Committing Poetry in Times of War
Directed by stavros
With Bill Nevins and Priscilla Baca y Candelaria
<http://committingpoetry.com>
The majority of the footage for this very poetically edited production is from one week in March of 2003. One week in New Mexico in which the very fabric of the 1st Amendment of the US constitution, that guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, was scrapped like a first draft. On the eve of "shock and awe" in Baghdad, with US President Bush calling for citizens to act patriotically, one Rio Rancho High School student was acting patriotically. She was playing her part in a larger movement that was sweeping the high school at the time called Slam Poetry. The Write Club had been established at Rio Rancho High by published poet, journalist and teacher, Bill Nevins.
The club helped students to find their individual voice and security in themselves at a precarious time in the US where both voice and security were becoming obsolete. The conflict in this story began when one poetry club member angered one military liaison at the high school with her closed circuit television reading of her poem, "Revolution X".
This is the Land of the Free ...
Where the statute of limitations for rape is only five damn years!
And immigrants can't run for President.
Where Muslims are hunted because
Some suicidal men decided they didn't like
Our arrogant bid for modern imperialism.
(Excerpt from Courtney Butler's "Revolution X")
With language much more obscene and aggressive than any high school poet could muster up, the military liaison sent an e-mail to the Principal of the high school expressing his displeasure. Nevins was swiftly removed from his position for allegedly taking students off campus without the proper documentation. It seems students were going to a local book store for poetry readings that were not school related, on their own time. The fall out from this moment of dissent included a partisan rebuttal poem staged by the Rio Rancho High School administration telling protestors to "Shut your faces", and was followed by an ultimately successful lawsuit filed by Nevins. The texture of this case is explored in the movie.
Half of this documentary also details the events of Rio Rancho's older and more recognizable "sister city", Albuquerque, also in New Mexico. That same week in March 2003, a peace rally in opposition to the war in Iraq ended in tears. Protesters were gassed by the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) and dissent was detained in "Free Speech Zones". Among the protesters were many poets, musicians, artists, students and activists who are also featured in the film. As a proponent of peace, Nevins attended the rally. The impetus and proximity of the two events fuelled an impassioned concert of music and performance poetry called Poetic Justice.
Building into a tour that crossed the country to promote free speech and free assembly, with two main events in Albuquerque and New York, money was raised to support Nevins' case against Rio Rancho High School. A marathon of over 40 poets performed in Albuquerque alone. The film cameos a number of those performances as well as first person accounts from the peace rally and most importantly, poetry and interviews with the now defunct Rio Rancho High School Slam Team.
Artistically woven together and edited "like a poem" according to director, stavros, the film is as much a video collage as it is an audio mix-tape of poems, live music performances and social commentary. The film does not take you on the road with the Poetic Justice tour, though it does have an MTV aesthetic from a cinematographic stand point.
The most important thing is that this story is being told, and from the accounts of those involved, it is easy to see that the events depicted deserved more than a measly front-page headline. Nevins' firing and the APD suppression of protest are two events that are provocative enough to each have their own feature length film. As a result, the viewer is left wanting more back story on this infamous Bill Nevins character as well as the APD, not to mention the "ROCK-umentary" on the Poetic Justice tour. However, for a movie that Executive Producer Eric Sirotkin and Bill Nevins both say is not finished, it is still very intriguing and satisfying, especially in a climate which many in the US still don't feel it is okay to say "I disagree".