Composed of scenes with non-actors and words borrowed from R.D Laing and Lucy Lippard (via a Spanish translation), Words, Planets applies the six principles for composition delineated in Reflections on Painting by the Monk Bitter Pumpkin, written by the eighteenth-century Chinese painter Shih-T’ao — as referenced in Raúl Ruiz’s essay For a Shamanic Cinema (for example, “draw attention to a scene emerging from a static background” or “add scattered dynamism to immobility”). In the course of making Words, Planets, Lertxundi became pregnant and gave birth. This transformation of her life and her body deeply affected the filmmaking process of a film that concludes with the statement: “and my life from now on is two lives.” A film that reads as a poem.
