Film UbuWebBettina Corke
The Poet and the Philospher (1973)
Bettina Corke started her career as an experimental film maker, often combining animation, live action and experimentation with sound and film. For example, one film (35mm) used the poetry of Wallace Stevens, GREEN & BLUE, NORTH AMERICA, WALLACE STEVENS. This film was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It is the only film devoted to the work of Wallace Stevens... "the major American poet since Whitman and Dickinson, and the only authentic rival to Yeats among 20th-century poets writing in English" Harold Bloom, Professor of English, Yale University, USA.
The film constitutes a significant departure from the static approach and single dimension of traditional poetry films, for, ".the rapidly juxtaposed imasges jar us into awareness as they take on a rhythm of their own that....both counterpoints and complements the feeling and thoughts in the poems" Robert Buttel, Chair, Department of English, Temple University USA. This imaginative use of film is a superb way to introduce and explore poetry in the classroom" Elaine Lynn, Garden City High School, New York.
For the last ten years, she has moved more and more into producing documentaries of a political and social nature on development issues, women, peace, war and tyranny. She has made films for the United Nations as an independent producer, writer and director. Some of her more recent productions include: "What's Global" - a New Movement? taped at the" First European Social Forum" held in Firenze 2002 & at the Rome Manifestation for " Peace and No to War," 2003. Presently, she is completing a short film on Rodin's "The Burgers of Calais" Her last production is " Together They Lit Up The World - Gandhi & Nelson Mandela in South Africa." She is currently working on a documentary "New Economics for Peace - Co-operatives for Change. She opened her film company Decade Media in 1983 in New York. In 1990 she founded CD Resources, an alternative publishing outlet producing full text "libraries to go" on CD Rom. In 1996, she returned to the UK and to Europe. In addition to Decade Media she is the co-ordinator and member of artsCOOP a co-operative operating out of Central Italy offering in addition to production and alternative media educational approaches, seminars and small conferences on experimental cinema and documentary TV production. She lives in L'Aquila, Central Italy and she is very happy to be classified as an European.