Posts By Dave Bonta
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Malaysia reviewed by George Szirtes
Though ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival‘s main event in Berlin only happens once every two years, they are regularly invited to screen selections of poetry films from their archives at festivals all over the world. I was pleased to see a review of one of these events by noted UK poet and translator George Szirtes, in his always interesting blog. He happened to have been in Malaysia for ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, where, according to Goethe-Institut Malaysia on Facebook:
In conjunction [with] Georgetown Literary Festival in Penang and with collaboration of Obscura-Kala and Art Printing Works in Kuala Lumpur, Dr. Thomas Wohlfahrt, Director of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and founder of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Berlin screened a selection of films all over the world as a part to promote poetry films in Malaysia.
Szirtes’ review deserves mention and excerpting not just because of his own prominence, but because any coverage of poetry film screenings by bloggers or journalists is unfortunately still quite rare. I liked Szirtes’ swerve into audience analysis and self-reflection—just the sort of personal take one expects from a good blog post—and I was fascinated to see which film-poet he thought was the stand-out. See if you agree. Here’s some of what he wrote:
The film show is in the evening at APW a converted printing works complete with auditorium, bar and much else. Slowly the hall fills up and, eventually, overfills. The idea of poetry-film is not films that may be poetic but rather the interpretation of an actual poetic text, often through computer work. We see about a dozen short films including a relatively early but ingenious version of Austrian sound poet Ernst Jandl created on an Amiga computer, move on to a snappy rhythmic interpretation of a Peter Reading poem and many others involving drawing, reading, performance, stop-frame animation, abstraction, grotesque and mixtures of them all. The one that takes my breath away is by one by Taiwanese poet, Ye Mimi, They Are There But I Am Not. Here is the link to it. Its timing, its restraint, its depth, its spare lyricism, the quality of its feeling and thought and its sheer simple precision seemed far beyond the rest to me. There was a fine comic-grotesque version of a poem by Ingeborg Bachman, an excellent rap performance by an exiled American Cambodian poet, versions of Billy Collins (his ‘Budapest’) and Mahmoud Darwish at the end reading one of his to simple figure images and arabic script in motion. Everything was pretty good and some excellent. The ones that dealt with issues might be most effective in moving emotions but their intentions are clear from the start. They set out to do something and do it. Sometimes they collapse into a kind of bathos (I don’t blame them, their cause is great and drives them into grander forms of rhetoric) before recovering. There are extraneous reasons for admiring these and indeed people do admire them. John Giorno speaks a fine comic poem against family values. Everyone laughs and claps loudly in approval of the message before returning to their family values. Another poem rhapsodises about freedom and jazz, and all the good things one might rhapsodise about and everyone claps. Sure we clap. It’s easy.
We like to be told we are free spirits laughing at convention. It help us to go on with our conventions. We have businesses to run, deals to clinch, jobs to go to, articles to write. I don’t think this is precisely hypocrisy but a kind of social behaviour, like people who want to be thought interesting at parties and declare, ‘I am mad, me, quite mad!’ You can bet your bottom dollar they are saner than you are.
But I love Ye Mimi’s film and I love her poem. The two together are a bringing out of the poem not by illustrating it or referring to it, but by realising it at quite another level. I shall be looking out for her work.
Read the whole post. And watch Ye Mimi’s films on Moving Poems here.
Як вишні / As cherries by Olena Huseynova
Dariia Kuzmych directed, animated and edited this videopoem with poetry by Olena Huseynova and music by Heinali. It won first prize in the main competition at CYCLOP 2014.
See the CYCLOP-2014 playlist on YouTube, currently at 30 videos, for more Ukrainian poetry films, many of them with English subtitles. With the Western news media always focusing on conflict in Ukraine, it’s easy to lose sight of the country’s rich and complex culture. Watching these bilingual videopoems offers a glimpse into the way Ukrainian people think, what they value and what they dream about. Plus, they’re just very good films.
Кафка / Kafka by Kyrylo Polischuk
Kyrylo Polischuk (Pol Ischuk) composed the music and text, and Viktoria Netrebenko is credited with the idea and editing of this Ukrainian videopoem. It took 2nd place in the main competition at CYCLOP 2014.
