Willow Mixed Media's documentary film Stanley's House will be screened on JAN 31, 2016 at 7pm as part of the NEW YEAR, NEW WORKS screening at the Film-Makers' Cooperative - Charles S. Cohen Screening Room at 475 Park Ave South, 6th Floor,
New York, NY 10016
Stanley's House is the story of the late Stanley Kunitz, former two-time Poet Laureate of the United States, who wrote many poems about growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the house in which he lived as a child. Some of the Pulitzer Prize winner's most memorable poetry illuminates his family, the search for his father who committed suicide six-weeks before he was born, his house, the neighborhood and his sense of place in Worcester. The 1918 classic Worcester three-decker house in which he lived now bears a plaque proclaiming the site's importance in Stanley Kunitz's life while growing up.
My name is Tobe Carey. I'm a filmmaker, and I grew up in this same house some thirty years after Stanley. From the 2nd grade on I lived there until going to college in 1960. Up until a few years ago I knew nothing about Stanley Kunitz's poetry or the Kunitz's family history. Only then did I discover the connection with childhoods spent in and around our house.
In 2006, when I videotaped Stanley Kunitz in his New York City apartment, he read four Worcester poems and then off-camera he remarked, "That house still has a hold on both of us." Stanley Kunitz was 100 years old when he died four days later on Mother's Day, 2006.
Stanley's House incorporates Stanley reading from the Worcester poems and the Kunitz family history interwoven with the Carey family history growing up in Worcester's still Jewish East side.
Visit our webpage at http://documentaryworld.com/stanley.html
photo credits:
Stanley Kunitz at boyhood home - Greg Stockmal
Tobe Carey at boyhood home - Meg Carey
Stanley Kunitz and Tobe Carey in NYC - Meg Carey
Stanley's and Tobe's boyhood home - Tobe Carey