Part I - This is also being written into a film companion book.
My newest film is a filmic poem and antiwar historical documentary titled, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero". It's still going around film festivals worldwide but has already won some awards. You can read my interview with the Tokyo International Short Film Festival, here.
This is my attempt to tell how it came to be, and what and why it is, as it is. I will start with the history of it coming into being and then will do a Part 2 detailing the viewing experience and meanings of this as a historical document and "filmic poem"
I'll just say this about that hybrid format. A documentary would require me to make it "pretty" and as 100% accurate as possible. As a filmic poem it gives me license to use art to enhance the experience.
Early in February of 2020 I came down with a bad case of COVID-19. It took me out for about eight months with "Long COVID", going into early 2021. Around that time, my son, who manages a health food store and has loved video games since childhood talked me into playing one of his favorite games, Fallout 4.
A FEW WORDS about the travesty of Russia's war crimes in the illegal invasion of Ukraine... and the video game, Fallout 4. In watching international news these past two weeks since the start of this illegal invasion of Ukraine, upon an innocent country for no reason other than one man's ego, a couple of things became painfully clear...
The Russian people need to understand...there ARE of course, neo-Nazis in every country on earth. But there are far MORE of those people IN Russia than Ukraine! There is NO reason for this illegal invasion. Putin is, and has made Russia now, all into war criminals. Now aside from that...
The game Fallout 4, is set 200 years after an apocalypse, where everything is destroyed. It's a disturbing, but fun game to play. However in viewing images and videos of Ukraine after Putin turned his Russian forces upon their previously friendly neighbor, blinding killing anyone before them whenever they start killing and blindly bombing, murdering Ukrainian military as well as civilians, Ukrainian speakers AND Russians living in Ukraine AND Russian speakers...as former Ambassador to Ukraine McFaul recently pointed out, even Hitler, when he invaded Ukraine, did not kill Germans or German speakers...the comparison between a game and an actual country TODAY, is horrifyingly similar when viewing real news of this utterly stupid devastation of Ukraine. Then the ambassador was wrongly accused of building up Hitler. Unbelievable how some people hear what they wish to.
Also want to mention Selo & Ludy playing music in a Ukrainian bomb shelter, trying to make the best of it. Big heart, all over that embattled country.
Apologies for that not so brief aside...
But in considering this film, how it grew ever more into an antiwar film, then an actual war began after I started sending this film to film festivals around the world...it's been a poignant and disconcerting experience for me.
I submitted to many festivals around the world. One was the Symbiotic Film Festival in Kyiv, Ukraine. One day, February 14th, 2022, I received notification they made my other film an Official Selection. A horror short titled, "Gumdrop", a short horror.
First step toward possibly winning an award (I've now won several awards for both films, including for this film in Hong Kong at the RunDoc Film Talent Award where they honor my film with, Best Documentary Short Film, Best Experimental Film Short, and my favorite, Best Human Rights & Social Film.
I emailed the Ukrainian festival and thanked them. They replied. Then I saw on the news that day that Russia had invaded Ukraine. It was a bittersweet moment. I emailed them back and sent my condolences and best wishes. They replied, "Thank you for your kind words...". That echoes still, in my mind.
The next day, I received notification from a film festival in Moscow, Russia. They chose my "Ravel" film as, Best War Film. I couldn't shake the feeling it was a commentary to their government in selecting an antiwar film. I emailed and thanked them and wished them the best in these difficult times, fully comprehending the difference between the Russian government and her citizens. I then forwarded their notification to the Ukrainian film festival and pointed out my feelings of a Russian Film Festival offering support to Ukraine in the only way they could.
It is now a month later and I have still not heard anything back from Symbiotic Film Festival and it's been...chilling, to say the least. I wish them well, and so very much so.
Back to the history of this film...
I got my son playing, in his early 30s now, his very first computer game as an infant, lying wrapped up on my lap. His hand banging against the keyboard, clueless he was playing, but it was his first time, and perhaps foreshadowing how good a player he would eventually become...HE BEAT ME!
Of course, I was playing against him while trying not to drop him. I had a handicap!
After I started playing Fallout 4, for about a year, all I had been doing was watch TV, sitting in my living room chair and wishing I had any motivation or energy at all. Or felt well enough to DO SOMETHING. Anything. It was pretty horrible. I like to stay active, productive.