Взрослеют / Growing Up by Ksana Kovalenko
A quirky, disturbing stop-motion animation by Eugene Tsymbalyuk with text and narration by Ukrainian poet Ksana Kovalenko. Denis Chernysh was the director of photography, and the actors are Victoria Klyosova and Roman Nemtsov. This was the third-place winner in the general competition at CYCLOP 2014.
Tsymbalyuk offers this synopsis in the description at Vimeo:
“Growing up” is an associative video, made under the impression of the short poem. It’s a story about growing up by pain. It’s about the ability to except the inevitable and to gain experience, when the treacherous knife in your spine turns out to be a key able to open new doors for you.
News roundup: Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition, Rabbit Heart DVD, animated poetry film screening in Leipzig
Spoken-word poets from the north of England are invited to submit films to the Read Our Lips Filmpoem Competition 2015.
Read Our Lips is a unique digital project that aims to give poets and spoken word artists the skills to make their own filmpoems, from storyboarding through to editing.
We believe that a filmpoem is not a recording of a performance to camera, but is instead a layering of visual elements on to a spoken poem in such a way as to create a new, coherent work of art. We are looking for films that do more than simply illustrate the featured poem in a literal way, but which seek to surprise, enhance or subvert by their choice of additional imagery.
Click through to the Facebook event listing for the competition terms and conditions. The deadline is February 23, 2015. Prizes total £225. (I especially liked this bit: “All poems will be screened online during March 2015 for entry into the viewer’s choice prize category.”)
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Here’s a cool thing: just in time for the holidays, a Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival 2014 DVD from Doublebunny Press.
All the best video from the 2014 Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival collected in one place, including category reels, and the Best of What Not to Submit Monday.
Films by:
Yves Bommenel, Greg Brisendine, John Mortara, Sarah Guimond, Aisha Naseem & Chris Markman, Josh Lefkowitz and Chris Follmer, David Richardson, Timothy David Orme, Meriel Lland, Megan Falley and Rachel Rae Gausp, Malt Schlitzman, Cheryl Maddalena, Sou MacMillan, Jenith Charpentier, Laura EJ Moran, Scott Woods, Michael Medeiros, Cassidy Parker Knight & Jeff Knight, and Allan & the Nieces
To sample some of the films included on the DVD, see their YouTube page.
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Here’s an upcoming screening that sounds kind of intriguing: Leipzig-Präsentation von LAB/P – poetry in motion.
Wir präsentieren 9 Animationsfilme, die in der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit von AutorInnen und FilmemacherInnen aus der Region entstanden sind. Die Werke ermöglichen einen spannenden Einblick in zeitgenössische Lyrik und Animationsästhetik und geben Gelegenheit, neue künstlerische Positionen zu entdecken.
Which Google Translate renders as:
We present 9 animated films that have arisen in the interdisciplinary collaboration between authors and filmmakers from the region. The works provide a fascinating insight into contemporary poetry and animation aesthetics and given the opportunity to discover new artistic positions.
Here are the details:
Donnerstag, 11. Dezember 2014
Kleiner Empfang ab 19:30 Uhr, Vorführungsbeginn 20:00 Uhr
UT Connewitz, Wolfgang-Heinze-Straße 12, 04277 Leipzig, www.utconnewitz.deProgramm:
KANTEN DEINER AUGEN (Melissa Harms & Yevgeniy Breyger)
ROSTOCK, GRAND CAFÉ (Susann Arnold & Moritz Gause)
DAS BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD IN DEM BILD (Catalina G. Veléz & Marlen Pelny)
ECHO (Damaris Zielke & Peter Thiers)
AUSGEBRANNTES HAUS (Eva-Maria Arndt & Antje Kersten)
OHNE TITEL (Meng Chang & Daniel Schmidt)
VIVA VIOLENCE (Johanna Maxl & Katharina Merten)
DIE ANGST DES WOLFS VOR DEM WOLF (Juliane Jaschnow & Stefan Petermann)
KASPAR HAUSERIN (Nelly Chernetskaya & Katia S. Ditzler)
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Thanks for all three of these news items to the fabulous Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, who seems to know about everything related to poetry film going on anywhere on the world, and posts it all to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival group page on Facebook.
