Posts By Dave Bonta
About a City by Aljosa Drazovic
The story of the city is simple.
It eats secrets of people.
It digests whispers and
turns them into leaves, birds, fish.
Serbian filmmaker Dragana Nikolic made this arresting spoken word/videopoem hybrid in 2011 with performance poet Aljoša Dražović playing the part of a slightly crazed tour guide, extemporizing in English. (Apparently he is fluent in both English and Serbian. Here’s a video of him performing work in Serbian.) Nikolic says this about this about the film on Vimeo:
Night walk. Unusual tour guide. Improvisation. Free-style poetry.
Talking with the ghosts of the city, the shadows, the fog…
This city is full of secrets. Secret passageways, stairways. Just hidden for you to find…Festivals: Balkan Beyond Borders, Bucharest, Romania; CologneOFF – Cologne International Videoart Festival; Timishort Romania; Clermont-Ferrand IFF France; Signes de Nuit International Festival, Paris, France; Belgrade Documentary and Short FF; Exit Festival, “Trgni se! Poezija!” Poetry an Book Festival, Alternative Film / Video Festival, Belgrade.
Nikolic also has a bilingual blog focusing on her graphic design work.
Call for submissions: Don McKay Video Poem Contest
There certainly are some interesting contests popping up these days. The Victoria Writers Festival in Victoria, British Columbia is sponsoring a contest for videos based on the poems of Canadian poet Don McKay.
Yes! To celebrate the publication of Angular Unconformity: The Collected Poems of Don McKay (Goose Lane Editions, 2014), we invite anyone with a camera and/or computer and a little editing savvy to create a video that “performs” any poem of Don McKay’s. You can easily find poems by this giant of Canadian poetry online, in bookstores and libraries, or hopefully on your own shelves. Prizes in two categories: Youth (under 18) and Adult.
THE SIMPLE RULES:
1. Videos must be no longer than five minutes.
2. Videos must include the entire poem.
3. Don McKay MUST be credited as the writer in the film itself and in the video description at YouTube or Vimeo, along with the title of the book or magazine in which the poem appeared, the publisher, and the date of publication.
4. Know copyright. Get permission to use audio, video and photography, or ensure that what you use is in the public domain. Moving Poems has compiled details about fair use, and links to troves of public domain video and audio here: Web Resources for Videopoem Makers. Best yet, shoot your own material. (Don McKay has given his permission for his poems to be used in this contest.)
5. Upload your video to YouTube or to Vimeo and send us the link at victoriawritersfestival@gmail.com. Please note if you are entering as a Youth.
6. Have fun – Don does!
The deadline is November 1, and the festival takes place November 6-8. Click through for details about judges, entry fees, and prizes, as well as samples of McKay’s poetry.
I’m glad to see my web resources guide put to good use, but I’m especially delighted to see a regular writers festival creating a space for videopoetry. I think this is part of a growing, international trend for writing or poetry festivals to include a screening of poetry films. In a few more years, it may seem odd to put on a writing festival and not include film or video in some way.
Liberated Words festival underway, and ZEBRA releases full schedule
As previously announced, Liberated Words III is spread over two weekends this year, so if you couldn’t make it to Bristol for today’s events “showcasing Memory competition finalists, commemorating the anniversary of the 1914-18 war, and entries based on Ivor Gurney’s poem The High Hills Have a Bitterness,” there’s always Sarah Tremlett’s screening of international poetry videos on the 19th and the day-long masterclass with Marc Neys on the 20th. Visit the front page of their website for the details, and if you’re on Facebook, ask to join the Liberated Words group page, so that even if you can’t make the festival, you can still participate vicariously.
Meanwhile, I see that the full schedule for next month’s ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has been uploaded to the Literaturwerkstatt website. And Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel summarized the results of the competition on Facebook earlier this week:
More than 770 Submissions from 70 countries were sent in for the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The Programme Commission nominated 29 of them for the competition. Four prizes will be given out this year by the three-person, international jury: the ZEBRA Prize for the Best Poetry Film«, sponsored by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, the »Goethe Film Prize«, sponsored by the Goethe Institute, the »Ritter Sport Film Prize«, sponsored by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG (Ritter Sport Chocolate), the »Prize for the Best Film for Tolerance«, sponsored by the Foreign Office, as well as the ZEBRINO – the prize for the Best Film for Children and Young People sponsored by Berlin on bike. The prizes have a total value of €12,000.
