Letters Not About Love

Jacki Ochs
USA, 1998, 60 mins.

Producer/Editor/Screenwriter: Jacki Ochs (based on correspondence between Lyn Hejinian and Arkadii Dragomoshchenko). Director of Photography: James Livingston
Music: Larry Ochs
Narrators: Lili Taylor, Victor Nord

In 1983, American poet Lyn Hejinian met Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko in Leningrad. In 1988, filmmaker Jacki Ochs initiated what would become a five-year correspondence between the two, who exchanged letters based on words selected by the filmmaker, measuring the gulfs of their cultures and the striking universality of their life experiences. This unique, lyrical film is the extraordinary result. Using imagery of northern California, the urban landscape of the former Soviet Union, home movies, and archival footage, Ochs meticulously constructs a visual pastiche to accompany the passion of the increasingly inti-mate words (the value of grandmothers, the smell of books, the window as metaphor ... ). Enhanced by Larry Ochs' joyful music, this lucid work - with nary a frame out of place - captures the experience of watching two artists thinking. - Eddie Cockrell