Eduardo Yagüe, a filmmaker friend from Spain, has just released this film based on my forthcoming collection of haibun, Failed State — Estado Fallido in Spanish. Here’s what he told me about it in an email (translated with the help of Google):
This project has been with me for a long time and for me it is very special. I always liked the title a lot and I wanted to bring it over to my own domain: “What would happen if the failed state were a person, what would it be like?” Then your haikus became the memories of the protagonist, in a kind of delusional inner monologue.
The production was lengthy and I had to cancel the recording several times, change the script, the location, the actors, the expectations. Until I found Rebeca, who lent me her house to record in, and she herself was a brave actress to investigate everything I proposed to her through your texts. Then came the pandemic and confinement and we had to wait again, and in the end (in the final shot) it was noticed. Somehow the entire failed state of the world in which we have lived this year appeared.
I know it is a hard video, difficult to watch, in a rather harsh mode. I hope it does honor to your poems, which I find extraordinary. I wish your book a long and successful track record.
As I mentioned on my author site just now, the book itself won’t be available till the end of the year or early January. Somehow I don’t think I would’ve gotten a big bump from Christmas sales anyway.