Nightingale Theater’s Christy LeMaster and Joshua Dumas on The City In Which
Cities are full of emotional topography—Chicago has it in spades with its lakefront and ceaseless horizontal planes of brick row houses.
In Nightingale Theater’s newest production, The City In Which: A Chicago Cine-Poem, 12 filmmakers plot this landscape to create a work based on the poem “The City in Which I Love You” by writer Li-Young Lee. The final result is one film composed of these 12 rolls of 16 mm film, accompanied by a spirited reading of Lee’s original work.
The film will première on Friday, April 8 at 8 p.m. at Nightingale Theater (1084 N. Milwaukee) and will play again Saturday, April 9 at 8 p.m. Before the opening, The A.V. Club sat down with the people behind the project, Christy LeMaster and Joshua Dumas, to discuss verse and celluloid.
The A.V. Club: Could you tell us a little bit about how Nightingale Theater came into existence?
Christy LeMaster: I used to work for a film festival in Missouri, and I fell in love with film presentation. Then, I moved to Chicago and started doing one-off screenings with my friends in the Chicago Cinema Forum. I decided that there was too much work and not enough space, and I went about trying to start this place.
We opened in April of 2008. There were a tremendous number of people who helped us do that. I essentially opened the doors, and a bunch of people came in to fill this place. We have several curators. It’s important that the theater remains pretty porous so that there’s room for emerging work and established experimental film as well.
AVC: How did you get involved, Joshua?
Joshua Dumas: I’m just involved in this particular project. We just decided to do it.
CL: It was Joshua’s idea.
AVC: It came from the poem specifically?
JD: I’ve admired Li-Young Lee’s work for a really long time. The poem itself makes specific reference to Chicago. It’s written about Chicago.
AVC: How would you describe the poem?
JD: The poem is about the way the landscape of a metropolis can trigger memory and emotion. In this case, for Li-Young Lee, it’s the memory of a loved one, a lover.
AVC: Do the films reflect that sentiment, or are they more diverse than that?
JD: We tasked our filmmakers with considering the poem within the work they normally do. We wanted their voice and vision in it. Then, third, their own relationship to the city because that’s what the poem is about in many ways. Where those three concepts meet is where this project exists.
AVC: What is the range of films that are included within the cine-poem?
JD: We are considering this a complete film. It’s actually one film. I’m developing a performance based on the moving images, making decisions about spacing and beats and rhythms so that there is a relationship.
CL: The styles are as diverse as the makers, and the makers are pretty diverse. There’s a cat in space, which is actually becoming a signature for a filmmaker friend of ours, Jerzy Rose. He’s a really brilliant young voice.
The poem is visceral, sexy and aggressive. Joshua might disagree with me.
JD: I don’t think it’s aggressive.
CL: Some of the films are sexy, and most are visceral.
JD: But also still, there are a few films that are so quiet. They make a beautiful still image. Li-Young Lee’s poetry really sings. It has its own natural rhythm, so it works well with the stillness.
AVC: What is it about this poem, or poetry in general, that lends itself so well to film?
CL: I think it’s this poet specifically.
JD: This is very project specific. The poem has an imagistic quality.
AVC: Since the poem is so image-heavy, was it important to take the written medium and make it more visual?
CL: I was interested in having both elements speak to each other in performance. We’ve become pretty passive viewers of movies. Having a live voice in the room makes for a more active audience.
JD: There’s this fancy film word that Christy taught me called “materiality.” It’s this idea that you can hear the projector whirring, its physicality. I’m using this fancy microphone. You can hear my mouth open and close. It’s kind of gross, but it’s an important part of the project. The projector is a performer in some ways.
CL: Celluloid, in general, has more of a presence depth-wise and light-wise. Even though digital projection is gorgeous in its own way, the tone of celluloid projection is more present.
JD: Particularly because this piece is about memory, film triggers a sense of memory for us that digital doesn’t.
CL: It’s nostalgic. Not that this poem is nostalgic.
JD: I think those two things are working nicely together, that sense of memory that comes out of hearing the projector spin.
AVC: What is an image or poetic experience of Chicago that sticks with you?
JD: It’s the alleys and bars. The reading series I attend happen in off places. The literary scene in Chicago has a glowing underbelly. It’s fantastic. There’s so much good work coming out of those places. We’re lucky to have the Poetry Foundation, although, for me, I prefer seeing poems in bars than in more institutional spaces.
