ABOUT POETRY GENERAL

A warm film where we meet the poet Lasse Söderberg and his friends at a Poetry festival in Malmö.

Lasse Söderberg is an unusual artist, poet, translator and entertainer. For many years he has arranged the international poetry days in Malmö. The world´s best known poets have visited Malmö to read their poems in barns and tea-shops, factories and churches, on street-corners and during nocturnal gatherings in Greger´s second-hand bookshop. Throughout the years more than three hundred poets have been rambling in and out of the temporary scenes of the poetry days. Lasse Söderberg has put his distinctive character on the arrangement. Poetry isn´t highbrow culture here, the poets demonstrate that by having fun. The Poetry General is a rich film with warmth, humour and a lot of sincerity. It is a film about Lasse Söderberg and his friends, but also about life, death, love and poetry.

The poets in the film: Inger Christensen, Denmark, Angela Garcia, Colombia, Edward Lucie-Smith, Great Britain, Göran Palm, Sweden, Jaap Blonk, the Netherlands, Adnan al-Sayegh, Iraq, Lasse Söderberg, Sweden, Edoardo Sanguineti, Italy, Lars Huldén, Finland, Kenneth White, Scotland, Octavio Paz, Mexico, Marcos Ricardo Barnatán, Spain

ABOUT THE DIRECTORS

Fredrik Gertten, director of Bikes vs Cars, is an award-winning Swedish director and journalist. His latest works BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* (2012) and BANANAS!* (2009) have met audiences in over 80 countries including leading festivals such as Sundance, Berlinale, Hot Docs, Toronto, IDFA, Melbourne IFF, Sao Paulo IFF and Sheffield. The sale of fairtrade bananas in Sweden almost doubled after the release of the films.

Lars Westman, born in 1938 in Nysve, Jämtland. He now works and lives in Bahia, Brazil. He is one of Sweden´s premier documentary filmmakers. Winner of the Widerberg scholarship in 2000. Since the early 60´s he made approximately 300 films. Some of them as an employee for the former Swedish Radio TV. In 1969 he was dismissed by political reasons. Since then he works as an independent filmmaker.

PRESSKIT

PRODUCTION INFO

Title: The Poetry General

Genre: Documentary

Production year: 2001

Length: 53 min

CREDITS

Director: Fredrik Gertten & Lars Westman

Producers: Fredrik Gertten

Editor: Åsa Mossberg

With support from: Malmö Kulturnämnd and Konstnärsnämnden

FESTIVALS

ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival Zagreb, Croatia 2008

Docs, Thessaloniki Greece 2008

Skånska Filmdagarna Malmö, Sweden 2008

Slow food film festival Bologna, Italy 2009