~ March 2015 ~
The Golden Bird by Helen Moore
My friend Rachel attended Liberated Words‘ “Reflections” screening at Bath last week, and this film, directed by Howard Vause of Frome Media Arts, was one of her favorites. I agree it’s a marvelous blend of live and animated sequences, and the back-story—the way it grew out of creative sessions with adults with dementia—is compelling, too. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
‘Babka and The Golden Bird’ is a Russian folktale in which the heroine, Babka, an elderly woman rescues a dying bird. When the forest is threatened, the bird grants her three wishes…
The Golden Bird Project invited patients on the RUH [Royal United Hospitals] Older People’s Units to take part in a series of interactive storytelling workshops with poet, Helen Moore and film-maker Howard Vause. With music by Frankie Simpkins and models by Edwina Bridgeman (Art At The Heart Musician and Artist in Residence respectively), the project was initiated by Sarah Tremlett (Liberated Words), funded by BaNES and supported by Art at the Heart’s Hetty Dupays and Diane Samways (Arts Programme Manager and Marketing, respectively).
This film features an original poem by Helen Moore based on both the folktale and contributions from workshop participants. It premieres at Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival (Arnolfini, Bristol) in September 2014.
See the page 12 of the programme on Issuu for a much fuller description of the project from Helen Moore. (See also the website for Art at the Heart of the RUH.) Moore writes, in part:
Drawing on my experience of running story sessions with older adults with dementia, I’ve seen how tactile objects can offer a stimulating opener for group work. Handling the objects provides the participants with sensory engagement, which helps ground them in the present moment. And by choosing things that connect with the story I’m about to tell, there’s a ‘bridge’ into what will follow. … Encouraging participants to express associations that arise with the objects can also facilitate self-expression in new/unexpected areas, mining memories and experiences, which were perhaps long forgotten.
This Poem is Free by Ngoma Hill
Performance poet and musician Ngoma Hill was the first person to be featured in a terrific series of web videos filmed, directed and edited by the artist and poet known as Advocate of Wordz. His Director of Wordz series—”digital films and performance art videos consisting of Spoken Word Artist, Poets, Singers, Emcees, and Storytellers”—is now up to six episodes; I’ll post more of them in the coming weeks.
Upcoming poetry-film screenings and festivals
Spring is almost upon us in the northern hemisphere, and with it some opportunities to see poetry films and videopoems on the big screen, with a cluster of events around the equinox.
March 12 in Leipzig
Lange Nacht Des Gedichtfilms: Google Translate renders that as “Long Night of the Poem Films,” which sounds rather dire, but apparently it will consist of “the award-winning films to poems from the audiobooks ‘Black fears’ and ‘Words are boats,'” with “skilful interplay between visual, narrative and auditory elements of style.” See the Facebook event page for full details.
March 19-21 in Bezons (right outside Paris)
Ciné Poème Festival de courts métrages de la ville de Bezons en partenariat avec le Printemps des Poètes. I don’t know much French, but “Printemps des Poètes” sounds pretty alluring. Visit their webpage (or see the English translation via Google) for the full details.
March 19-21 in Gijón, Asturias
Deletréame Poesía: I Festival de Poesía de Gijón includes a section called “Poesía Iluminada (palabra + imagen)” each day of the festival. On the 19th, the poetry filmmaker Eduardo Yagüe will be curating a selection of works. See the complete schedule on Facebook.
March 19-20 in Barcelona
PoetryFilm will be presenting two programs at the Kosmopolis Amplified Literature Festival at CCCB Barcelona. For the full list of films, see the PoetryFilm website. (And by the way, if you’re a filmmaker or videopoet, be sure to check out PoetryFilm’s guidelines for submission. “There is no deadline; submissions are ongoing and continuous throughout the year.”)
April is National Poetry Month in Canada and the U.S.
You’d think there would be poetry-film screenings planned for somewhere, but if so, I have yet to hear about any. (If you know of anything, please share the details.)
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere at the Walker Art Center. Make a donation via the Motionpoems front page and qualify for discounted reserved seats. (Also in Motionpoems-related news: they have a call-out for voice recordings to be used in one of their films. The deadline is March 14.)
May 24 in Edinburgh
Hidden Door arts and music festival will be including screenings from Filmpoem on the 24th. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information. And in the meantime, as reported here last week, Filmpoem submissions are open until May 1.
Culoarul vagonului e liber/The coach’s aisle is clear by Doina Ioanid and Teniet/Undone by Jan H. Mysjkin
For some reason, poetry filmmakers don’t tend to combine texts by different authors very often. With Undone, Marc Neys AKA Swoon shows just how well that can work, even with multiple language barriers to cross. Doina Ioanid‘s Romanian text meets Jan H. Mysjkin‘s Dutch text in the soundtrack, with an English translation by Mysjkin in subtitles. As if that weren’t enough, Marc made a second version with the poets reading their work in French translation, also subtitled in English:
And a version of that version with subtitles in German and supertitles in Turkish:
Marc wrote about how he came to make the film in a recent blog post:
Such a fun one, this.
2 poems, by 2 different writers in different languages with different subtitles.
I have worked with Doina Ioanid and Jan H. Mysjkin before.This time I picked out Culoarul vagonului e liber/ The coach’s aisle is clear by Doina and combined it with Teniet/ Undone by Jan for obvious reasons.
They both read the poem in French, Doina also read hers in Romanian, Jan his one in Dutch. They also gave me English, German and Turkish translations. So much blocks to work with.