Around the end of winter 2021, I was feeling better but still not very motivated. I tired easily. So, I started playing Fallout, which required leaving my chair and sitting at my desk in the same room, to play on my more powerful machine where i did my video editing.
Day 1. I got in an hour before feeling exhausted and returning to my chair.
Day 2. An hour. But the day after, TWO hours. Several months later I had over 700 hours on the game. A lot for such a short time, or so my son told me. Finally one day I realized I wanted to do something else than watch TV, stream movies and shows and playing Fallout. Before this I had tried sitting at the desk and working but it made my skin crawl, I'd last a few minutes. That's how the beginning of playing Fallout had gone. But the game pulled me in as you can roam across a countryside as a character in the game. It felt like walking around a strange and curious world. Until finally, I was ready to progress to something, more.
But what? Several years ago I had written a poem. I'm not much into poetry and I can't really remember what made me think I should do it. But I decided to and came up with an idea. But, what to write a poem about?
I thought about it for days. Then one day I decided for some reason, to base it on music. I liked the music of Ravel's Bolero. Which goes back to my childhood and an article in Playboy I read about bachelors using it to woo dates.
It had became a common joke in the 1960s/70s. It was used in movies and TV shows going back to the 1950s. Because it starts slow and quiet and builds into a loud fast paced crescendo, it was alleged to mimic the buildup to "la petite morte", French for "the tiny death". Yes, orgasm.
So, put it on, start "making out" with your date on the couch and the action will increase with the build up of the music. Whether that now seems questionable or despicable isn't either here or there. It's history. And it's not a drug, it's atmosphere. Though it does call up a less enlightened time.
Either way, Bolero has long been popular for a variety of reasons and has been used in comedy skits. Anything that becomes that well known eventually becomes spoofed. Even until today as exemplified in this performance, "Wiener Cello Ensemble 5+1: Bolero".
Now push back through that to 1945 and WWII. Now further back to 1916 and WWI. (or today with Ukraine). War is not enlightened. It's War. But it calls up the poetic orientation of this film. Poetry isn't always beautiful, but surely can offer hope.
I've long been exhibited in film, "Bolero", in foreign films since childhood (thank you 1960s PBS). The auteur filmmakers (Truffaut, etc.) and the language of film. As well as of poetry. I had to take a class in poetry at university for my creative writing minor. I dreaded Poetry 101. But came to truly respect and love it.
I had also taken a month long series of seminar classes from famed director Stanley Kramer, in back in the 1980s. The romance of film has been with me since childhood and my mother's love of film. But, that's another story for another time.
So fine, I thought. I'll write a poem. About...Ravel's, Bolero. Bolero is something I've known about since childhood.
Better? About Ravel AND his Bolero. So I started researching both. It was an enlightening study. I had no idea what I was getting into.
Eventually, I knew enough to begin writing the poem, and finished it. This was January of 2014. I sent it to a poet I knew online. He was kind enough to read it and replied that it was good, and was indeed a poem. I should keep working on it. Which meant, it wasn't finished. Nuts. So I kept working on it. I submitted it to my first poetry magazine that same month. Nada. I kept working on it
His initial comments to me:
"I have since read you poem, which I found to be a satisfying, tightly drawn and an evocative narrative piece - also pleasing fluid as it draws to its carefully crafted climax. To be honest, I am rather surprised it hasn't yet found it's way to publication, especially in this commemoration year - but would encourage you to persist... After all, there will be other very timely and appropriate opportunities in 2018 & 2019. So, if I was you, and didn't crack it now - then I would polish my shiny poem and keep it in my locker till then... Anyway, hope this response is of some use/interest to you, JZ and do keep in touch with your progress, as our two creative journeys continue to unfold. Regards." - Scott Hastie, Writer and Poet, London
That, gave me hope.
"Gumdrop", a short horror, was my first short (48 minute) narrative film, back in 2019. I had done a shorter film of eight minutes, the year before and it got a festival selection or two. This one actually won a few awards from film festivals like "Best Short Horror", "Best Noir Film" and received various "Official Selections" for festivals around the world. It's not done yet in the festival circuit until this coming, July 2022. But it gave me hope for future projects.
Then COVID hit. Time passed healing from that and a very complacent, sedentary 2020-2021.
All which brings us up to early 2021, after months of playing Fallout, and looking for a new project, and now that I knew I COULD sit at my desk all day and into the night (which I finally did a few times in playing Fallout).
Once I decided to do a new film, realizing I did NOT have the energy to be on a set like with "Gumdrop", to direct actors and run literally everything on my film set (yes, sometimes actors would help), I decided I could/would do something simple.
