Sandra Cross

Word Projections screening at The Poetry Society

Word Projections

Film screening at the Poetry Society
22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX
Saturday December 2, 2017 2.30-4.30pm
Free entry

‘Limbo’ Sandra Cross
Between a film and a journal
Part One
60 minutes
Colour with sound DVD 2017

Limbo
a lament on loss

Ten years of writing about and visiting her Mother who had ‘Probable Alzheimer’s’
resulted in a 2,000 page journal and a four-day reading. In this hybrid film-journal
we hear Sandra’s voice overlay the weekly train journey from London-Leicester as
she reads the first extract written in 2006.

‘A landscape haunts as intense as opium’ Stephane Mallarme 1888

From Limbo, the journal:

‘I see her face reflected in the wing mirror. All of the harsh observations I have
made and will continue to make, are swept away as I see her face go through a
series of gentle transformations from sad and lost to hopeful as the sun warms her skin.’

Comes in
breathing changes
races through her
whole body
wracking it with
disbelief at
where she is
now
the loss
cauterising
the cries rise up
out of her
quaking body like
what?
A moment
fraction of
time known only to
her
changes everything
and she
rallies
It’s over
for now’

‘Winder’ Gerry Smith
Colour plus sound DVD 2011
15 minutes

A film inspired by Paolo Uccello’s painting ‘The Battle of San Romano’ 1440
a work depicting part of the battle fought between Florence and Siena in 1432
which in turn inspired Gregory Corso’s poem ‘Uccello’ from his collection
‘Gasoline 1967.

A young girl reads from Corso’s poem:

(Extract)

‘They will never die on that battlefield
nor the shade or wolves recruit their hoard like brides of
wheat on all horizons waiting there to consume battle’s end
There will be no dead to tighten their loose bellies
no heap of starched horses to redsmash their bright eyes
or advance their eat of dead
They would rather hungersulk with mad tongues
than believe that in that field no man dies’

‘Chest Freezer’ William English
16 mm colour film plus sound
25 minutes
Out-takes from ‘Heated Gloves’ 2015
Footage dates from 1980-1990

A portrait of Captain Maurice Seddon (Royal Signals Retired)
A record of Maurice’s telephone conversation between him and someone
offering him a chest freezer.