[…]
German, English and French translation: Jan H. Mysjkin
Turkish translation: Burak Sengir
[…]Working with a split screen came natural. I combined 2 sets of visuals for each poem. Empty <-> crowded, abstract <-> concrete, nature <-> urban, black&white <-> colour.
Shifting between those during the readings and in between…
In the final editing I made some minor cuts to fit the footage with the reading (different languages, different pace), but nothing major. They all ‘feel’ the same.
I guess that last bit answers my question: Why not put all the translations into Vimeo’s own subtitling system and just serve up a single video? Because Swoon’s an insane perfectionist, that’s why.
Spilled Milk on Banjo by Lisa Williams
A poetry film by the Michigan-based conceptual artist and educator Adriane Little, the latest of at least three she’s made for different poets. This one features a text by Lisa Williams from Gazelle in the House (New Issues Poetry & Prose). According to a note in the Vimeo description, “This video was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.”
Adriane Little also teaches videopoetry to undergraduates, and nosing around on Vimeo, I discovered a few of their student films.
Trein by Astrid Haerens
Flemish poet Astrid Haerens‘ poem “Trein” in a film by American animators Annelyse Gelman and Auden Lincoln-Vogel, commissioned last year by Filmpoem and included in Deus ex Machina‘s “Filmpoem Album” DVD (which I reviewed here). Now it’s available with English subtitling.
Poet-filmmaker Rachel Eliza Griffiths interviewed at Connotation Press
The March issue of Connotation Press is out today, and with it a new Third Form column by Erica Goss. This time, she interviews a poet and multimedia artist I’ve been especially curious about, having featured several of her films at Moving Poems: Rachel Eliza Griffiths. A couple of snippets:
“Students have a more visual life nowadays. In my creative writing classes, I often have students respond to photos on their iPhones. One day they might examine their own work, and on other days they respond in writing to the photos of other students. It’s very interesting to see what they come up with.” Students write self-portrait poems using, for example, five photos as a gallery. Rachel Eliza asks them, “How does shadow work in a poem? Is it similar to shadow in a photo?”
[…]
Rachel Eliza’s current project is P.O.P (Poets on Poetry), a project with 100 contemporary poets who read and comment on poetry, their own and others’. “I wanted videos that showed poets in a better light, quality-wise, than what you often see in archival videos on YouTube, for example. I’m happy that teachers use some of the videos as part of their lesson plans.” P.O.P includes poets such as Cornelius Eady, Tina Chang, Michael Dickman, Marilyn Nelson and Terrance Hayes.
The interview includes commentary on some embedded films. I was especially struck by Griffiths’ description of how she came to make Incident, her contribution to the #BlackPoetsSpeakOut movement. And I was excited to hear that she plans a triptych of new videos in support of her upcoming collection of poems. Check it out.
Submissions are open for Filmpoem Festival Fifteen
Reprinted from the Filmpoem website. This is the Filmpoem Festival’s third year, and it’s great to see Alastair Cook’s vision for it continue to expand and adapt. Films aren’t static, so why should film festivals stay the same? Also, kudos for giving in to poetic temptation and embracing the f-alliteration. —Dave
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working within the British Isles this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetry-film, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
“The combination of film and poetry is an attractive one. For the poet, perhaps a hope that the filmmaker will bring something to the poem: a new audience, a visual attraction, the laying of way markers; for the filmmaker, a fixed parameter to respond to, the power of a text sparking the imagination with visual connections and metaphor.” Alastair Cook, Anon 7 (Edinburgh, 2010).
This wonderful hybrid artform has become a great new force in the worlds of film and poetry provoking a range of terminologies: filmpoem, videopoem, cinepoem and poetry-film each reflecting different origins and schools of thought.
SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN FOR THE GENERAL PROGRAMME
– Films should be no more than 15 minutes in length. If you have a particular film for consideration which is over 15 minutes, please contact us directly.
– The work should contain the full text of a poem or multiple, related poems, whether spoken or using visual text. Talking-head poems will be considered on merit but the poetry-film is a genre that encourages filmic exploration. Poetic film or poetry inspired film without words will also be accepted on merit, depending on relevance.
– Work outside the genre cannot be accepted.
– All submitted work not in the English language must contain English subtitles.
– Deadline for submissions is 1st May 2015
There are two ways to submit:
DIGITAL SUBMISSION
– Upload a screening quality copy of your film to http://vimeo.com. Ensure you set the privacy settings to password only and set the password to filmpoem15
– Email a digital copy of your biography, your full name and contact information to submit@filmpoem.com
PHYSICAL ARTEFACT SUBMISSION
– Send a screening quality copy of your film (Quicktime file – m4v or mov) on a USB stick or DVD. Please do NOT embed the film. DVDs are non-returnable but all USB sticks are returnable if you include a stamped addressed envelope.
– Include a digital copy of your biography, your full name and contact information to
Filmpoem Festival, 21 Cambridge Gardens, Edinburgh, EH6 5DH, UNITED KINGDOM
FURTHER INFORMATION
There is no entry fee.
All submissions will be considered as your screening copy so if the resolution is not sufficient, we will unfortunately not be able to screen your film.
We would encourage the use of original soundtracks wherever possible as no copyright material can be used without the express permission of the poet, musician, filmmaker and/or author.
We will consider your submission as granting us copyright permission to screen the film for the duration of the project and will retain your film for archive unless expressly instructed otherwise.
Many thanks and good luck!
Alastair