Easy (HA! Did that fail! Easy...). Something, I could do alone, at my desk anyway, on my own time, no matter how long it took me.
But what to do a film on? THAT took me a few days to come up with.
Some more background on my "Bolero" poem...
After I got the poem in working condition a few years ago, I visualized it as a animation. Simple black and white, minimalist cartoon, detailing the action in the poem stanza by stanza. I contacted animators. No one was interested
Finally, one who is a friend told me I could pursue it, but probably no animator would touch it under $250,000!
Well, that wasn't going to happen. So, I shelved it, disappointed.
Eventually, for my new project, in trying to dream up what to do, I decided... maybe, I could do a... documentary? Only using public domain media. But, what? I thought about the poem, but realized it was a lost cause.
Over the next couple of weeks however, I couldn't shake the thought. It grew in me and I couldn't drop it. How could I do it, though? I'm not an animator. I could use old public domain photos, music, videos and prints/posters. But I could never do the animation. How would I find all I would need as detailed in the poem?
I couldn't. It's not possible. I tried. My uplifting idea? To take all the time in the world to produce a documentary, slowly, on my one time frame? Would it fall apart? After another week of ruminating over it, something started to come together in my mind.
Let's call it, apathy. Yes, I have a story about that, too. Back in the early 90s I had a job I found frustrating to do. My first office job. After five years working nights as a mainframe "God" (IT joke), working alone, fully responsible, no one bothering me, then taking a daytime busy office job as a worker bee? It was disparaging. I put up a sign in my cubicle: "Sometimes APATHY can be a good thing!"
My boss thought I was nuts, until one day she told me regarding my sign, "Now I get it!" After a really bad day, she realized the meaning of the sign. Basically, just...let it go. DON'T care. And you will get through it.
My own form of, "Keep calm and carry on!"
Anyway, I hit a point about the poem realizing it was useless. I couldn't animate it. But...if I didn't care, I could do... SOMETHING! What? Yes. Just...do it. Do, SOMETHING with it.
No.
Yes.
Yes?
Yeah, sure. Why not? Don't care so much. Just do...something.
Ohhh... okay. So then, what? How?
Start. Just, start. I opened a new video project in the video editor. Saved it in a new folder, new file name new title: "PvtRavelsBolero". I dropped the poem into the project file. Done. Begun.
Now what? Hmmm... good question.
For the previous few years I had been researching Ravel and his Bolero. I'd been saving interesting files of notes, photos, videos, music audio files. All public domain. It's how you do things. Take time when you have it, save all you can for later. If you need it.
I have many files on my hard drive I may never use, or use for something other than what was originally intended. I have a folder with just story ideas. One for bulk research on many things. Files of story titles alone. All I've used in various fashions for various things over the years.
I reviewed them all. I found them lacking. I began my research again in earnest. I spent a LOT of time on the Library of Congress web site. I'm used to that site from having copyrighted all my fiction and screenplays over the years. And my "Gumdrop" film.
After a couple of months, I had a lot more new information and media.
I started to add all the media as seemed reasonable to the project. Haphazardly, guessing. Over time, weeks, I moved things around in the project. Added, deleted, replaced. I started to get a feel for it, for what I was doing, where this was all going. It began to take shape from an amorphous blob.
But how can I make it all better fit the poem? Well? Maybe? Don't. How do I make it interesting? Ah well, that...
Make it interesting. How? Well, who IS Ravel? Where was he in WWI?
Verdun, France. When? WHY? What did he do? I continued adding media, moving it around. I added the entire original, first public recording of Ravel's Bolero. It wasn't enough. I added some other Ravel (only his) music. A piano version of Bolero, Ravel himself played.
One day I posted on my Facebook page, telling friends and family what was going on. I was looking for a fresh view. They'd been following along these past months on Facebook.
One of my friends, I first met working in IT, working closely together for years, reminded me he was a trained classical pianist. He had some interesting insight into Ravel. As did an author friend of mine. I incorporated their comments (they're both mentioned at the end of the film (David Van De Sompele, and Kurt Giambastiani).
I added a new piece of music Dave had mentioned. He said Ravel was one of the most complicated composers to play. Adding several pieces of music helped with separating out the visual media.
