The 22nd ALDEBURGH DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL
in conjunction with ‘Poetry in Aldeburgh’ Festival 2016
are proud to present:
ROBERT BLY: A THOUSAND YEARS OF JOY (12A)
USA 2015. 81mins
Director: Haydn Reiss
Saturday 5 November 2016 at 3.00pm in the Aldeburgh Cinema
Followed by a panel conversation with Ruth Padel, Dariane Pictet and Harry Burton.
ROBERT BLY: A THOUSAND YEARS OF JOY is a wonderful film about the life and work of the bestselling author of ‘Iron John: A Book About Men,’ revealing Bly’s journey from Minnesota farm boy to global troubadour and one of the world’s most influential poets, social activists and cultural troublemakers. Poetry In Aldeburgh is delighted to have this opportunity to join with the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival in sharing this remarkable film, which Mark Rylance highly recommends.
After the screening there will a panel conversation. On stage will be RUTH PADEL poet, DARIANE PICTET who appears in the film and HARRY BURTON, who is one of the producers, as well as an actor and a first-hand witness to the Iron John work.
Acclaimed poet Ruth Padel is reading from her work at 2:30pm on Sunday in the Jubilee Hall as part of the Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival.
Dariane Pictet is a poet, performer and currently a Jungian- trained psychotherapist.
Robert Bly
Poet Robert Bly stands out even among the celebrated, revolutionary generation of American artists who burst forth in the 1950s. A THOUSAND YEARS OF JOY charts Bly’s singular path from farmer’s son on a wintry Minnesota farm to radical anti-Vietnam War activist to wild man of the 1990’s men’s movement. The bespectacled, white-haired Bly is every inch the politically and spiritually engaged mystic, seeking each moment’s fervent heart as well as the eternal, intuitive bedrock beneath our cultivated ideologies and ‘personas.’ He was one of the first to translate Pablo Neruda, Rumi and other ecstatic Sufi poets, and his work with Joseph Campbell—exploring the metaphorical, psychological terrain of myth and ritual—led to the unexpected pop culture phenomenon of Iron John. A confounding whirling dervish, Bly’s life embodies the quest for personal honesty and shared truth.
Filmed over four years in five US states and two countries, the film features Louise Erdrich, Jeff Gordinier, Donald Hall, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Garrison Keillor, James Lenfestey, Philip Levine, Michael Meade, Mark Rylance, Martin Shaw, Martin Sheen, Gary Snyder, Tracy K. Smith, Gioia Timpanelli, Lewis Hyde, Martin Prechtel, Roger Bonair-Agard, and other luminaries from the world of culture.
Tickets available from the Cinema box office or online
£15 Regular, £14 Friends of the Aldeburgh Cinema
£10 Students & Under 18’s