Exclusive: Documentarian Cosima Spender plans feature about her grandfather, the 20th Century writer.
English poet, novelist and essayist Sir Stephen Spender is to be the subject of a new feature by his granddaughter, the documentary filmmaker Cosima Spender (Palio).
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Interview: Cosima Spender, ‘Palio’
The London-based director told ScreenDaily: “I’ve written a short fiction that I’d like to make into a feature. It has been researched as a documentary and is based on the moment my father realised his father was homosexual.
“It’s about a family Christmas when a mother goes away and the father invites a young writer to stay with the family.”
“It’s not a biopic,” continued the director, whose previous credits include 2011 documentary Without Gorky, which charts the influence on her family of her maternal grandfather, the artist Arshile Gorky.
“It’s a slice of his life and will explore the emotional dynamics at play within the family,” she added...
English poet, novelist and essayist Sir Stephen Spender is to be the subject of a new feature by his granddaughter, the documentary filmmaker Cosima Spender (Palio).
Subscriber Content
Interview: Cosima Spender, ‘Palio’
The London-based director told ScreenDaily: “I’ve written a short fiction that I’d like to make into a feature. It has been researched as a documentary and is based on the moment my father realised his father was homosexual.
“It’s about a family Christmas when a mother goes away and the father invites a young writer to stay with the family.”
“It’s not a biopic,” continued the director, whose previous credits include 2011 documentary Without Gorky, which charts the influence on her family of her maternal grandfather, the artist Arshile Gorky.
“It’s a slice of his life and will explore the emotional dynamics at play within the family,” she added...
- 8/12/2015
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Poetry through cinema is expressed in Forsström's intensely visual work, inspired by film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky
This week's poem, "The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses," is by the Finland-Swedish writer, Tua Forsström, translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian. It's the first poem in her 1998 collection After Spending a Night Among Horses, which is included in the four-part Bloodaxe collection of Forsström's work.
The poems in After Spending a Night Among Horses are inspired by the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and are interleaved with quotations from Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, and from his prose-book, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Tarkovsky once said, "There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically." Forsström expresses the reverse idea, of thinking in poetry cinematically. The collection itself is a montage, and many of the individual poems, like this one, draw on a similar technique, combining different settings, seasons, voices and moods in one imaginative sweep.
This week's poem, "The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses," is by the Finland-Swedish writer, Tua Forsström, translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian. It's the first poem in her 1998 collection After Spending a Night Among Horses, which is included in the four-part Bloodaxe collection of Forsström's work.
The poems in After Spending a Night Among Horses are inspired by the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and are interleaved with quotations from Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, and from his prose-book, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Tarkovsky once said, "There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically." Forsström expresses the reverse idea, of thinking in poetry cinematically. The collection itself is a montage, and many of the individual poems, like this one, draw on a similar technique, combining different settings, seasons, voices and moods in one imaginative sweep.
- 3/4/2013
- by Carol Rumens
- The Guardian - Film News
Oxford just inherited a sizable collection of letters and manuscripts from former poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, The Guardian reports. The archive was donated to the University’s Bodleian Library by his children, actor Daniel Day-Lewis and food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The collection includes letters exchanged between the elder Day-Lewis and other notable figures, such as Kingsley Amis, Alec Guiness, and W.H. Auden. The latter, with whom Day-Lewis was especially chummy following their undergraduate years at Oxford, offers previously unseen criticism of Day-Lewis’ work that ranges from subtle (“The lines ‘For there’s no wonder … When any echo waits’, sound as...
The collection includes letters exchanged between the elder Day-Lewis and other notable figures, such as Kingsley Amis, Alec Guiness, and W.H. Auden. The latter, with whom Day-Lewis was especially chummy following their undergraduate years at Oxford, offers previously unseen criticism of Day-Lewis’ work that ranges from subtle (“The lines ‘For there’s no wonder … When any echo waits’, sound as...
- 10/30/2012
- by Josh Stillman
- EW.com - PopWatch
Tamasin and Daniel Day-Lewis hand over poet laureate's archive including manuscripts and letter from Wh Auden.
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
- 10/30/2012
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
1943/45, PG/U, Optimum
Having released DVDs of all the familiar Ealing titles, Optimum is now bringing out largely forgotten ones like this pair that resulted from Ealing boss Michael Balcon hiring documentary film-makers during the Second World War to bring a new realism to the studio's output.
Nine Men, the feature debut of documentarist Harry Watt, director of Night Mail (1936), is a morale-raising propaganda entertainment set in North Africa but shot on a Welsh beach. Character actor Jack Lambert, then serving as an army officer, plays a tough training sergeant inspiring a platoon of recruits by recalling how nine gallant soldiers (a regional cross-section including Ealing stalwart Gordon Jackson) held off a numerically superior Italian force in the Libyan desert.
Charles Crichton's semi-documentary Painted Boats is a quieter affair, both realistic and lyrical, about life on England's canals and a romance between a boy and a girl from rival barge families.
Having released DVDs of all the familiar Ealing titles, Optimum is now bringing out largely forgotten ones like this pair that resulted from Ealing boss Michael Balcon hiring documentary film-makers during the Second World War to bring a new realism to the studio's output.
Nine Men, the feature debut of documentarist Harry Watt, director of Night Mail (1936), is a morale-raising propaganda entertainment set in North Africa but shot on a Welsh beach. Character actor Jack Lambert, then serving as an army officer, plays a tough training sergeant inspiring a platoon of recruits by recalling how nine gallant soldiers (a regional cross-section including Ealing stalwart Gordon Jackson) held off a numerically superior Italian force in the Libyan desert.
Charles Crichton's semi-documentary Painted Boats is a quieter affair, both realistic and lyrical, about life on England's canals and a romance between a boy and a girl from rival barge families.
- 1/10/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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