I’m excited! This will be my first time attending the world’s premiere poetry film festival. I’ll be part of a panel discussion on October 18th, “Poetry Films in the Digital World,” focusing on “the opportunities presented by various internet platforms.” I hope to see some of you there. Here’s the 2014 ZEBRA trailer:
Speaking of opportunities presented by internet platforms, I think all poetry film festivals should release trailers on the web. I seem to recall that the Body Electric festival in Colorado had a particularly effective trailer last year.
Call for submissions: 3rd annual International Film Poetry Festival in Athens
The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network are once again sponsoring a poetry film festival in Athens this December.
There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.
The International Film Poetry Festival 2014 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.
The deadline for submissions is November 20. Click through to read the rest and to download the application form.
Right Hand Pointing magazine tempts poets to submit with promise of a video made from their work
The always innovative online literary magazine Right Hand Pointing has hired an unusual reader for their next issue.
81: (December 2014): Special poetry issue: “Swoon,” One to three poems will be selected by Marc Neys who, under the name “Swoon” creates videos incorporating poems. Marc will create a video based on the winning one, two, or three poems. We will begin reading for this issue immediately. Deadline October 31, 2014.
And check out their fancy multimedia guidelines! I can’t remember the last time I was so entertained by a list of rules.
Neys probably needs no introduction to regular readers/viewers of Moving Poems, but just in case, here’s his website.
Their Names by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
A film by Lori H. Ersolmaz, incorporating Nic S.’s reading of a poem by Sally Bliumis-Dunn at The Poetry Storehouse. Two other video remixers have also tried their hand at this poem, Paul Broderick and Nic S. herself, but Ersolmaz’s film is in a class by itself.
Clothesline by Kathleen Kirk
The words and voice of Kathleen Kirk (via The Poetry Storehouse) meet the ear and eye of Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon.
The visuals took me some time to figure out.
Different approaches, different ideas resulted in at least three completely different videos.
None of them were what I thought was needed.
Number four hit all the right notes:
Sunlight, straight lines, bright colours, slightly experimental and a strange overall atmosphere…
Happy with this one.
What’s In The Cellar, Mrs Mellor? by Michael Somerset Ward
A fun light verse written and read by Michael Somerset Ward and animated by Jessica Ashman, whose description on Vimeo reads:
A short animation made for the Sheffield arts festival, Sensoria in 2013, for the programme ‘Now Will You Listen’.
A great bunch of musicians and poets came up with dark stories and poems which were given to a bunch of animators to create visuals to for a live performance at the festival. Mine is an eerie tale about a slightly unhinged babysitter…
Created using 2D digital animation in Flash, which was then printed out on a digital craft cutter machine and then placed on a glass line tester, along with lots of fun textures.
Big thanks to mister Chris Randall at Second Home Studios, for letting me invade his excellent studio space and for his downright excellent hospitality.
I found an interview with Michael Somerset Ward about the “Now Will You Listen” program. Here’s what he says about the animated poems:
There are three poems in the set and although I didn’t set out to write verse they just began appearing. The poems are some of the most successful pieces and we are performing all three at Sensoria. The animation factor gave us the opportunity to provide a live soundtrack – something we all love doing. Also with all three disciplines involved – literature, film and music – a viewer or listener can have an all-out assault on the senses or can choose to zone in wherever.
¿Las oyes cómo piden realidades…? (Do you hear how they beg for realities?) by Pedro Salinas
Poem and voice by the great Spanish poet Pedro Salinas (1891-1951), one of the Generation of ’27 along with Lorca, Aleixandre, Alberti, and so many other wonderful writers. Click on the CC icon to read the English subtitles (my own translation).
I made an earlier version of this five years ago with the subtitles baked into the video, and when someone recently asked me for a version without them, I realized I’d have to completely redo it, both because I no longer have the software I used then, and also because the earlier version was too low-resolution. I found and used the same soundtrack, but unfortunately I don’t remember who’s responsible for the music, only that it had been released to the public domain on archive.org. The audio of Salinas comes from palabravirtual.com. The footage of amorous garter snakes is my own, filmed in April 2009.
In the subtitles, the short phrase in brackets appears in Salinas’s published text but not in his recitation. Since the line means “which is the nothing,” or “which is nothingness,” I guess he decided to make it literal by reading nothing.
Incidentally, for other Vimeo users who might be wondering about the subtitles, I used Amara (it’s free and easy to use) and followed their instructions for uploading the file to Vimeo. For those of us with fairly basic video editing software, I think it’s actually easier to add subtitles in this way, and I’m thinking it might be a good idea to start adding closed captioning to English-language videopoems as well, and quit discriminating against the hearing-impaired.
