Posts By Dave Bonta
Every Day by Robin Coste Lewis
The physical and spiritual planes intersect in Ryan Simon‘s meditatively paced adaptation of a poem by Robin Coste Lewis, part of Motionpoems’ Season 8, “Dear Mr. President.”
Dear White America by Danez Smith
This may be a basic video (from the livestream by Katalogon of Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, 2 June 2018), but it is nevertheless essential watching: a master poet at the top of his game calling out the rot at the heart of the American dream. The text is from Danez Smith’s award-winning collection Don’t Call Us Dead and has been reprinted online at Literary Hub.
Updates from Art Visuals & Poetry / Vienna Poetry Film Festival
It’s the off-year for the biannual Poetry Film Festival in Vienna, but that doesn’t mean they’re sitting on their hands. Here’s the English-language portion of their latest emailed newsletter:
The preparations for the next Poetry Film Festival in Vienna have started. During the festival pause there are several poetry film screenings in Austria:
August, 15, 2018 Millstatt, Carinthia – curated by Hubert Sielecki
September 27, 2018, Austrian Society of Literature Vienna – curated by Anita C. Schaub
October 9, 2018, International Poetry Film screening, Künstlerhaus Vienna – curated by Sigrun HöllriglFor the ones, who want to submit again to the next poetry film festival. The submission period will start around begin of December 2018 and will last appr. until April 2019. The next festival will take place in November 2019 at Metro Kinokulturhaus Vienna. Keep in touch with informations in English on www.poetryfilm-vienna.com.
Coyote Wedding by Brittani Sonnenberg
A poem by Austin, Texas-based writer Brittani Sonnenberg adapted for the Visible Poetry Project by UK artist Jane Glennie. “A key technique in her films is to take hundreds of photographs, which are edited and sequenced into rapid ‘flicker films’ and combine them with composite soundtracks,” as Gklennie’s bio on the VPP website puts it.
Half-life by Luisa A. Igloria
Two Moving Poems regulars—filmmaker Eduardo Yagüe and poet Luisa A. Igloria—in their first collaboration, a film for the Visible Poetry Project. Luisa provided the voiceover, and the actress, as in so many of Eduardo’s poetry films, is the wonderful Gabriella Roy. The music is an original composition by Four Hands Project. The poem originally appeared on Via Negativa, the literary blog I share with Luisa, last October.
Luisa had another poetry video this spring, too: Marc Neys (a.k.a. Swoon) made the trailer for her latest collection of poems, The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis.
Skirt by Rochelle Potkar
Why is this our most silent, daily question, ‘what to wear?’
And is it for ourselves or someone else that we ask this?
A thought-provoking poetry film from Indian writer Rochelle Potkar and UK-based Irish director Philippa Collie Cousins. It was produced for the Visible Poetry Project, which notes:
It was writing poetry and being a published poet at 14 that spurred [Cousins] on to be a visual artist: “The best poets explain our lives back to us in the rhythm and song of our own language. I was a very lonely child befriended by poems and stories. It was a combination that made me a very happy and successful adult. Being commissioned to send a poem out in to the world in a 3 dimensional film form is very exciting to me. I cannot wait to collaborate with my poet and think up a tapestry of images that will do them visual justice. What a treat! My aim is to reach an audience who benefit as I did from the magical medicine of poetry.”
Leisure by W. H. Davies
UK director A D Cooper‘s short for the Visible Poetry Project adapts a poem by the early 20th-century Welsh “supertramp” W. H. Davies. I had the pleasure of seeing the film, and meeting the director, last Saturday at a special curation of VPP films at London’s Poetry Cafe. Cooper said her decision to film in London, rather than in some more pastoral setting as the text might seem to suggest, was driven in part by filming logistics and in part by the desire to avoid naive illustration, and that some of the shots were unplanned and serendipitous. I told her it really worked for me, both as a tourist in London and as a country person in cities generally, where I often wonder why no one else seems inclined to pause and gawk at the amazing surroundings. So for me, the text and the video seem tailor-made for each other.
For full credits, stills, and other information about the film, see its page on the Hurcheon Films website.
Small Shoes by Maggie Smith
This simple but devastating poetry film pairs U.S. poet Maggie Smith with Irish filmmaker Kate Dolan. It’s the latest web release from Motionpoems’ Season 8, “Dear Mr. President”. As a nature lover I appreciated the inclusion of a starfish in one shot, subtly suggesting a link between the deaths of human refugees and of species impacted by global warming — a small but effective example of how a film can add additional dimensions to the poem on the page.
We’re back! And GDPR compliant. Probably.
If you subscribe to the Moving Poems weekly digest, you may have been wondering: A) Why haven’t there been any digests for nearly two months? And possibly also B) Why didn’t you receive an email exhorting you to re-subscribe to make sure that Moving Poems is in compliance with the EU’s new data protection law?