Special Audio FX
Decades ago I purchased a four CD set of audio effects. I didn't even have a need. I just saw it, it was cheap, I thought it may one day, possibly, be useful. I had it all through raising my children into adults, it just sat in my CD music collection. It has 400 audio clips of an odd variety of sounds. I never thought I'd run out with that collection. Way more topics than I'd ever need. When I made my first narrative film, "The Rapping" a few years ago, I pulled it out and used a few audio clips.
When I produced my film, "Gumdrop", a short horror, I used it a lot more of those audio pieces. I found ways to take an audio clip, use part of it, alter it, and apply it. In producing "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" I found I had fewer clips than I needed. And that's when things got interesting in doing the audio FX/"Foley" work. I couldn't find a few sounds so I made them myself.
In creating sounds that sound like one thing, when they may have had nothing to do with what that sound actually comes from.
In "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", you will had a few machine gun sounds, a few gun sounds of various sizes, all from the same clip. I would alter speed, tone, reverb, etc. I would put more than one clip together.
I would add other pieces of other clips. The sounds of rubble falling from an explosion in a field is actually altered sounds of water in a bathroom shower, lowered, expanded, and morphed using various audio tools in my Sony Vegas Pro Edit software. It was at first a frustrating experience, but as I got used to doing it, became somewhat freeing. I would sometimes take my Roland digital recorder and create a sound and add that in. Whatever it took to try to produce a scene that felt real. Video or even stills that felt real and accurate, as if part of the original recording.
The same is true of some of the video and stills in altering their original state into something more poetic, or impactful.
Moving on...
The project was starting to take form. It was exhausting, mentally. But I was really getting involved in it now. Which was the point to begin with. To get back up to speed again after COVID toward doing a more valuable project. I had no idea how this film would end up being exactly what I was shooting toward, for AFTER this film.
A format had evolved seemingly on its own. I would now have an opening, an "Intro". Then music supporting and the poem overlaying images. Then the main body. Finally, the "Outro". Then, credits.
It was shaping up rather well, but still a mess. I wasn't worried about the finer details of things, perfect transitions, syncing music and visuals, the poem. Not yet. I would do fine turning last. I was approaching gross synching of elements.
Of course I ran into one problem after another. Filmmaking is after all if nothing else, continuous problem solving. So often however, something you dearly loved and planned on. falls through and you have to fix it. make it work, even if you have to kill part of it ("Killing your Darlings", as they say). Thus, "outtakes reel".
Often I found I had to break the video file (moving things around, making it ugly, requiring making it pretty again, which is all rather frustrating).
Breaking, makes it better in the fixing of it.
About the music I used. First I got what I thought was a public domain version of the song. It IS public domain apparently, IN America and a few other countries. But it is apparently not in many other countires. I had uploaded my finished film on YouTube, set it to private, all to let their algorithm check it for licensing issues. There were none.
Apparently the original Polydor recording has fallen into the public domain. But if you get a copy of the album and make a recording from those original discs, then engineer and release it yourself, that version is then your own copyrighted version.
Anyway, one day I checked YouTube and suddenly there were licensing issues. I looked into licensing with the licensing company. After a few emails it went no where. I thought of options and it occurred to me if I could find the original 1930 album Ravel recorded, I could make my own licensed version.
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After searching online I found the only complete double disc set of the original recording world wide that was recorded that day by Ravel conducting the orchestra in 1930, on the Polydor label. I found only ONE copy, in Paris. There were a few other single discs, missing either disc one or two, but only one complete set. So I purchased it. Then I bought a turntable I could used to digitize it from and I digitally recorded it on my digital recorder I use on my film sets.
Now I had my own actual public domain copy. I processed it through some software but I still heard the sound of the needle scraping the track on the record. So I found a sound engineer on Fiverr who cleaned it up and now, I'm good to go. I have a public domain version I now had the copyright to, for my version of the recording and engineering.
One day something devastating happened. I realized that the poem didn't end at the end of the fifteen minutes of the orchestra performance conducted by Ravel of his Bolero. Nearly in the middle of the poem it clearly says... "It ends".
What? NO! What? Oh, Hell!
How did I ever not notice that? On that consideration, not noticing something. it was something that would happen way too many times during this production. The end result? The poem made the project/film, better. Obviously, right? The film was based around it. But the project actually made the poem better. Because as the film developed, I was altering words in the poem to better fit the scene. Sometimes to fit the immediate visuals, or music.
