Poem from South Africa

May 4 1997. The first international poetry festival in South Africa. At the seaport of Durban, Natal province, chaired by Breyten Breytenbach, painter/poet/writer. Thirteen poets came from all over the world to meet, speak with, and listen to their South African counterparts. To see for themselves the “New South Africa” with its freshly-found freedom and its deeply-rooted inequalities. Between readings and excursions, discoveries and exchanges, the film weaves a collective visual journal of a land haunted by painful memories and uncertain of promised future. All the while, a reflection on exile, censorship, unfinished struggles and the absolute necessity of poetic expression as refuge and protest.