Алый апрель (Scarlet April) by Dmitry Vodennikov
Ukrainian filmmaker Anzhela (Angie) Bogachenko directed and edited this surrealist videopoem with a text by the contemporary Russian poet Dmitry Vodennikov (who is no stranger to video). That’s Vodennikov’s reading in the soundtrack, which was put together by Victor 78 — the long-haired male lead. The English translation in the subtitles is credited to Anna Shwets. (I like the way even the post-it notes are translated. And I love the post-it notes in general.) The cast includes Zoryana Tarasyuta along with Bogachenko and Victor 78. Vladimir Gusev was the cameraman. Asya was the cat.
Bogachenko also made that delightful film with the dancing cosmonauts that I posted back in October, “А у вас дім далеко від нас?” (Do you have a home away from us?).
Poet Benedict Newbery on collaborating with animator Sandra Salter
A fascinating interview with UK poet Benedict Newbery has just been posted in the Berlin-based arts magazine Chased. I was especially interested to learn how closely he works with his collaborator Sandra Salter in the making of their widely screened poetry films — it’s far from the passive role that many poets take in these kinds of partnerships. Bettina Henningsen is the interviewer.
Chased: You produced some wonderful and very successful poetry animations together with Sandra Salter – “Cul de Sac” and “The Royal Oak”, which were part of the film programme at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Is making poetry films something you always wanted to do?
B. N.: I fell into poetry film quite by happy accident and had never thought of making one until I was contacted by Sandra in early 2008. We’d met very briefly a couple of years before through a mutual friend. She saw a call for submissions for the 2008 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, remembered she’d met someone who’d just started writing poetry (me)and emailed me. Did I want to make a film of one of my poems? Of course! I replied.
I enjoy film and am interested in how film works. I did a short introductory course on animation a few years ago and would like to make some films on my own. But working full time and writing when I can doesn’t leave an awful lot of room for developing that side of things. I’m happy to let Sandra take care of that side of things for now!Chased: How did the co-operation of the two of you work exactly?
B. N.: Our first film Cul de sac was a pretty rushed job and we were both improvising quite a bit. Sandra works with watercolours and sent me a few images to start with. So I got a feel for the sort of thing she was looking to develop. After a couple of meetings it was obvious we were running out of time so we agreed that I’d storyboard the film — something I’d never done before but which I really enjoyed. From the storyboards, Sandra painted sequences of animation, each one very small — 5 x 4cm. She then scanned the images, reassembled them, placed them in sequences and then added my voice recording and Paul Murphy’s music. The animation process was done very quickly — there was no registration of images etc. But it worked! And we were shortlisted for the ZEBRA competition that year.
The Royal Oak was a bit more stop-start over a few years. We had met a few times to discuss storyboards and the general direction of the film but with no funding it was proving difficult with jobs and family commitments. Then Channel 4 got in touch with Sandra and asked her to make a pitch for its Random Acts series. The pitch was successful and suddenly we had the funding we needed. By this time we lived quite a distance from each other so we weren’t able to meet up so easily. But we’d email and chat on the phone. And in the end Sandra produced a fantastic film!
Chased: Is the film version of a poem an extension of the poem to you, or an addition?
B. N.: When I drew storyboards for both poems, I was illustrating the narrative flow as I’d realised it in the writing of the poems. I think left to my own devices in the first couple of films, less-interesting films would have emerged. Perhaps just a visual addition.
This was the key with collaborating with someone like Sandra. She’s a very talented film maker. And she also gets what it is that I’m talking about in the poetry. Through her animations she extends the poem into something new, substantive, with its own interpretation of the narrative. She has the skill and ability to take it somewhere else, and surprise me with her take on what is important — or how a particular aspect of the work needs to be given salience. Even though she followed the storyboards for Cul de sac she still brought in her own ideas that lifted the words elsewhere. And in animating The Royal Oak, she worked away from the original storyboards — to brilliant effect.
I think perhaps an OK or average film of a poem adds to the poem, if it’s lucky. A good film will extend it.
Chased: What is your next project?
