…in this documentary we tried to capture the essence of this poetry, as well as the poets who define the streets of New York. The film made its premiere in 2009 at the International IDFA festival and has screened at various film festivals since.
Spitting Ink follows eight spoken word artists as they traverse the streets, perform in situ, and talk about their motivation to write.
It was a chance encounter with a poet that led us to the streets of NY with a 16mm camera, an old DAT recorder and short-end rolls of film. We thought it would be interesting to film poets on location and cut portraits out of it. We did it without plan or budget because we’re not serious filmmakers. Most of the footage was already shot 7 years ago, but without knowing what to do with it, the footage got shelved. Only later we edited the footage down to all the bits that interested us and from there a story line organically evolved…
