Flames that Drift

"Flames that Drift" (Laai ende Drift) is an experimental poetry film on super 8mm film that enters into direct intertextual dialogue with Antwerp poet Paul van Ostaijen's 1921 collection "Occupied City," and more specifically his "Music Hall" poems, and set during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in New York. Like van Ostaijen, looking at Antwerp from his voluntary exile in Berlin, Antwerp writer-director Vito A. Rowlands turns the camera on the city that is home to his own voluntary exile, New York City. The film ascertains how his new city, much like his own, has been occupied, if not infected, with viruses that have debilitated Western society for centuries; viruses that we propagate ourselves; that we use to enslave others, in the name of progress; by authorities as much as by aesthetics; by art that towers above us on a daily basis, looking down at us.