~ 2023 ~
Seven things I know by Janet Lees
Janet Lees is a poet and film-maker with a distinctive voice.
Her images are often black and white, with soft shades of grey, or tinged with the subtlest of colours. Her poetry is minimal in style, carrying quiet emotion. In counterpoint, the soundtracks are often lush in feeling. So it is in her latest film, Seven things I know.
The atmospheric music is by alt-pop duo Narrow Skies, Anita and Ben Tatlow. The song’s lyrics weave with those of the poem, which is given as text on screen. Anita Tatlow sings in an abstract way that is more musical than verbal, and so the song does not detract, but instead adds fine strands of meaning to Janet Lees’ poem.
The poem is whimsical while uncovering depth. A few of the seven things of the title:
the cadbury’s flake jingle
…
the magpie’s rough music
…
that eric morecambe
was not my uncle
Both poem and song lyrics are printed on the page with the video. This is a film in a single shot and slow motion rhythm, with breathing space for each of its elements.
More of Janet Lees’ films are to be found on her Moving Poems author page.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival 2023 – Seattle and online
The 6th Annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival will take place as a hybrid event with screenings in Seattle, and online. There are multiple events in the programme and you can choose between single event tickets or festival passes. The in-person events will be between 27-30 April, while the online programmes will be available for a week longer until 7th May.
There are five intriguing sounding programmes in the festival, including The Edge of Here, The Great Entanglement, and the fantastic title of A Tune to Contain All Your Revolt, as well as a satellite in-person film programme at the Frye Art Museum.
There are also three, live, collaborative workshops with a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and online events.
See the Northwest Film Forum website for more details and a full programme.
Un/Write by Fiona Tinwei Lam
Vancouver-based poet and poetry filmmaker Fiona Tinwei Lam collaborated with animation students Lara Renaud and Quinn Kelly back in February on this videopoem “about revision, redaction, and renewal.” Lam told me in an email that
It originated in a published shaped or visual poem on the page about the editing and revising process. I quickly created and brainstormed a text block from which the poem would be carved out on screen.
But I realized there were other poems within the poem while utilizing further compression and fragmentation. Then I noticed there were a few interesting phrases in the discarded text from the text block I’d created for the initial poem, that could form the basis of a new poem about reclamation. So these “cut out” phrases could return on screen in a new way.
She added that she thought it could form the basis of a fun lesson plan for schools and community writing workshops, and I agree. One of the great things about erasure poetry is the way it reminds us that no creation is truly ex nihilo; there’s always an element of discovery. And often with such serendipity comes joy, flowering of its own accord, as the animation suggests. A wonderful start to Poetry Month. (And imagine my surprise just now, bringing up the Canadian National Poetry Month page, to find that this year’s theme is in fact joy!)
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
There is balm to be found in this poetry film from Wendell Berry‘s deep and enduring poem, The Peace of Wild Things. Berry has a close connection to rural Kentucky USA, where he was born in 1934 and has maintained a farm for over 40 years. It is his own voice in the soundtrack.
The animation is touchingly childlike, directed by UK artists Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang. The project was produced by The On Being Project, a non-profit initiative. Music and sound is credited to David Camp. In-depth process notes on the making of the film can be found here.
I found The Peace of Wild Things among a fine Top Ten of films from classic poems published recently on the magazine side of our site. These films were selected by Paul Casey and Colm Scully, organisers and judges of the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer poetry festival and poetry film competition in Ireland.
Gedicht an die Dauer/To Duration by Peter Handke
Dutch filmmaker Pat van Boeckel responds to some lines by the controversial Austrian writer and Nobel laureate Peter Handke, with music by Dario Marionelli. For German speakers, here’s a version without the subtitles.
This is a great example of a poem I wouldn’t spend much time with on the page, given its high level of abstraction—not something I generally look for in poetry. So van Boeckle’s images rescue the poem for me, which is great because in fact the passage of time is a mystery of perennial interest… and also because it seems axiomatic that any argument about duration must take some time to digest.
Calls for poetry films: spring round-up
In the UK we’re having quite a cold snap this week before (hopefully) we get a bit more into spring next week, and by which time submissions to the HNA Haibun festival co-sponsored by Moving Poems will close on 15th March. And on the theme of spring, I encourage you to visit The Fauvist In Spring (created c.2012) and reviewed by Dave Bonta in 2018. The title sequence alone is worth watching for the gorgeous animation.
