The phrase can be broken down as follows:
Together, the phrase reads like a search term from a media archivist looking for an obscure 1996 film-poetry hybrid involving the name Cynara, possibly produced by a group called MTRJM, featuring or dedicated to May Syma, and tagged as the “hot” version.
Combining all clues, I hypothesize the existence of a lost 1996 short film / demoscene production: fylm cynara poetry in motion 1996 mtrjm may syma 1 hot
Title: Cynara: Poetry in Motion
Year: 1996
Director / Poet: May Syma
Crew / Collective: MTRJM (Motion & Textual Rhythm – Jazz Multimedia)
Format: QuickTime movie or Amiga AGA demo, running ~3–5 minutes.
Content: A kinetic typography visualization of Ernest Dowson’s Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae, using slow pans over black‑and‑white archival footage, a minimalist piano loop, and the poet’s voice whispering:
“I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.”
Distribution: CD‑ROM included with Wired 4.06 (June 1996) or a cover disc of Amiga Format issue 82.
Status: Masters lost; only the keyword string remains in a text file from an oldwarez BBS.
The keyword as we have it might be a directory listing from a pirated CD image: The phrase can be broken down as follows:
/FILM/CYNARA_POETRY_IN_MOTION_1996/MTRJM_MAY_SYMA/1_HOT/
Where “1 hot” was either the final render or a rating by a scene board (e.g., “Hot 1/5” → but written as “1 hot” in reverse-order filing). Together, the phrase reads like a search term
Here is where Fylm Cynara achieves cult immortality. The soundtrack, credited to “MTRJM” (a trio of producers from London, Tokyo, and New York who never met in person), is a holy grail of trip-hop, illbient, and ambient jazz. Bootlegs from 1997 describe tracks like:
The “May Syma 1” in our archive code suggests this was the first of a planned four-season series (“May” as spring, “Syma” possibly a corruption of “simile” or the director’s alias). Only the “May” episode was ever completed.
If you remember 1996, you remember the texture. Before DVDs and digital smoothing, there was grain. Poetry in Motion leans into that grain. Shot on expired Kodak film, the color palette is crushed blacks, melancholic blues, and the occasional flare of sodium-vapor orange.
The “poetry” is literal: intertitles featuring fragments of Dowson, but also Sappho and a then-unknown translation of Rumi. The “motion” is slow, deliberate—think Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (released four years later) but rawer. The camera lingers on a hand touching a windowpane, on a streetcar’s reflection in a puddle, on a cigarette burning down in an ashtray.