To Live (1994)

Synopsis

Adapted from the novel Bid Me To Live by the poet H.D. (written 1933–50, published 1960) and shot in houses occupied by military families on Governors Island, NYC, from the 1770s to the 1960s, To Live is about what happens on the fringes of a war, and the extremes and estrangements that war produces—how dancing on “the last-straw edge of everything” makes us strangers not only to each other but also to ourselves. It is propelled by a text that spirals through a perpetual state of siege, suspension and postponement, marking the inroads that the state makes on our ability to love and to live.