Poetry films in the dark

Last weekend, at the SADHO Poetry film fest, I saw more than thirty poetry films from over 20 countries – all packed into two evenings smelling of the impending Delhi winter. The longest poetry film was about 20 minutes and the shortest less than one minute.

Poetry films! Not sure you get that – I didn’t as well, to start with. We are used to hearing poetry in Hindi films - when a character in the story has lost or won, when there is dismay in solitude or romantic delirium, in song and in dance.

Poetry films are those where the poetry itself is a character in the film, well, the protagonist in fact. These can be poetic films, films based on poems, poems turned into films, poet-filmmaker collaborations and so on. Yes, an avant-garde medium and a new genre just beginning to find an audience which appreciates the cusp between poetry and the visual arts.  Rare, subtle.

The SADHO poetry film fest is the only one of its kind in Asia. This festival has films based on poems by Pablo Neruda. Victor Hugo. Emily Dickinson. Gananpath Award winner Kunwar Narain, Sufi poet Shah Bhittai, 9th century Zen poet Han Shan. This year's Nobel Prize winner for literature, Tomas Transtromer. The Times of India called it a ‘rare treat for poetry lovers’. 

More than 200 poetry lovers gathered each of the two weekend evenings, sat in the dark auditorium and resonated in their own individual ways to each frame that flickered past with poetry.

I volunteer for SADHO. It’s based in Delhi, and travels all over the country with its magic box of poetry films, poetry wallpapers, workshops, lectures, recitations and inspiring evenings. Sadho has imbued itself with the mighty mission of taking ‘poetry to people’.

Poetry, to me, is an irresistible proposition because it is at once powerful and pleasurable. Poetry, to me, is many people and ages rolled into one, it is vacantly crowded. Poetry sublimates my moments with it to spaces never visited. 

I began getting to know and understand SADHO sometime in 2008. Jitendra Ramprakash, a friend of fifteen years, sent me a text message with a website address www.sadho.com with instructions to read and respond to a recent post. SADHO was his brainchild and big idea. It happened to be a sluggish Sunday afternoon and I complied and within minutes found myself nodding in agreement with the simple yet firm assertion the website made - because ‘life needs a bit of poetry everyday’. Indisputable. 

And there started my sluggish volunteering with the poetry sages.

SADHO, which literally means ‘O sage’, is the familiar addressee in the poetry of the great Indian saint poet Kabir.