I would change a word or words in a poem stanza to fit a visual on screen, then look at the visual on screen, and see something I could add in the poem to make it more visceral, intense. Eventually, I realized I was done. The poem was "locked". So, I sent it off to poetry magazines in it's new and enhanced form. Last week I received another rejection on this newer form of it.
I even told them it was now in a film and though I had released it in my latest 2020, two volume sequel to my first book of short horror/sci fiction (as, Anthology of Evil II Vol.s I & II), this version of the poem, newly submitted to poetry magazines, had never before been seen anywhere in its new filmic form.
Eventually, I had the film in kind of a rough draft form. The poem had been locked. The structure was now there. I had achieved something! But I was not done, it was not yet ready to get to that final fine tuning.
Something was missing. But what?
Then it hit me. I needed someone reading the poem. Well, I'm not doing it. Though I have read some of my own stories a few times for audiobooks. I preferred my voice actor for that, Tom Remick. I wanted a specialist for this. But who? Tom had kind of retired from acting. The poem was about Maurice Ravel, so I needed a guy to read it.
I thought about everyone I knew. Local actors I'd worked with. Something wasn't right though. Then I realized finally after week or so, it was because I needed a French speaker. To have someone read the poem, but in FRENCH! With English words on screen. A male actor who speaks French?
I thought about my sister? Her daughter, the stage/TV/Film actor? One of her friends? They were always traveling the world. My sister (recently retired Flight Attendant) later she said that I was correct...I should have contacted her. Still, no one clicked. Why?
Brilliant. But who. I took a while to think about that. Did I know any French speakers? But no, I didn't want someone who took it in high school. I wanted a real, born there type of French speaker/actor. But I don't have money for that.
One day I was on one of our hours long phone calls with my friend and fellow director, Kelly Hughes. We did podcasts together, I've been interviewed on his podcast and I'd been in films he shot. Hmm...he's never been in one of mine, I should probably correct that. Maybe I'll kill him in my next film... He'd shot at my last couple of houses and after each time, I ended up moving.
So I'm not letting him shoot at my current house.
Not ready to move yet. Though I shot a film myself at my last house ("The Rapping"), and at this house ("Gumdrop", a short horror). I'd helped on his sets for few years before I tried doing it myself on my own set. I'd shot a documentary in 1993, the beginning of my Last good Nerve Productions company, but this was different, narrative film is different.
I'd been on Kelly's podcasts, we did a couple cohosting. We'd attended horror conventions. We began the Gorst Underground Film Festival together. Then the monthly local independent filmmakers' late night Bremerton, WA event, "Slash Night" which went well and we all had a blast until...COVID. Local indie filmmakers would show their films at the Historic Roxy Theater and come and drink and network and we all made merry and had much fun.
Kelly said, "Try Etsy." What? "Yes, give it a shot."
And so I did. The rest is history. Of a film now, anyway. I realized quickly that I needed a translator for the poem. I was going to just ask the voice actors to do, it but Kelly said, "Do you really want to trust something that integral to your film to actors?" Good point. I should have a poet do it.
I initially believed I needed a male actor reading the poem. Until one day I decided I wanted a women reading it. No idea why. I just did. Until one day it hit me. I was reading the on screen narration text, the other than poetry, historical text. Right there was a passage where Ravel says in a letter he had written to someone, that he had named his truck, "Adélaïde".
Adélaïde.
For Ravel had gotten cancelled out of his desire to be a pilot due to health reasons (like Hemingway was) and so became a truck driver. While Hemingway became an ambulance driver, which Ravel may have done some, but mostly was a truck ("camion") driver.
So, "Adélaïde" should be reading the poem about Ravel? Everything snapped into place.
I found three people in France, a male and female voice actors who were also a couple, and a French poet who performed translations. I loved the idea the actors were a couple, because Ravel loved his truck. After all, it kept him going, out of dangers again and again. Perfect!
The poem was translated by French poet, Rémi Bernard.
Atreverse, supplied voice actors, who is: Jey Martin (narrator) & Brel Martínez (Adélaïde).
One other person who helped directly, artist Marvin Hayes. He kindly took some of the public domain photos, over 100 years old and tweaked them to look better. Even adding some elements that weren't there to add intensity to the filmic poem film. Including this film, which does not exist in history. I had take this photo, replaced a soldier with Ravel and though, "what a good job I did!" Then Marvin redid it and it was Amazing! So much better.
About that, a filmic poem?