Anyway, here is a round-up of a selection of other festivals open for poetry films coming up in the next few weeks and months. Some are free to enter, some are quite expensive. Check and check again what the criteria are for entry before you submit – is your film the right length, is it in the right language, does it have subtitles? Do you need to be a student? Or from a particular country? But equally, be aware of what festival you are entering – does it have a track record, is it well-established, does it have an in-person event or an online event or both?
The festivals that accept poetry films seem to be growing. All of the following opportunities can be found on the FilmFreeway platform which does elicit results beyond the established poetry film festivals if you search simply for ‘poetry’, often useful if your film ticks the box of a particular theme – horror, or ecological, or feminist perhaps.
Absurd Art House Film Festival
“We are open to all international films that don’t fit in, don’t want to fit in, or just can’t be categorised to fit in to the norms expected of so many conservative festivals (you know who you are)”
Blue Town, Kent, UK. Category for poetry film.
EXTENDED DEADLINE 18th March
11th International Video Poetry Festival
Athens, Greece
“The International Video Poetry Festival in Athens attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry”
Deadline 1st April
Ottawa Canadian Film Festival
Ottawa, Canada
For Canadian filmmakers, including a cinepoetry category.
Final deadline 10th April.
Bloomsday Film Festival
Dublin, Ireland
“Ireland’s most literary film festival is back for its forth year!” Including poetry films category.
Deadline 10th May
Zebra Poetry Film Festival
Berlin, Germany
Long-standing and high profile festival for poetry films of many kinds.
Deadline 1st June
The Artists Forum Spoken Word Competition
New York, USA
Includes an experimental film category for video poems, and a sign-language category.
Final deadline 21st June, earlybird offers
Hombres Videopoetry Award
Carsoli, Italy
Deadline 30th June
Midwest Video Poetry Fest
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
“Midwest Video Poetry Fest inspires experimentation and collaborations and deepens the understanding of poetry and visual culture.”
Final deadline 1st July, earlybird offer 1st June
5th Hottomela International Film Festival 2023
Kolkata, India
“A Grandeur Physical Video Festival in Kolkata City ( India) with Great Projection, Sound, Arrangement, Proper Judgement and Filmmaking Seminar.”
Final deadline 31st August, earlier options
So Limitless and Free International Film Festival
Montreal, Canada
A festival about artistic world wilderness, love and creativity with no limits. Including a category for film poetry.
Final deadline 25th November, earlybird offers
Find all these and more on www.filmfreeway.com
Landschop by Valerie LeBlanc & Daniel Dugas
From the Canadian duo of Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas, Landschop is one in a series of videopoems titled Around Osprey. The artists’ words about the overall project:
Around Osprey is a series of short videopoems based on our 2018 residency at the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast Preserve in South Florida. These poems have been derived from our exploration of the lands and waters of the Myakka River, the Manatee River, Sarasota Bay, and Charlotte Harbour. While looking for the crossovers between nature and culture, we were also looking for threads of human histories within protected natural spaces. (source)
Whispered voices combine with cleverly designed on-screen text to convey the single words and short phrases that form the poetic piece of writing. The background of the soundtrack is comprised of subtle sounds of nature, randomly punctuated by sounds of gunshot. The latter are a mysterious aural presence through the video and only connect to the text in the final moments.
I appreciate the gentle, open-ended qualities of this video, consistent with much of the other work from these artists. It’s as though each of their videopoems is just one moment in a long and steady stream of contemplations.
Their daily blog entries for the Around Osprey residency can be found here.
Top Ten: Classic Poems
Paul Casey and Colm Scully, organisers and judges of the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer poetry festival and poetry film competition in Cork (Ireland), have collaborated on their top ten films that feature classic poems from a wide range of writers. Their range of selections begin with Lewis Carroll with Jabberwocky written in 1871 in England, and conclude with Pablo Neruda, in 20th century Chile, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature 100 years later in 1971.
Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll
Filmmaker: Sjaak Rood
When it comes to marching
Bertholt Brecht
Filmmaker: Andrea Malpede
The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry
Filmmakers: Charlotte Ager & Katy Wang
Hope is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson
Filmmaker: Dave Bonta
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe-Shelley
Filmmaker: Alvaro Lamarche Toloza
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower
Rainer Maria Rilke
Filmmaker: Matt Huynh & Mila Nery
Lightenings viii
Seamus Heaney
Filmmaker: Eoghan Kidney
Innisfree
W B Yeats
Filmmaker: Don Carey
Toads Revisited
Philip Larkin
An excerpt from a BBC programme (Monitor, 1964, UK) with John Betjeman interviewing Philip Larkin.
Tonight I can Write
Pablo Neruda
Filmmaker: Lorena Col
