Images & Soundtrack

Film Stills

Soundtrack Notes

Carla Poindexter met Jay C. Batzner at the University of Central Florida where they are both professors of art and music respectively, in October 2007. She was introduced to his music through his original composition, “Near Burning”. Batzner’s piece was inspired by a poem written by Kathleen Peirce of the same name, included in its entirity below.

Poindexter knew immediately that Batzner’s improvisational style and artistic aesthetic were similar to her own and asked him if he would be interested in collaborating on a film project.

At first, the pair imagined they would respond to small segments of each other’s work as the film was gradually created and produced, but as it worked out, Poindexter created the silent visuals first with Batzner responding to the visuals in a way that does not illustrate but rather accompanies. Poindexter refers to the relationship of the visuals and music as both independent and interdependent and believes both complement the other beautifully.

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Jay C. Batzner's electroacoustic composition Near Burning is based on imagery found in the Kathleen Peirce poem of the same name. Ms. Peirce is a poet and Professor of English at Texas State University.

“Near Burning” by Kathleen Peirce

My sister singing the Kyrie
from Beethoven’s Mass in C Major
at Saint Clement’s in Chicago, on tape,
through headphones, in Iowa, in bed, dark,
my pillow, the room suddenly perceptibly cooler,
those tears crawling sideways down exactly
to mark where her voice passes in.

Pulling the steaming teacup
easily from the end table,
lightly, so easily through
the space above my baby in my lap,
toward my mouth

Those Yellowstone fire making Iowa hazy.
Dusk. Mercy. That sound the jay made leaving
the empty feeder.

“Near Burning” from MERCY, by Kathleen Peirce, © 1991.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.