Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana 2005, 2007
Distributed by Imagery Film, Ltd, 91 Bedford St., Suite 1R, New York, NY 10014; 212-243-5579
Produced by Ken Kimmelman
Directed by Ken Kimmelman
DVD, color, 15 min.
Sr. High - Adult
Poetry
Date Entered: 09/03/2008
Reviewed by Lisa Forrest, E. H. Butler Library, State University of New York College at Buffalo, Buffalo, NYQuiet and green was the grass of the field,The year is 1924. The 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, has just been passed. The first US aircraft carrier is commissioned. Mussolini comes to power in Italy. The USSR is created. Commercial radio is aired across the United States. Prohibition is in full effect—and the poet Eli Siegel (having never stepped foot in Montana) writes the 99 line “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana.” Painting an expansive picture of America’s heritage and that “afternoons have to do with the whole world,” the poem was awarded the “Nation Poetry Prize” in 1925. William Carlos Williams praised the poem as “that single poem, out of a thousand others written in the past century, [which] secures our place in the cultural world.”
The sky was whole in brightness,
And O, a bird was flying, high, there in the sky,
So gently, so carelessly and fairly.
In this 15 minute short film, Director Ken Kimmelman combines a 1969 recording of Siegel reading Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana with visual images (archival stills from the 1920s, paintings, and some live-action footage) intended to express the diverse message of the work.
There are millions of men in the world, and each is one man,
Each is one man by himself, taking care of himself all the time,
And changing other men and being changed by them…
Ironically, the one criticism I have for the film is that the images could have been a bit more diverse (surprising from Kimmelman—who has produced award winning films for the United Nations against prejudice and apartheid, along with a variety of political and children’s films.) Still, the film does a good job of visually expressing the interconnectedness of the world, while raising useful, if problematic questions about what might have been excluded from that world in the 1920s.
Afternoons have to do with the whole world;
And the beauty of mind, feeling knowingly the world!
The world of girls’ beautiful faces, bodies and clothes, quiet
Afternoons, graceful birds, great words, tearful music, mind-joying poetry,
beautiful livings, loved things, known things: a to-be-used and known and pleasure-to-be-giving world.
Recommended for libraries supporting poetry or film classes. $21.95 (DVD includes library circulation rights); or $199.95 (includes public performance rights for non-paying audiences).
Awards
- Best US Short, Avignon/New York Film Festival, NY
- Gold Remi Award, Houston International Film Festival
- Premio Infromazione, Tam Tam Festival, Naples, Italy
- Best Experimental Film, Big Apple Film Festival
- Achievement Award for Mixed Form, Putnam Valley Arts Film Festival
- Grand Festival Award in the Arts, Berkeley Film Festival