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Synopsis:
Spanning five years, BEEF traces the literary evolution of four female veterans of the New York City slam poetry scene. This documentary film takes a close look at each woman’s work and the experiences that inspired it.
BEEF goes inside clubs like The Nuyorican Poets Café and The Knitting Factory to see, from the poet’s perspective, the battle royal of words that is the poetry slam. Whether they love it or hate it, the stage is the poets’ workshop. Based on the talents of these four women, they are later invited to a recording studio by four musicians where they compose music for the spoken word.
This is a film about the struggle, angst and elation that come with putting your inner-most feelings on paper…and then having the guts to hold a microphone and deliver those words to an audience.
Background:
"...a film that's all about creative catharsis and heightened self-expression...Beef is earnest and terrifically shot. This earnest documentary, produced, directed, and edited by Jon Baskin, follows a band of angry chicks, all poets of some renown on Manhattan's East Village slam circuit. Anne Elliot is a preacher's daughter who uses poetry to vent about her straight-laced upbringing. Charismatic Jersey girl Cheryl Burke takes the mic to spin tales about alienation, sexuality, bereavement, and rock 'n' roll groupie-dom. And spoken verse is just one of the myriad ways African-American artist and renaissance gal Gloria Williams expresses herself." Adele Marley, Baltimore City Paper
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Maryland Film Festival:
BEEF just made quite the ruckus at the prestigious invitation-only Maryland Film Festival. Here's a quote from Mary Kerr, a member of Festival advisory board as well as serving on the Sundance advisory board and as a senior programmer for the Los Angeles Film Festival.
The word Poetry — If you think of your 10th grade teacher reading Emily Dickinson from a book then you definitely need to see Beef to set you straight. This documentary takes a behind the scenes look at the life of Poetry Slam performers who are judged not only on what they say but how they say it. Director Jon Baskin has done a great job of finding a group of very talented, diverse female poets and investigates the source of their creativity. We get to see them at work creating and performing and we get to meet their friends and family--people who unknowingly helped contribute to their talents.
Terrific cinematography and sound recording help to give this film, as a whole, just as much energy as each performance depicted within it. Beef culminates with a recording session between the featured poets and several musicians. The audience becomes privy to the exhilarating creative process that happens between artists of different media. It would be deserving, to say the least, if the poets on this circuit were one day as revered as rock stars.
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