingham
    United Kingdom
    March 13, 2019
    Europe Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Walt Whitman 200 Festival
    Washington, DC
    United States
    May 31, 2019
    Washington, DC Premiere
    Official Selection
Director Biography - H. Paul Moon

H. Paul Moon (zenviolence.com) is a filmmaker whose work includes short and feature-length documentaries, dance films, and experimental cinema, featured and awarded at over a hundred film festivals worldwide. He has taught documentary editing at Docs In Progress as an Adobe Certified Expert, and serves as adjunct professor at George Mason University's Film and Video Studies program. He also manages a network of online communities at focuspulling.com that keeps pace with new camera technologies. He worked as a small camera specialist for a Paramount feature film starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, and as cinematographer for director Josephine Decker’s film in "collective:unconscious" that debuted at the South by Southwest Festival. Recent films include "Sitka: A Piano Documentary" (sitkadoc.com) about the craftsmanship of Steinway pianos, and "Quartet for the End of Time" (quatuor.xyz) about Olivier Messiaen’s transcendent WWII composition, that premiered on the commemorative date and at the place where the imprisoned composer first debuted his work. Moon's latest film, an award-winning feature-length documentary about the life and music of American composer Samuel Barber (samuelbarberfilm.com) recently premiered on PBS, and he is currently finishing another documentary feature about Western folklife, cowboy poetry, and the American frontier (westdocumentary.com). Excerpted poetry films from that project have appeared in museum exhibitions, and numerous film festivals, leading up to the feature film's completion. Ongoing projects include an opera film based on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (scroogeopera.com), a documentary at the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (95thesesfilm.com), and a biographical portrait of Whittaker Chambers.

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Director Statement

The confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was politically divisive, but Walt Whitman's 19th century wisdom remains timeless. In 1892, the poet wrote in prose:

"I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of a reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of woman."

Towards the end of his life in 1888, he added "America" to his collection "Leaves of Grass," and then recited four lines from the poem, onto a wax cylinder recording, before he died (it is the only record of his voice in existence):

"Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love"

And the written poem proceeds to say:

"A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time."

This poetry film combines my documentation of the minutes after Kavanaugh's confirmation, with Whitman's own voice, and original music by composer James S. Adams. I used the new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K at 120 frames per second, and color graded using an emulsion/grain simulation of Fuji 8563 RL film stock.