Joseph Brodsky for Academic Distribution
Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 05:35PM Joseph Brodsky...In the Prison of Latitudes
ENGLISH, RUSSIAN and ITALIAN VERSIONS ARE AVAILABLE
Persecuted Russian Poet and Essayist, Joseph Brodsky defies all odds to win a Nobel Prize and become America’s Poet Laureate. But his heart will always be in his homeland. ‘In the Prison of Latitudes’ is a documentary portrait of Joseph Brodsky, one of the world’s most extraordinary poets and essayists. Filmed on location in the United States, Italy, and Russia.
Here is the VIDEO LIBRARIAN REVIEW
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The life and work of Nobel Prize-wining poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky is brought to vivid life in this wrenching film, and offers irreducible proof of the importance of language. Enduring extreme hardship, political persecution and eventual exile from his homeland, Brodsky becomes celebrated in America. Through archival footage and present-day interviews with friends and colleagues, and through his own words, an indelible portrait emerges of an essential poet.
“All my poems are about the same thing… Time. And what time does to a man.”
Brodsky in his beloved Venice....
Young Brodsky, Russian days...
The Nobel Prize winner and Poet Laureate with friend Barishnikov
Fellow Russian Mikhail Baryshnikov, famed dancer, choreographer, and close friend of Brodsky, has called this film—shot on location in New York, St. Petersburg, and Venice—“The very best ever done on the subject.” Barshnikov has recently created a new theatrical production "Bronsky/Barisnikov" which will have its debut in the United States in the spring of 2016. Read the New York Times Review HERE
The poem below and a poster of Brodsky wearing a surgical mask have been circulating around Russia since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic began.The poem has even been put to rap music.
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Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940, and left school at fifteen. His talent evident by the age of eighteen, he would soon run afoul of Soviet authorities. Reviled and persecuted, Brodsky was finally expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972. Shortly thereafter he settled in America with the help of W.H. Auden and other illustrious supporters, and found work teaching at Yale, Cambridge, Queens College, Smith, Columbia, Mt. Holyoke College, and Michigan State.
Screen the Film Trailer Here:
Joseph Brodsky...In the Prison of Latitudes (Trailer) from sarasotafringefilms on Vimeo.
Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991, having defied all barriers to become one of the most famous contemporary Russian poets of the 20th century.
Interviews with scholars and friends trace Brodsky’s experience as the last Russian writer arrested by the KGB. Forced to undergo a “Kafkaesque” trial in 1964, he was sent to the Northern Arkangelesk (Archangel) region.
When exiled from his homeland, Brodsky left behind a family, a new-born child, and a multitude of devoted fans who had followed his work, and shared his trials and tribulations. (In one poem, he described an exiled writer as one “who survives like a fish in the sand.”) His stance on poetry was indeed heroic, delineating formal poetry rather than the free verse then popular in America.
In the film, recordings of Brodsky reading his poems form a background of visual motifs and themes that have defined him as a resident of three water cities over the course of his life: Leningrad, New York and Venice—where he traveled every winter because the haunting city reminded him of his beloved St. Petersburg. It was in Venice that Brodsky was inspired to write the book ‘Watermark’ in 1992.
Four years later he died in New York City at the age of 56, and was subsequently re-buried on the Island of St. Michel in Venice.
‘In the Prison of Latitudes’, while presenting a chronology of Joseph Brodsky’s work and philosophy, the film explores his prominent themes: Exile and loss.
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