What I Think about the “Poetry of Witness” Documentary
I think that this documentary effectively delivers the main intended message by addressing a general audience. Fascinatingly, the ‘Poetry of Witness” documentary highlights the struggle of six modern poets who faced the pressure of exile, war, and human rights violations to make the voice of their experiences heard. In the process of giving voice to their experiences, these poets wrestled with complex moral predicaments of memory, artistic production, and trauma. The documentary is made convincing by the use of first-person accounts that the six poets give. Arguably, first-person accounts have the power to convince the audience of work to believe in the intended message. This documentary utilizes this very well, thus making it an exciting and convincing documentary. In the documentary, these poets give their accounts and experiences as activists, soldiers, doctors, and survivors. These experiences imprint their poetry works as evidence of the conflicts they went through instead of a representation of their personalities.
I also think that the documentary is added some taste by the fact that a musical score accompanies all the poems as the poets read them. In this case, the story of the poets’ experiences is told through both the visual and musical interpretations of the poems as well as an evolving conversation. Therefore, this aids in evolving the main story from ‘poetry of witness” contextualization to a thematic communication revolving around imagination and memory. The story also evolves into the struggle of freedom of expression and the rights of a personal body. Notably, this documentary addresses a broader audience about personal accounts given by six poets, and it an exciting documentary that relies on visual and musical interpretations and evolving conversation.