Rilke’s “primordial tower” (uralten Turm) is given literal shape in this otherwise wonderfully suggestive film of a video installation based on the famous poem from the Book of Hours. The film, directed by the artist Pat van Boeckel, takes a kind of call-and-response approach—which seems highly appropriate, given the subject matter—by having a voiceover of the poem at the very beginning (with the English translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in subtitles), followed by the installation in a kind of reverse ekphrasis. According to the Vimeo description, the installation was “Made for art project Internationales Waldkunst in Darmstadt.” Max Richter composed the music.
The joint reading by Zach and Larry Grossberg is especially charming here, but the animation by Francesca Talenti is nice, too. The translation is by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.
Susanne Stich is the filmmaker, and she used a translation by Cal Kinnear for the English subtitles. I found this a very effective film.