William Cliff, poête
William Cliff, poet

Belgium, 1996, 16 mm, Format diffusion : 1.67 (Super 16), 35 minutes

Can a film make poetry be heard?
This is the question of William Cliff, poet which condenses its image around the poet in order to make his poetry flow out, fleshy, made of breathe and loose stones, a language as familiar as unsuspected.
Cliff reads here his own writings. At first, autobiographic, he talks about himself; subsequently, biographical, he tells about a fellow writer, Conrad Detrez, who died of Aids.

Meanwhile, his poetry will have travelled to other mouths, through songs (singer Arno set a poem to music and sings it himself), through translators who tell fragments in their own language (Arab, Yiddish, Spanish, Catalan, Flemish), through a child who recites by heart, through a sign language translator who alternates silences with noises from the body. And in the end through the pysical destruction of the book; pulping a book is an auto-da-fé authorised by the laws of the market. And by then, that voice of rimes, alliterations and verses will have become natural to us...

  • Screenplay: Gérard Preszow
  • Photography: Jorge Leon
  • Sound: Patrick Van Loo
  • Image editing: Ludo Verbruggen
  • Sound editing: Jean-François Gosselin
  • Languages: FR
  • Available formats: Beta Digital, Digital
  • Production: Qwazi Qwazi Films
  • Coproduction: ARTE Belgique RTBF, CBA & avec le soutien du Service des Lettres du Ministère de la Communauté française.
  • Festival promotion:

    CBA - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

  • Sales (interlational distribution):

    Thierry Detaille - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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