Anthology Film Archives

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THE STORY IS TRUE: ROBERT CREELEY ON FILM

May 12 – May 19

May 12-19, 2026

Robert Creeley was a poet of relationships and their many, varied forms within human life. The most familiar term to even the casual reader of Creeley’s work is company. For more than 50 years and across more than 60 books of poetry, prose, and simply writing, company was the subject and object, the aim and the means, the dream and its opposite. Next to family (including dogs), the pillar of Creeley’s work was friendship: with fellow poets and teachers, musicians, and, most generatively, visual artists.

In recognition and celebration of Robert Creeley’s centennial, Anthology presents a slate of films made about and very much with the writer, including documentaries, profiles, and portraits, such as one by Stan Brakhage, who said, perhaps hyperbolically, of his lifelong friend, “Robert Creeley, of all the many, many poets I’ve known and known closely, is the only one that really clearly understands film as a possible art.” Additionally, the program includes works that Creeley lectured or wrote about during his exhaustively documented life, with films by Brakhage and Robert Bresson.

Guest-programmed by Jaye Bartell, who wrote the series introduction and individual film descriptions.

Special thanks to Will Creeley & Hannah Cedermark; Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Charles Bernstein; Raymond Foye; Grayson Goga; Bruce Jackson & Diane Christian; Anjelica James (WNET); Ron Mann; Grace Stalley; Colin Still; and Anne Waldman.

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