Letters Not About Love 1988-1998

"Structured around a five-year correspondence (1988-93) between two noted poets, American Lyn Hejinian and Ukrainian[*] Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, American filmmaker Ochs has created a thought-provoking and lyrical film in which culturally diverse responses to familiar concepts evolve into intimate meditations in words and images on the intersection of the political and the personal. This double portrait of Russia and the U.S. draws on home movies as well as archival and newly shot footage from both nations. Nonliteral in its aesthetic and intoxicated by the poetry of language, Ochs's film is an original reflection on the relationship between language and culture."

                                      From the program for The Museum of Modern Art's (NY) 1999 FilmFest

                                      *Living at the time in Leningrad, USSR

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From the filmmaker:

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I had the opportunity to visit the (former) U.S.S.R. in 1983 while traveling with an American jazz group and a number of writers. It was an extraordinary time when the governments of the United States and the U.S.S.R. were hurling accusations at each other and the arms build-up was peaking. We were surrounded by many writers, artists and musicians from the Soviet Union who wanted to meet and talk with Americans in their fields. Our pursuits and interests were similar, yet naturally there existed this impenetrable difference - the difference between our cultures.

On returning to the United States I began to think long and hard about how one could investigate the complexities of cross-cultural communication in a film. I decided to work with two poets [Lyn Hejinian and Arkadii Dragomoshchenko] who had met during the trip to the U.S.S.R. Poets, I thought, spend their lives thinking about words, meaning and context. And the basis of communication is what we hear (language) and what we see, and how we decide to interpret this input - that interpretation being largely influenced by whatever our particular culture happens to be. From these thoughts sprang the concept for the structure of “Letters Not About Love” -- to design a correspondence between two people who daily explore language and to compose images to that evolving discussion which might challenge the viewer to reflect upon the relationship between language and culture. 

“Letters Not About Love” has turned out to be more than the sum of its parts. As the poets' letters engaged in discussions of history, anecdote and observation, they gradually came to know one another, and an intimacy develops which is both poignant and somewhat haunting. As a viewer we are privy to this development and at the same time confronted with a multitude of images which visually question the context of what we are hearing. An impressionistic montage of film and sound from the United States and Russia provides counterpoint to the evocative and intimate discussion between the poets. 

“Letters Not About Love” is not a traditional documentary. Rather than present a series of facts or events, the film creates a dialectic between images and narration which demands a new kind of audience attention. “Letters Not About Love” hopefully offers us a new way to listen to each other, across the cultural divide."

                                                                                                   Jacki Ochs

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An "experimental documentary," "Letters Not About Love" was structured around the poets' letters to each other about certain ordinary words chosen by Ochs -- "home," "book," "violence," "neighbor," etc.  In each letter, they were asked to focus on just one word -- its conventional meaning, as well as what it meant to them. In effect, their correspondence became an examination of their lives and their surroundings. As the narration unfolds, the film becomes a compelling and surprising expression of cultural differences and the art of mutual understanding.

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As associate producer of this Human Arts Association (NY) production. The Arts Company raised essential funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the LEF Foundation and consulted with Ochs on various aspects of the film's funding, creation, completion and release. 

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