Coming to a Screen Near You

By Danica Fisher ’05, August 12, 2022
Associate Professor John D. Scott’s film about a Pulitzer Prize winning poet will play at Cinemapolis from August 19 to 25.
Bishop

Filmmaker John D. Scott, Ithaca College associate professor of media arts, sciences, and studies and director of the documentary studies program in the Roy H. Park School of Communications, has been on a ten-year journey to bring “Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing” to the screen. The film is screening at Cinemapolis in downtown Ithaca from Friday, August 19, through Thursday, August 25.  

The film centers on the creation of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Elizabeth Bishop’s masterpiece poem “One Art.” The work started as adaptations of Bishop’s poetry as short films and eventually blossomed into the feature film that explores her work and life. 

Watch Trailer

Bishop’s life is tragically disrupted by a profound personal loss that pushes her into her worst self-destructive habits. Yet, in her sixties, while grief-stricken, she courageously faces up to her most tragic heartbreak and learns to master “the art of losing.” In doing so, she writes one of the great poems of the twentieth century. As a writer and a public persona, Elizabeth Bishop resisted being open about her homosexuality. The film reveals some of the inner turmoil she felt about being open and vulnerable about her personal life and how it evolved.