Independent Lens
Season 4 Episode 2 - Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story
6.5 ?
1999
Documentary
“Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story,” a wry exploration of the industry in which record producers set amateurs' poems to music and record them (for a fee, of course). Included are interviews with producers, performers, observers and people who have submitted their poems for musical adaptation. And there's a sampling of the results (examples include “Non-Violent Tae-kwon-do Trooper” and “I Am a Ginseng Digger”). Most songs are “in one ear and out the other,” says musician Ellery Eskelin (the son of a song-poem “auteur”). But, he adds, “There's the 10 or 20 percent that are from another planet.”
Episodes in Season 4
1
Maggie Growls
60 min
2
Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story
60 min
NOW PLAYING
3
On This Island
60 min
4
Downside Up
60 min
5
Los Trabajadores/The Workers
60 min
6
Chiefs
60 min
7
Strange Fruit
60 min
8
Bird by Bird with Annie: A Portrait of Anne Lamott
60 min
9
Sisters in Resistance
60 min
10
Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka'ehukai
60 min
11
Guns and Mothers
60 min
12
Razing Appalachia
60 min
13
Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer
60 min
14
Daddy & Papa
60 min
