The front rows of Los Angeles' historic Wilshire Ebell Theater were filled with more than 20 high school students Saturday, holding hands and reciting verses under their breath as they prepared to compete in the championship round of the largest classical poetry contest. of the world.
He classic hitHosted and produced by Get Lit—Words Ignite, a nonprofit educational organization based in Los Angeles, is a three-day culminating event for more than 50,000 students who annually complete Get Lit's college-approved poetry curriculum. UC, which culminates with Saturday's Grand Slam finals.
Following Get Lit's signature call-and-response model, in which students “claim” classic Get Lit poems poetry anthology and write original answers, Saturday's competitors recited both original compositions and classics from Ross Gay's “Throwing Children” to Kendrick Lamar's “How Much a Dollar Cost.” Throughout the night, the crowd erupted in tears, applause and laughter.
It was while attending the same event six years ago that filmmaking duo Jordan W. Barrow and Matt Edwards came up with the idea for their feature-length documentary. “Our words collide” which will be released on Tuesday by Freestyle Digital Media and will be available to rent or buy on most streaming platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video and YouTube. The film premiered in 2022 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where it won the Anti-Defamation League's Stand Up Award.
Produced by “Ahsoka” star Rosario Dawson and Get Lit founder Diane Luby Lane, among others, “Our Words Collide” follows five Get Lit poets during their senior year of high school. The film combines images taken by the teenage poets, dramatized poetry performances and animation, bringing their stories to life.
Barrow and Edwards presented the project in 2018 to Lane, who immediately agreed. She introduced the duo to Get Lit Players, the organization's award-winning performance group of young poets. The filmmakers chose five students to appear in the film: Jason Alvarez, Cassady Lopez, Amari Turner, Virginia Villalta and Tyris Winter.
“It was a really organic process,” Barrow said. “These five poets really felt like they would be perfect for this kind of project.”
They also had diverse acting and writing styles, which Barrow and Edwards felt it was important to showcase. While a poet like Álvarez is playful, Winter is fierce; Villalta is in charge, while López is melancholic. Turner is the most confessional of all.
“They all had unique points of view, both in their personal lives and in their poetry,” Barrow said. “We felt like they really inspired us, and if we felt inspired and transformed by seeing their work, seeing their stories unfold, we felt like maybe the audience would have the same feeling.”
Filming began in September 2019 and lasted until 2020. During the first few months, Barrow and Edwards focused primarily on establishing a good relationship with the poets. Some days they didn't film anything. They said they didn't want to rush things and, as they were both balancing other jobs, they couldn't do it anyway, which led them to ask the young poets to film themselves.
“When you spend the weekend with one of the poets, you think, 'Wow, it'll be five weeks before we see Jason again,'” Edwards said. “That sparked the idea of, 'Why don't we give everyone cameras?'”
They told the poets to film themselves when they felt inspired, when they wrote, or simply when they felt like it. When a poet filled out a memory card, Barrow or Edwards would collect it, and when the next day of filming with that poet arrived, the three would discuss the footage. The system was originally intended to make filming more efficient, but it also ended up giving Barrow and Edwards greater access to the inner lives of the poets.
“If there was something that the poets wanted to explore that might be personal, that maybe they weren't ready to share yet, we found that they could share it with their camera,” Barrow said. “It really gave us a great entry point into the topics we wanted to explore with them.”
Because the self-filming segments were already an integral part of the film, when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, production on “Our Words Collide” was not diverted as others might have done at the time. But the backdrop of the pandemic did change the tenor of the story.
“It became a real journey of reflection: How do you use this art form to process feelings? How does that happen? How can it literally help you survive and overcome something? Lane said.
In the early days of quarantine, we see Villalta in the film struggling to write or even sleep. Turner celebrates her 18th birthday isolated at his house. Lopez repeatedly tries to clean his room before telling the camera, “I don't feel like recording a check-in.”
But poetry helps them cope, and in Dawson's eyes, this is where the film's message crystallizes.
“Especially in difficult times, we tend to cut back on our arts programs and I think [the film] It shows so deeply and clearly how necessary those types of programs are to help us get through our daily lives and especially through these types of emergencies,” Dawson said.
When we first meet Villalta in “Our Words Collide,” she says she used to think she wouldn't live past 15.
On Saturday, he took a day off from his studies at UC Irvine to cheer on his alma mater, Venice High School, in the Classic Slam. (In the end, Venice shared the first-place title with Mark Keppel High School in the first Slam tie.)
“These are the kind of opportunities that get kids out of scary situations,” Villalta said of Get Lit. “It was like a lifeline for me, and I know there are a lot of other kids who go through that.”
After graduating this spring, Villalta said he plans to go to medical school.
Get Lit is not only a defender of a declining art form, or an antidote to falling literacy rates after the pandemic; It has been a saving grace for young people struggling to imagine a future for themselves.
“It's shocking to me to see how many kids don't have that experience of true, unconditional love, like, 'You are accepted and loved exactly for who you are, and I'm here to help you as you discover yourself,'” Dawson said. ” “I'm really grateful to Get Lit, the filmmakers and this project for highlighting how special and important doing this is for young people.”
Barrow and Edwards hope “Our Words Collide” provides similar support to its viewers, especially those the age of the featured poets.
“Jason has a great line at the end of the movie where he says, 'No one is alone, everyone's story is important,'” Edwards said. “My hope is that young people around the world can see this and maybe connect with it and just realize that some of the things they're going through, they're not going through alone.”
