Sunday, March 24, 2013

"Brenda Lee en El Barrio" (poetry in motion).

A few months ago the highway scribe did a post about the days and times surrounding production of the feature film "Believe in Eve," for which he wrote the script.

In that post that scribe waxed poetic about a particular scene for which we now have a link: "Brenda Lee en El Barrio."

"For the scribe, the scene of Brenda Lee and Juan Roman walking through the Los Angeles barrio, as Alex Sellar reads a poem from the script to sprightly flamenco music, is a keepsake like no other. Many poems are published. Few are produced and mounted with the glue of music and image.

Brenda Lee Underwood
If I could only catch her
sheet of bright breeze
again.

If I could only manage a smile
for every mile of Loveworld
she lived in.

Oh, Cajun-spiced,
twice as nice,
something to count on
something taken for granted

Watch out!

Leave your wildflower in the wind
and see it be supplanted.

The scene is as lilting as the afternoon it was shot. Javier and DP Juan Carlos Ferro did naught but set a camera up at a street light west of McArthur Park and have Monique and Alex walk through the barrio, towards it. The day was devoid of the usual headaches associated with filming. It was lock, load and shoot. Ian McColl had come to watch the process and wound up playing, with all originality, the drug dealer who briefly accosts them.

The sun set on cue, an Indian woman walked into frame with a tropical plant in her hand, and the city blossomed around the lovers as they crossed the urban landscape, establishing an intimacy no amount of dialogue could have duplicated.

Elegant Mob Films endures as a maker of a dozen beautiful documentaries of radical and social cast. It is run by the director of "Believe in Eve" the aforementioned Javier Gomez Serrano, who has put up a link to "Believe in Eve" for all to enjoy. "Believe in Eve"

Thank you to the director for excerpting this scene for highwayscribery readers.

1 comment:

highwayscribery said...

Valarie, I accidentally delted your comment, "That's cool!".