Opportunities? Cylinders and joining dots …
Poetry film is the small but growing medium we all love. It can do amazing things when it brings image and words together. But as much as film festivals are great, I am always more excited by how good it can look when projected in a site-specific way. In 2022 I interviewed Lori Ersolmaz about her installations, and was inspired by what she achieved. Last year I tried to join the dots between various organisations and do something similar but failed. But I don’t think I’m on the wrong path.
In the news this week has been Trump’s state visit to the UK and Windsor Castle. Very close to home for me, and I happened to be near the Castle early in the morning. I enjoyed spotting the protection officers buying pastries, the photographers grabbing a coffee together, the protestor waiting with a giant teddy bear, and most of all, eavesdropping on all the numerous international reporters outside the castle gateway and catching all the cliche words like unprecedented and pomp.
And then at home I heard about the protestors who had projected images onto a castle tower. Projected onto a huge cylinder … wow. It just looked so good. The edges fall away beautifully, and I would think little or no mapping required.
And to cap off my excitement, I then read of a new poem. The Guardian newspaper reported that:
“Carol Ann Duffy has written a poem about Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain that appears to reimagine the ceremonial banquet as taking place in a bombsite”
Read the full poem here. Just imagine if someone had been able to join the dots on this one? Duffy was previously the poet laureate for the UK from 2009 to 2019, and so has frequently marked significant occasions for the country, and her work is studied on school curriculums.
Big public buildings often have big projections on them, think Buckingham Palace at a Jubilee or the Olympics perhaps. But they can feel just like fancy coloured light bunting. Very pretty, sometimes spectacular. But not so much in depth of thought and feeling. A poetry film officially projected on Windsor Castle? Now that would be something. And if not there, let’s all look out for other big cylinders you might gain permission and access to: a lighthouse, a silo, your neighbour who has a turret to their house? It could look unprecedented and just fabulous.
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Jane Glennie’s award-winning poetry films have screened at festivals across the world. She works with still photographs to create films with a layered visual aesthetic that is abstract, painterly and floods the imagination. She is also a typographer and book designer, founder of Peculiarity Press publishing artists’ books.