The second question is easier to answer: Since everyone receiving the newsletter signed up for it of their own volition and can remove themselves at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any edition, there is apparently no legal need to require current subscribers to re-subscribe, and we’re happy not to have contributed to the sheep-like stampede of panicked arts organizations last month clogging up everyone’s inboxes. However, we do embrace the new privacy protections and applaud the EU for enacting them. So we’ve created a privacy policy and placed one of those annoying-but-necessary banners on the site asking visitors from EU countries to accept the policy before using the site. Ironically, perhaps, the banner itself sets a cookie so you won’t have to see it on every subsequent visit. I suppose I should include something about that in the privacy policy, but I was afraid of creating some kind of infinite loop of things you’d have to approve before seeing other things that you’d also have to approve.
In answer to the first question: I needed a break. Burn-out is a real issue for this kind of thing, so from time to time I take an unscheduled hiatus. I realize this does inconvenience people who rely on Moving Poems for news about contests, festivals and the like. I’m sorry about that, and all I can say is that if someone would like to volunteer to help out with news posts, I could certainly use another writer. There would be no pay, of course, and you’d probably want to be a bit more active in social media than I currently am, having deleted my Facebook account on May 1. On the other hand, I can’t in good conscience require someone to be on Facebook when I’m opposed to its use myself. Anyway, email me (bontasaurus@yahoo.com) if you’re interested in helping out.
Film and Video Poetry Symposium, Weimar Poetry Film Prize announce winners
Back at the end of April, the Film and Video Poetry Society website had a post announcing the winning films coming out of their inaugural symposium, presented in image form, with no accompanying text. They were:
Best Choreopoem
Moving Southwark (director & poet Jevan Chowdhury, U.K., 2016)
Outstanding Poem
Oceanik (director Lucia Sellars, poet Nia Davies, U.K., 2017)
Best Film Essay
Where Is Eva Hipsey? (director Orla McHardy, writer Justin Spooner, U.S., 2016)
Best Experimental film
Phantom Cinema (writer & director Cheng Li-Ming, Taiwan, 2016)
Best Videopoem
Dog Daze (director & poet Ian Gibbins, Australia, 2017)
(Details grabbed from their previously published shortlist.)
*
Earlier this week, the 2018 Weimar Poetry Film Prizes were announced on the Poetryfilmkanal website, in German. Here’s how Google translates the first part of the post:
The winners of the third Weimar Poetry Film Awards are the films THE DESKTOP METAPHOR (jury prize) and PATATA DAY (Audience Award). The jury also awarded a special mention to the film BLUE FLASH FLASH.
JURY PRIZE
The jury of the third Weimar Poetry Film Award, consisting of the Thuringian poet Daniela Danz, the artist and curator Cathy De Haan from Leipzig and the Norwegian animator Kristian Pedersen, chose the English entry THE DESKTOP METAPHOR (2017) as the winner of the €1000 jury prize. Directed by the Dutch director Helmie Stil; the underlying poem was written by the British author Caleb Parkin.
Google makes a hash of the jury statement, but here’s the film:
And here’s the winner of the jury’s Special Mention, Blue Flash Flash by Jane Glennie:
The Poetryfilmkanal post also includes a trailer for the winner of the audience award, but that’s their own upload, so you’ll have to click through to watch it.
Don’t miss the illustrated and annotated (in German and English) shortlist. These were a bunch of really strong films.
A belated but nonetheless heart-felt congratulations to all the winners!
Call for work: 6th annual Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition
Just received this communication from the Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition.
2018 is Ó Bhéal’s ninth year screening International poetry-films, and sixth year featuring this competition. Up to thirty films will be shortlisted and screened during the festival in October. One winner will receive the IndieCork/Ó Bhéal prize for best Poetry-Film.
The festival takes place between the dates of the 7th and the 14th October, 2018.
Entry is free to anyone, and should be made via email to poetryfilm [at] obheal.ie – including the following info in an attached Word document:
- Name and duration of Film
- Name of director
- Country of origin
- Contact details
- Name of Poet
- Name of Poem
- Synopsis
- Filmmaker biography
- and a Link to download a high-resolution version of the film.
You may submit as many entries as you like. Films must interpret, or convey a poem which must be present in its entirety, having been completed no earlier than August 2016. They may not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Non-English language films will require English subtitles. The final shortlist will be announced during September.
Shortlisted films also appear in Ó Bhéal’s poetry-film touring programme, at a number of film and literary festivals, to date including the Clare Island Film Festival, Belfast Film Festival, Stanzas in Limerick, the Cyclops festival in Kiev, Poemaria in Vigo and at the Madeira Literary Festival (2018). Shortlisted entries are also screened throughout the year from Ó Bhéal’s competition shortlist archive (in random), at the start of each Ó Bhéal poetry evening.
This year’s entries are judged by poet Oonagh Kearney and filmmaker Anamaria Crowe Serrano.
The submission deadline is August 15th, 2018.
