The Poetesses visit Juana Bignozzi, to translate the title into English, is a lovingly crafted documentary co-helmed by Citarella with Halfon, a writer, poetess and critic. Halfon has been entrusted with the papers of the titular poetess, a formidable woman and a wonderful poet. The film offers a loving introduction to Bignozzi’s work, but more than this, it is also delightfully self-referential, asking the question of to what extent a film can ever truly represent a subject like poetry, or a poet(ess). The tension between directors is noted, with Citarella more preoccupied with these questions, whilst Halfon is engaged in the more prosaic task of paying homage to Bignozzi. There are two main areas where their approaches coincide. Firstly, with the more Bolañoesque elements of Bignozzi’s story: she spent thirty years living abroad, and the contents of this time in her life remain mysterious. She was married, but travelled extensively; in the dense forest of photographic memories left behind, many of the figures who appear are unknown and appear untraceable. There’s something of The Savage Detectives about all of this, as well as the spy narratives which Citarella loves: a fortuitous touch is the way that in a doc filmed about Bignozzi when she was still alive, there’s a sign which says in Spanish - From Russia with Love - outside the block of flats she lived in. Secondly, their approaches coincide in ultimately letting the poetry do the talking, (even if the director has to ask the question: which version of the reading is the best one to use? Is it better (more truthful) to get actors to read or not?). The final section of the film is given over entirely to the poems, although even here there’s a dialectic between sound and image, with the poems being presented both through being read and via the text itself appearing on screen.
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