I learned that term decades ago in a college cinema class and fell in love with the idea. Think of a poem, in the form of a film. Although this is a documentary which requires clarity and facts, making it a hybrid allowed me artistic license to enhance and inform in ways other than using, "just the facts, 'ma'am.
Filmic Poem definition:
"The film-poem (also called the poetic avant-garde film, verse-film or verse-documentary or film poem without the hyphen)[1] is a label first applied to American avant-garde films released after World War II.[2] During this time, the relationship between film and poetry was debated. James Peterson in Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order said, "In practice, the film poem label was primarily an emblem of the avant-garde's difference from the commercial narrative film." Peterson reported that in the 1950s, overviews of avant-garde films "generally identified two genres: the film poem and the graphic cinema".[3] By the 1990s, the avant-garde cinema encompassed the term "film-poem" in addition to different strains of filmmaking.[4] Film-poems are considered "personal films" and are seen "as autonomous, standing apart from traditions and genres". They are "an open, unpredictable experience" due to eschewing extrinsic expectations based on commercial films. Peterson said, "The viewer's cycles of anticipation and satisfaction derive primarily from the film's intrinsic structure."[5] The film-poems are personal as well as private: "Many film poems document intimate moments of the filmmaker's life."[6]" - Wikipedia
And so you will notice in my film how it has elements of documentary, but aside from an included read aloud and onscreen poem, it is structured around that to allow for a more intimate sense of life in WWI trench warfare. Other elements became available to me in producing the film. Using a blurry photo or video to enhance the poem, jumping from poem to facts, even facts of French trench soldier's slang, pop up on-screen quickly, sometimes too quickly, populating the screen in various locations, mimicking how odd, and dangerous things tend to happen in war.
For such is life in war. Foggy, blurry, too quick, uncomfortable, curious, beautiful, ugly, horrifying, confusing, and most frustrating... lacking closure.
But you cannot leave a viewer so unsatisfied, and so I created an outtakes reel including elements I had to leave out because of time, or because they didn't fit, but were still too fascinating to simply cut out. As well as text on screen in the film that goes by too fast to read, or purposely distorted, again, as in war. This outtakes reel also contains the entire poem as read by the actor, unencumbered by what is going on in the main film, allowing one to comfortably experience the poem alone.
Then one day I realized, months after wishing I were done, that it was done There was nothing else to tweak, add, fix, or shuffle about. It was a relief and a great day on multiple levels. By now I had watched the film uncountable times. I never got tired of the music. I began to realize, but oddly not consciously, that it was an antiwar film. So I added a list of all wars on earth at the end, after the credits. Then I found an appropriate quote and added that, and it was a poignant end to a very unique film.
The visuals had worn on me. Day after day for six months, viewing video and photos of death and destruction, gets one into an odd state of mind I was happy to move onto something else, and moved into the fun part of film production. Getting it out to the world. I started submitting to international film festivals. Within that first week after submitting to the festivals, the film got an Official Selection. Until then, I had no idea how it would do. Though my hopes were high.
Then Ukraine was invaded by Russia, by undemocratically "elected" Pres. Vladimir Putin. Someone I've said since 2000 should have never been allowed near Russian leadership.
I made a separate outtake reel of the end list of all "Wars on Earth" underscored by a Ravel piece of music, as a standalone which I put online. People have been viewing it. When viewed at the end of the main film however, it is a powerful reminder of the concept and horror of war as a part of our human experience.
In the end, this is an antiwar film.
As you may have already guessed, this did not begin as an antiwar project. That didn't happen until one day during the months of editing I did on this film when I simply realized, "This is an antiwar film." I always know that orientation as the poem was about the horror of war and its effect on humanity, but never truly saw it outright as antiwar. But pro-human. It's a fine distinction.
I should have seen that from the beginning. But it snuck up on me. All I had wanted to do was find a way to share this poem about Ravel, about his Bolero, about, "what if he wrote it during the war". Because I thought it as an interesting story, an interesting poem, a humanitarian statement of humanity through adversity. But it became so much more.
And I'm proud of it.
Update Note 12/2/23: I have the book now nearly finished. Long Covid has not been my friend on this book. I'm updating this because today I received an email from Symbiotic Film Festival in Ukraine to submit a film with a discount waiver for a documentary pro package. I hadn't thought about submitting this film to them, though I should have already. So I took the opportunity and submitted. It will be interesting to see what they decide/judge the film as. Cheers!
End of Part I.
Continued soon, in Part II: Pvt. Ravel's Bolero, Form & Structure of the Filmic Poem
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