Florida Film Poems is a project I began in April of 2020. During that time I was researching the historic neighborhood in Coral Gables known as the MacFarlane district as part of a larger project I was working on for a local non-profit. With my friend and local cinematographer Daniel Kaplan, I set out simply to document the street life of the neighborhood. The images that resulted left me spellbound. I stitched together the most moving shots we had captured from that day and created a short, two minute montage that I refer to as a filmic poem. Since then, I have determined other locations and individuals that have inspired me to create film poems. My approach to capturing the essence of a location on film, be it Stiltsville, my neighbor’s backyard, or a rest stop on the Turnpike, is to first study the environment. Who are the people who value these places? How do they demonstrate that? What value does an empty space hold? And most importantly, how do people find beauty there? As I continue this project indefinitely, I hope to share with the public a delicate tableau-- sometimes rugged, sometimes fragile-- woven together with the texture of life. I will offer these filmic poems online but I hope some day I can present them in public spaces around Miami.