In Need of Seawater: Where Poetry Meets Cinema

The São Paulo Film Festival highlights In Need of Seawater, a documentary short by Mark Anthony Thomas, directed by Richard Yeagley. Inspired by Thomas’s own poetry, the film translates literary work into a cinematic experience, bringing together performance, image, and time without relying on explanatory narration or conventional documentary structures.

The film marks the first chapter of a trilogy examining different moments in Thomas’s creative life. Here, the focus turns to an early formative period, drawing from poems written in his youth and later collected in The Poetic Repercussion. Rather than framing these texts as memory or retrospection, the film places them firmly in the present, allowing the words to exist as living material.

The project emerged during a moment of transition in Thomas’s life. As he approached the age of 45, with significant personal and professional changes underway, he felt the need to pause and reflect on where he had been and where he was headed. That moment coincided with his first experience making a documentary performance film in 2022, a form that immediately resonated with him. His poetry, always visual even on the page, found in cinema a way to exist beyond the written word, without being translated or explained.

Mark Anthony Thomas – In Need of Seawater

As part of this process, Thomas returned to poems he began writing in his early twenties and carried with him through different stages of life. Revisiting that material was not about revision or nostalgia. Instead, it became a way to recognize how those early questions, emotions, and ideas continue to shape who he is today. With the support of producers Scott Burkholder and Dustin Kuhns, and in collaboration with Yeagley, that rediscovery took on a cinematic form.

One of the central challenges of the production was preserving intimacy. Poetry depends on voice, timing, and trust, elements that can easily be disrupted by the presence of cameras, lights, and a crew. Another challenge was incorporating archival and historical material without overwhelming the poems themselves, which were written by a much younger version of the author during a time when everything still felt unresolved. The film needed to honor that early voice while leaving space for the perspective of the present.

Collaboration played a key role in addressing these challenges. Yeagley and Kuhns approached the project with particular sensitivity to performance and rhythm, helping to maintain emotional closeness throughout the process. The involvement of artists connected to place and cultural memory, such as painter Jeffrey Kent, whose work reflects Baltimore and Maryland, helped ground the film’s visuals in lived experience rather than abstraction.

At the center of the film is the performance of Ziaire Mann, who provides emotional and structural continuity. His presence guides the viewer through images that function as memory and association rather than literal illustration. Word and image coexist, each maintaining its own space and integrity.

Ziaire Mann – In Need of Seawater

In discussing the film, Thomas points to specific influences that shaped its approach. Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, demonstrated how poetry can inhabit cinema without losing its force by trusting both language and audience. Janet Jackson’s That’s the Way Love Goes offered a reference for revealing something personal through restraint and intimacy. Rodney Evans’s Brother to Brother informed the film’s sense of dialogue across generations, connecting present identity with voices from the past.

In Need of Seawater

Produced entirely in Baltimore, In Need of Seawater also maintains a strong relationship with place. The city is not presented as a backdrop, but as part of the lived experience shaping memory, identity, and creative expression. This attention to place aligns closely with Thomas’s broader professional work in urban development and civic life.

During production, Thomas rediscovered his connection to performance. Returning to the physical and emotional act of performing reactivated his original relationship with poetry and spoken word. That rediscovery resonates throughout the film and informs its open, attentive structure.

Mark Anthony Thomas – In Need of Seawater

Running just over 26 minutes, In Need of Seawater invites revisitation. The film does not resolve itself in a single viewing, instead offering space for new details, lines, and images to emerge over time.

By establishing the thematic and formal foundation of a trilogy centered on memory, time, and creative evolution, In Need of Seawater affirms cinema as a space of translation and listening, where poetry is not explained, but experienced.

From the São Paulo Film Festival’s perspective, In Need of Seawater stands out for the way it brings Mark Anthony Thomas’s past into the present through a mix of dramatized scenes, archival material, and produced images. These visual layers are balanced by moments of intimacy, as Thomas reads his poems directly to the audience, grounding the film in voice and presence. The film turns poetry into cinema and sparks curiosity about Thomas’s work beyond the screen.

Watch the trailer.