~ October 2016 ~

Neon Poem by TJ Dema

Poet TJ Dema, director/cinematographer Masahiro Sugano and Studio Revolt show how performance poetry film is done. The Studio Revolt Facebook page shared the video link on Friday accompanied by the following note:

On September 30 1966, the people of Botswana achieved independence from Britain’s colonial rule. On this 50th year anniversary, Studio Revolt would like to honor this important occasion with the world release of TJ Dema’s “Neon Poem” video. We were fortunate enough to collaborate with this talented and fiery spoken word poet while she was on tour in Cambodia. In the same year of Botswana’s independence, Amiri Baraka wrote a landmark poem as a radical anthem for Black Americans to seek self-love and liberation. “Neon Poem” exists after, and in conversation with Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art.”

Studio Revolt previously released another Sugano film of TJ Dema, “Dreams,” which demonstrated a more minimal but equally effective approach to performance poetry film making.

“Digitized Figures” installation combining video, text and live dance reaches funding goal, debuts in two weeks

If you can get to Brooklyn on October 14th, 15th, 16th, 21st, 22nd, or 23rd, the Digitized Figures performance and installation at the Gowanus Loft sounds like an event not to be missed. You may remember my post back in August about the Kickstarter campaign. They just updated it today to announce that they’ve met their goal (44 backers pledged $5,133), and tickets are for sale. As the Facebook event page describes it:

Digitized Figures is an immersive installation created by Sarah Rose Nordgren and Kathleen Kelley that incorporates video, text, and live dance to conjure a richly textured and fluctuating landscape. The installation elements surround and interact with the viewer, inviting them to play in and co-create the performance environment. Digitized Figures is totally immersive experience that you roam through, interacting with the text, the projections, and the dancers.

For more information, see the Smart Snow website. The next-to-most-recent update to the Kickstarter also goes into some detail about the interactive aspect:

As we are moving forward with the show, we are currently in the process of building interactive touchscreens designed by Krista Anne Nordgren. These touchscreens will allow the viewers to choose words and directives that change the dancer’s movements.

When they get instructions from the touchscreens, the dancers interrupt their regular looping dance structure to respond to the audience’s prompts. There are three dancers, three touchscreens, and an infinite number of possibilities for how the dance can be built by YOU the viewer. You build the poem, you build the dance.

It sounds wild.

Human by Meghann Plunkett

Andrés Fernández Cordón of the Buenos Aires-based studio Sloop animated and directed this adaptation of a charming poem by U.S. poet Meghann Plunkett. The Vimeo description notes that “We approached the production much in the same way the poem reads, step by step, drawing one frame after the other without knowing before hand where it would take us.” Plunkett provided the voiceover, and the music is by Shayfer James.

The video was featured at Luna Luna Magazine on August 30, with an accompanying appreciation by Aja Monet, a fellow poet and friend of Plunkett’s since college, as she recounts. Check it out.

Red Coil (excerpt) by Cecilia Vicuña

https://vimeo.com/156326963

I discovered recently that the Chilean poet, visual artist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña has an active presence on Vimeo, with many documentary videos of her performances and installations. Here’s one by Geoffrey Jones that I quite liked.

Film by Geoffrey Jones
Cecilia Vicuña and Jane Rigler.
Four performances for sitelines, New York, 2005, sponsored by LMCC and Poet’s House.

In this performances the artist pays homage to Gloria Anzaldúa’s line “The serpent, mi tono, my animal counterpart…” (Borderlands 26).

Thus the Vimeo description. It’s actually apparently an excerpt from a longer work:

Red Coil. Video, English. 68 mins, 2005
Records four performances where Cecilia Vicuña & the flutist Jane Rigler improvise music and poetry along the Hudson River, within the context of the Sitelines Festival of New York. Filmed and edited by Geoffrey Jones.

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival’s complete list of films, English-language program online

https://vimeo.com/185122525

With the biannual ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival — the world’s largest and most prestigious such event — less than a month away, their website is replete with information, including what should be of most interest even to those who (like me) can’t attend: lists of all the films in each screening. Access those via the main programme page. They also issued a press release on Wednesday; here’s the English version:

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin – The Program

For the first time, the Zebra Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin will be held in Münster from 27-30 October at cinema Schloßtheater. Established in Berlin in 2002, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival was the first and remains the largest international platform for cinematic adaptations of poetry: poetry films

With three poetry-film competitions – one international, one German, and one North Rhine-Westphalia based – as well as themed film programmes, a retrospective on TV poetry hosted by Klaus-Peter Dencker, readings, a Colloquium, a lineup for younger audiences called ZEBRINO and a lineup focused on works from the Flanders and the Netherlands, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2016 promises to showcase the richness and diversity in the emerging film genre of poetry films.

This year, more than 1,100 submissions from 86 countries were submitted to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin, among which 80 have been nominated by the program commission to compete in the international and national competitions. Four prizes totaling €12,000 will be awarded by the three-member international jury, including the “ZEBRA Award for the best poetry film”, the “Goethe Film Award”, the “Ritter Sport Film Award”, as well as the “Award for the Best film for Tolerance”. Additionally, 18 films will be presented in the newly established NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia) competition.

The Flanders and Netherlands Focus

As part of the official programme of the Frankfurt Book Fair, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin will bring into focus Dutch language and literature this year, and present work of artists from Netherlands and Flanders. With selected poetry films from this year’s submissions, award-winning classics and the results of the Master Class “Poetry across the borders”, ZEBRA will showcase the diversity in language arts in the area between the dunes and the polders through poetry readings and Film Talks.

In this year’s festival, we have permission from Dutch poet Mustafa Stitou, author of the poem oracle van een gevonden schoen, to use said poem as a theme for short films. The six best among the filmmakers who decided to center their film on oracle van een gevonden schoen have been invited to Münster to present and engage in discussions of their work.

The Festival Committee has also organised a Retrospective on the work of Klaus Peter Dencker, visual poet and literary scholar, who is widely considered to be the inventor of the TV poetry. Klaus Peter Dencker created the Sequencing form, which in turn has influenced his work of visual poetry. Throughout his years in the television industry, he played an important role in creating more than 100 documentary and experimental films for ARD and ZDF, including influential experimental films like starfighter, rausch and Austronaut, which were broadcast over the now defunct SWF of Baden-Baden during 1970-1971. Professor Dencker will be present at the festival to talk about his work.

ZEBRINO Program for Young Audiences

The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster/Berlin will make poetic forays with younger audiences. What is a poetry film? Where does the idea of making a cinematic poem come from? What is a poem? ZEBRINO is a lineup of colorful short films based on poems which target audiences of 10-14 years old and aims to bring children closer to the genre of poetry film. In this program, the young visitors will not only meet a rabbit-turtle, a black bear, people with funny mice, but also travel with two brothers back into their past. In the end, the young participants will get to choose their favorite film by voting. The film with the most votes wins the ZEBRINO competition 2016 prize worth 500 euros.

The Zebra Poetry Festival is organized by the Filmwerkstatt Münster in cooperation with the Haus für Poesie (formerly Literaturwerkstatt, Berlin). It is made possible by the support of Kunststiftung NRW, the LWL Kulturstiftung, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the city of Münster, the Stiftung der Sparkasse Münsterland Ost, the Kulturrucksack NRW, the Netherlands Consulate General and the Flemish Embassy. The competition prizes have been donated in 2016 by the Haus für Poesie, the Goethe Institute, the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, the Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG and Deutsche Lufthansa AG. The festival is also supported by the Münstesche Filmtheater-Betriebe, GUCC grafik & film, as well as the Factory Hotel.