POETIC ROADS-Film screening: BRIGHT STAR

The New Kalamata Cinema Club, within the framework of the "Poetic Roads" action organised by KALLIERGON syn, collaborates for the screening of the film Bright Star on Wednesday, November 12th, 2025, at 8:00 PM at the "Theodoros Aggelopoulos" Amphitheatre of the Kalamata Labour Centre with free admission.

The plot of the film: In early 19th-century London, a secret romance begins between 23-year-old John Keats, an ambitious Romantic poet, and his 18-year-old neighbour Fanny Brown, an apprentice seamstress with a dynamic personality and a sharp tongue. However, social conventions, as well as the hardships of the time, keep the two lovers apart, in a struggle to survive their love through letters and with the unquenchable hope that one day they will experience it.

Jane Campion, 16 years after "Piano Lessons", returns to period films and her incredible ability to listen and capture human passions through the silence of social obligations. Especially in the case of Kitsch and Fanny, a love that never came to fruition, the image is full of muffled outbursts, impatient glances, and unspeakable emotions. Campion detests melodrama. She rejects it. Instead, she lowers the intensity and chooses to remain as restrained in the narrative handling of tragedy as her heroes. At the same time, however, she is madly in love with them and does not hide it. Their innocence, the momentum of their emotions, and the obsession with which they believe them have blown her mind. The usually hazy palette of her images now floods with colour, the shots of flowers, butterflies, and light. Fanny's skin, Kitsch's blue gaze, and the fingertips opening the love letters are all framed reverently, with affection and tenderness.

And this creates a poetry, above and beyond the art of Kitsch himself, which, also very restrainedly, runs through the film. The aim is neither a typical biography nor a simple presentation of his emblematic work. Campion's goal is to connect art with the artist's necessity to give birth to it. Its axis is the muse that inspired it, as well as the tense sensitivity and the demonised talent of a child who captured it at the tip of his pen and expressed it in words.

Ben Whishaw bravely interprets his legendary poet of the same age who died alone and unsuccessful, without experiencing his love and before his work was recognised. Abbie Cornish seems like a creature made of light, justifying the dynamic and ethereal reputation of the genuine Fanny Brown. The result is a film that breaks your heart, but you are glad you experienced it—a great love, in other words.

Shortly before the start of the film Bright Star, there will be a screening, lasting 6.5 minutes, of a composition of images of old, uninhabited houses of Dimitsana and the sound composition of Lauren Neefe, as part of the Periplus 2025 project, a ten-day workshop hosted by the Dimitsana Inter-Conference and Cultural Centre, in July 2025. Leading Art and Design Schools participated in this workshop. The poem “Locus Fugit” by Katerina Karizoni is heard in the permanent exhibition “Time and Light” at the Dimitsana Inter-Conference and Cultural Centre, alongside soundscapes of the village and the voices of Dimitsana residents and Greeks who participated in the workshop. The entire archival material presented was provided by the President of the Centre, Mr Costas Lambrou, in the context of the joint journey in the “Poetic Roads” action.