“I am a tone of voice, warming, shifting, pausing, changing, including, asserting, exulting, including, turning and including.” This quote by the poet Alice Notley opens “At Night,” British filmmaker Beatrice Gibson’s feature debut, which held its world premiere on Aug. 8 in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present program.
Gibson, who was a friend of Notley’s, took inspiration from the poet’s 1992 feminist epic “The Descent of Alette,” as well as Kathy Acker’s “Don Quixote,” to craft her story about a group of women crossing each other’s paths over the course of a single night in Paris.
Poetry doesn’t just open the film; it shapes the entire narrative. “[Notley] was always talking about non-compliance,” Gibson says, highlighting poetry’s ability to accommodate formal and thematic experimentation. In “At Night,” poetry appears in staged performances, voiceovers, and moments in between, as when we hear an off-screen female voice reciting a poem, then watch a character pause on a dark street corner to watch a video of that reading. In these instances, poetry becomes a sonic bridge connecting disparate characters, spaces, and stories.
‘At Night’
Courtesy of Night Films Ltd