B. N.: Sandra and I are looking to make our third film together — hopefully in 2015. We already know which poem we’re going to use — exploring the darker, seedier side of the English seaside town. It will see a continuation of Sandra’s style of watercolour transitions.
Do read the rest.
Hunter’s Moon and Trapper’s Moon by Erica Goss
I’ve gotten a couple of months behind on the 12 Moons videopoetry collaboration between Erica Goss (words), Marc Neys/Swoon (concept and directing), Kathy McTavish (music) and Nic S. (voice), so here are parts X, “Hunter’s Moon” (above) and XI, “Trapper’s Moon” (below). About the former, Marc writes:
The wind in this poem led me to a film I used earlier; ‘Terror in the midnight sun’ (Virgil W. Vogel)
I created a ‘windy’ scape using blocks of sound Kathy provided me with, added Nic’s reading and started playing around with the footage. (Different grading, colours,…)
In the end I only used one sequence. Played with repetition… I added a light layer of flickering windows to emphasize the wind even more.
For “Trapper’s Moon,” Marc notes that
Kathy provided me with a beautiful soundtrack, full of nostalgia and melancholy. A perfect fit for Nic’s intense reading.
I wanted very simple and pure images to go with this music. Preferably nature. A forest. Solitude.
Ephemeral Rift filmed one of his winter walks, I edited out a few bits and played around with colouring and timing in a split screen.
As with the others in this year-long series, both films were featured in Atticus Review.
Ironically, one of the reasons I got behind on sharing them was because I took almost two weeks off to go to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in October… where one of the big draws was seeing all twelve films in order on the big screen, with both Marc and Erica in attendance to introduce them and answer questions afterwards. It was an utterly captivating experience; the films flowed really well one into another, which might not be obvious if you watch them individually on the web. I hope that won’t be the last time that the whole project gets shown in a theater.
New book on poetry film by Stefanie Orphal
Academic publisher De Gruyter has just published a 310-page monograph titled Poesiefilm: Lyrik im audiovisuellen Medium [Poetry Film: Poetry in the Audiovisual Medium] by German literary scholar Stefanie Orphal. It’s probably a good thing I don’t know German, because if I did, I’d be feeling pretty frustrated by the astronomical price tag: US$126.00 for either the hardcover or the eBook — or $196.00 for both together! But perhaps one could talk one’s local university library into buying a copy. The publisher’s description is certainly enticing:
Unlike film presentations of narrative or dramatic literature, the audiovisual depiction of poetry has received little attention from researchers. This volume traces the history of the poetry film genre and subjects it to systematic examination. It thereby fills a gap in research on the relations between films and literature but also develops key categories for understanding ways of dealing with poetry in the audiovisual medium.
There’s a brief review (in German) at Fixpoetry. One can also get a sense of Orphal’s research interests from her page at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies:
Stefanie Orphal was born 1982 in Halle (Saale). From 2002 to 2008 she studied literature, media studies, and business studies at the University of Potsdam and Université Paris XII. She completed her Magister Artium (Master of Arts) in 2008 with a thesis on Stimme und Bild im Poetryfilm (Voice and Image in Poetryfilm) in which she analysed the connection and interference of voice and image in short films based on poems. Her research interests include the relation of literature and other media, literary adaptation, and 20th century poetry. From 2009 to 2012 she has been a doctoral candidate at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary studies, where she finished her dissertation “Poetry Film”: On the History, Poetics and Practice of an Intermedial Genre.
In her dissertation project on “poetry film’, she examines the emergence of poetry in film and the poetic dimension of film as an art form. The “tradition of the cinema as poetry”, as Susan Sontag calls it, appears particularly in the avant-garde films of the 1920s and in experimental cinema. At the same time, poetry itself has strived for connections with other media or for recognition as a performance art throughout the 20th century. Futurism, Dada, Beat Poetry, Spoken Word, and Konkrete Poesie feature prominent examples. Unlike literary adaptations, most poetryfilms do not present a ‘translation’ of literary text into filmic text, but keep the poetry present in vocal performance or writing. Her analysis of various poetryfilms therefore concentrates on rhythmic features of film and verse, the sound of voices and spoken language, iconic qualities of writing, and the interplay of poetic and filmic imagery.
