Posts By Dave Bonta
Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival Vienna 2017 winners announced
From the front page of poetryfilm-vienna.com/en:
ART VISUALS & POETRY FILMFESTIVAL VIENNA NOV 4 – 6, 2017
The award winners 2017
People, we had three great days with lots of fantastic poetry shorts. The festival donates 5 prizes. The festival awarded the Austrian animator Gudrun Krebitz for her film “Exomoon” with the main festival prize. The Rilke Competition prize or Special Award goes to Sebastian and Daniel Selke for their interpretation “rilke überoffen”. The only Honorable Mention of the Vienna Poetry Film Festival goes to Andrea Capranico from Italy for “The Landscape Within”. The Hubert Sielecki Award for the best Austrian poetry film of the festival goes to Moritz Stieber “Die Tatsachen im Fall Waldemar”. The OKTO audience award goes to Christian Heinbockel for his film “Lass uns von Liebe sprechen” or “Let´s speak about love”. Stay tuned. We will publish the jury statements soon!
Go here for the post in German.
Vaccine by Christy Ducker
I can’t say enough good things about this animated film by the ever-inventive Kate Sweeney. It works equally well as a poetry film or as a lyrical promo for vaccination; the transition from prose narration (by Dr. Mohamed Osman) to poetry half-way through is natural and powerful, and the poem by Christy Ducker is extraordinarily good. Here’s the description:
An animated film highlighting the research and fieldwork into finding a cure for Leishmaniasis, a chronic disease affecting millions of people in areas such as Sudan and Syria. The film was made as part of a collaboration between poet Christy Ducker and artist Kate Sweeney and scientists working at York University at The Centre for Chronic Disease.
Working in collaboration allows access to an other’s research, in this case, the work of scientists who are actively working to find a cure, and to study the causes and exacerbations of the Leishmaniasis disease. Dr Mohamed Osman sent me photographs he had taken when in Sudan of the people he was working with, trialing a vaccine for the disease. I was able to interview him, talk to him about my interests in stories and how we tell stories to frame experiences and use his response and his photographs in the initial part of the film. The second part of the film is an animated response to Christy’s poem that explores metaphorical links between medical vaccinations and the grieving process. Where the loose style of the first part of the film reflects the nature of conversation, the more structured animation in the second part reflects poetry’s structured, considered language.
Call for submissions: Weimar Poetry Film Award
Once again, the annual backup_festival at Bauhaus University and the Literary Society of Thuringia are cooperating to sponsor a poetry film prize in association with Poetryfilmkanal. The 2018 Weimarer Poetryfilmpreis is now open for submissions. Here’s the English version of their bilingual call:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Through the new film award, backup_festival and Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V. (LGT) are looking for innovative poetry films. Filmmakers from any nation and of any age are welcome to participate with up to three short films of up to 8:00 mins, which should explore the relation between film and written poetry in an innovative, straightforward way. Films that are produced before 2015 will not be considered. From all submitted films selected for the festival competition three Jury members will choose the winner of the main prize (1000 €). Moreover, an audience award of 250 € will be awarded.
The competition »Weimar Poetry Film Award« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen, Thüringer Staatskanzlei and the City of Weimar.
Deadline: January 31th, 2018.
Form for submissions [pdf] by mail or e-mail.
Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e. V.
Marktstraße 2–4
99423 Weimar, Germany
Email: info@poetryfilmkanal.de
The »Weimar Poetry Film Award« call for entries is international. For the submission send with the other informations a quotable text of the related poem in German or English.
Presentation of awards: June 2nd, 2018.
More information about the program: www.backup-festival.de.
Link.
Apartment Living by Meghan O’Rourke
Elizabeth Masucci directs and stars in this adaptation of “Apartment Living” by Meghan O’Rourke — the second installment in Masucci’s ambitious poetry short film anthology series (Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” was the first).
It’s always great to see professionally made, narrative cinema-style poetry films that seek to inhabit a poem and take it in new directions rather than just using it as a jumping-off point. Apartment Living compares very favorably with other recent, stand-out films of this type such as Lotus Hannon’s The Expiration (based on John Donne) and Laura Scrivano’s A Lovesong (based on Prufrock).
Endellion — excerpts from a poem by Emma McGordon
Filmmaker Rhiannon Tate collaborated on this film with spoken word poet Emma McGordon and composer David John Roche. Endellion was “produced as part of Endelienta‘s Artists in Residence 2017, held in St Endellion, North Cornwall,” according to the Vimeo description.
Hat-tip: the Poetry Film Live group on Facebook.
Stolen Moments by Luz Emma Cañas
Ella Quinn was 17 years old when she directed this film written by Luz Emma Cañas. It’s the winner of the Shoots! Youth Prize and finalist for Best Overall Production at Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival 2017. A new addition to the festival this year, the Shoots! Youth Prize was sponsored by the Worcester County Poetry Association and, judging from the finalists, received some very high-quality submissions.
See the PARTICL3 blog for more about all the members of the production team for Stolen Moments. Ella Quinn’s bio gives some background:
Ella is part of the family production team, PARTICL3, along with her brother Adrian Miles and mother Luz Emma. She served as Creative Director on their first short film, Pas de Deux, which was “Official Selection” at four international film festivals. She also contributed to the fine details of production from script editing to wardrobe selection. Stolen Moments is Ella’s directorial debut and is “Official Selection” at two film festivals for young filmmakers, Young Filmmakers Film Festival and Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival.
And here’s the synopsis:
Stolen Moments is the third in a series of four dance shorts that tell stories of women of color, relationships and intimacy. This story takes place during the Roaring Twenties. From fashion to sexuality, Evelyn is breaking free from societal norms established by the Victorian Era. She is the center of a love triangle with two ladies, Harper and Lily. One love is repressed while the other is realized but not publicly. Like Pas de Deux, our debut film, there is no dialogue in this short. It relies on poetry and visuals to tell the story. The film features three Sufi poems from the book, “Stolen Moments: A Lover’s Recourse,” by Luz Emma Cañas Madrigal who also produced and acts in both films.