Allen Crawford’s Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself
A gorgeous filmpoem by David Scott Kessler, made as a trailer for what looks like a gorgeous book. Here’s the description from the publisher, Tin House Books:
Walt Whitman’s iconic collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, has earned a reputation as a sacred American text. Whitman himself made such comparisons, going so far as to use biblical verse as a model for his own. So it’s only appropriate that artist and illustrator Allen Crawford has chosen to illuminate—like medieval monks with their own holy scriptures—Whitman’s masterpiece and the core of his poetic vision, “Song of Myself.” Crawford has turned the original sixty-page poem from Whitman’s 1855 edition into a sprawling 234-page work of art. The handwritten text and illustrations intermingle in a way that’s both surprising and wholly in tune with the spirit of the poem—they’re exuberant, rough, and wild. Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is a sensational reading experience, an artifact in its own right, and a masterful tribute to the Good Gray Poet.
Here’s Allen Crawford’s website. The score for the film, “I Contain Multitudes,” is the work of Ben Warfield, and both Warfield and Kessler are good friends of Crawford, according to his blog post about the trailer. I like what he says about book trailers:
David really did a wonderful job: viewers at first will wonder where the book is, only to realize that they had been seeing it all along. Book trailers are still a relatively new thing, but I think David has set a nice precedent by going with a slower pace and lyrical treatment: there’s no reason why a book trailer should look like a film trailer, after all.
[…]
My good friend Bill was kind enough to serve as our “Whitman” (How odd and fortuitous that one of my dearest friends should be a dead ringer for Whitman…)
(Hat-tip: Poets & Writers’ Clip of the Day)
Program for Vienna Poetry Film Festival on November 5-6 takes shape
The Austrian artists’ collective Art Visuals & Poetry have released some additional information about their upcoming festival via their occasional email newsletter, which includes this summary in English:
The Vienna Poetry Filmfestival will take place from November 5-6, in Vienna at Schikaneder Kino, Margaretenstraße 24, 1040 Wien. We have set up a curated international film program around the competition program with films from Germany, Georgia and Norway on the 5th of November. Best of and the winners will be presented on the 6th of November together with the live visualized poetry performance Rhea Krcmarova / 4youreye. All participants are invited to join the festival for free! Please follow the festival informations on our website regarding reduced accomodations in Vienna. The winners of the competition and other selected films will be presented again on December 2, 2014 at the cinema Künstlerhaus, Vienna. More details coming soon!
Clicking on the latter link reminds me to add a reminder that their film competition is still open for entries through September 30.
New Third Form, Swoon’s View columns
September’s edition of “The Third Form,” Erica Goss’ column on videopoetry at Connotation Press, features interviews with two people whose work I’ve been following for a long time. Yorkshire poet Gaia Holmes (Moving Poems archive) was among the first poets to have her work animated for Comma Press back in 2006, and she’s been a consistent favorite of British poetry filmmakers over the years — a good example of how emerging poets or those from outside the establishment can get a big boost in visibility by letting their works be adapted for film.
“I don’t have any say about the videos,” she said. “I’m not involved in their making. I go to the screening and there’s the poem, but I’m happy it turns out that way. When a poem is out in the world, it’s open to anyone’s interpretation. For example, the video for ‘Occasional China’ takes the poem in a completely different direction from what I imagined.”
In the the second half of her column, Goss talks with American poet, filmmaker and digital literature expert Matt Mullins (Moving Poems archive), whose work first caught my eye back in 2009 — the year he discovered videopoetry, it turns out. The interview focuses on a series of three films he’s made collaboratively with the Belgian filmmaker Swoon (Marc Neys).
“I gave Matt several videos with music and said he could re-edit them, add new music, combine as he saw fit,” Swoon said. “The videos I sent Matt were finished products and/or experiments that were not properly used before. They might have never seen daylight if it wasn’t for Matt’s vision and creativity to breathe a new and different life into them.”
Click through for the full interviews and to watch the films.
Speaking of Swoon, I was pleased to see another installment of his column on videopoetry, as well. This month at Awkword Paper Cut he examines “The ephemeral worlds of Sandra Salter & Benedict Newbery,” a British animator-poet team who have made two films so far, both striking for their use of watercolor and a certain quality which Neys characterizes as “simple and naïve, almost. But … rich and … full of life.” As usual with a “Swoon’s View” column, his experience and insider perspective is invaluable, e.g.:
I’ve seen this video on different occasions, in different venues. On large screens, on small screens. It never fails, never disappoints. I rarely saw an animated video that came this close to imitating real life, yet not looking like it.
These videos prove that big budgets are not always needed to deliver fantastic work. A warm love for the words, intelligent use of sources and a playful feel for rhythm and illustration can do so much more than money.
