~ News and Views ~
Conference on poetry, film and technology at FACT: three views
I was happy to see a comprehensive, 17-page report [PDF] on the Feb 5 Send and Receive conference about “Poetry, Film and Technology in the 21st Century” at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) from the poet John Davies, A.K.A. Shedman. His highly literate and personal take on the conference gives one a good sense of the sorts of issues under discussion and the often conflicting opinions of the participants. Davies also did his own research on poetry film to flesh out the article, which he titled “Send and Receive: misaligned model or magnificent mix?” It concludes with a brief description of each film shown. Check it out.
Davies includes his reactions to two presentations that are also online. Zata Kitowski has posted her talk [PDF] on the semiotics of poetry film at the PoetryFilm website. And while it doesn’t relate to poetry film per se, George Szirtes’ presentation on how he uses Twitter and Facebook to draft poems is nevertheless very interesting, and may be read on his blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).
Szirtes also shared some informal reactions to the conference, including the poetry films, in a post on Facebook that’s fully public (i.e., you don’t have to be a Facebook friend of a friend, or even a logged-in user, to read it). Although his assessment of the films was a bit less critical than Davies’, they agreed on which was the stand-out: Dream Poem by Danny Caswell Dann Casswell. “The Dream Poem won it for me, because the idea of the poem was the idea of the film—the one was the other,” Szirtes writes. And Davies called it “superb – witty, clever but thoughtful animation that played with the media. A true poetry film with the right mix and balance.” Unfortunately, I can’t find any trace of this film on the web. Hopefully that will change at some point. It’s available to view on the PoetryFilm site.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Only the Lonely”
Only the Lonely by Marie Craven
Poem and reading by Neil Flatman
Music by Dementio 13
When I first viewed Only The Lonely it reminded me of Marina Abramovic’s work. The message and performance is enticing. However, I find most performance art to be lacking in substance and execution. In this case it does not take away from the underlying theme, which I believe to be uneasiness.
A young woman sits in the middle of a white room. It’s apparent she is filled with anxiety as passers-by speed along. They can probably feel her discomfort thus making her unapproachable. Perhaps her presence is so visibly intense they are afraid to engage on any level.
In terms of the video, again the feeling of angst comes across well. The fact that we have to move through the world is frightening, even if we are just sitting still.
The composition seems to be intentionally centered. Personally I would rather have the artist make better use of the female image, possibly close-ups and various camera angles. This would make it much more dramatic. It’s a short video, and I think too much time is wasted using the zoom. Judging from the wall hangings I assume she is in a gallery performing. I would rather experience her in an airport or office building where people come and go only because they have to. In situations such as these, we accept the sterile atmosphere. A location such as an airport or hospital would connect more to life, rather than staring at a bunch of blank canvases and ignoring a person sitting in the middle of a room. I presume that was the artist’s intention. She is part of the exhibition and the attendees are not comfortable connecting with her on any level.
The avoidance of contact by the audience makes Only The Lonely a thought-provoking piece, but I think it could be stronger. Getting the point across is key, but I do wish the artist had taken it a step further and pushed the envelope. The music is really nice but it doesn’t fit the mood. If this piece is about pain and anxiety then the other media should support it. I feel as if the artist is holding back. Give me something I can latch onto and remember, like a nightmare that keeps reoccurring.
Now if I could only get that Roy Orbison song out of my head.
Lori Ersolmaz: Beginning with the End in Mind
Still from “I Too Come From“
I always have a sense of excitement when I am in the process of creating a new filmpoem. I find I am not as prolific as others in the genre who I admire. Not only does my other work get in the way, but sometimes it takes me time to soak in a poem, and I don’t like to be rushed. I have been wanting to develop a piece from Luisa Igloria’s work ever since I read about her practice of writing a poem each day on Dave Bonta’s website, Via Negativa.
At least six months ago I looked through The Poetry Storehouse for Luisa’s work and downloaded her audio, then I surfed again about a month ago. I printed out “I Too Come From” and read it a handful of times before I decided to shoot some new footage on a rainy day. I patiently waited for drips to fall from a line and watched rain falling softly on my back steps with the shadow of a very old oak tree (which may have to be cut down later this year), surprisingly echoing the words, “…elbow of an alley shaped like an L…” I also looked through my archived footage seeking unused imagery and then went online after reading about a new source of public domain material on Pond5, both from Nic S.’s post on Facebook and an email from Pat Aufderheide at the Center for Media and Social Impact.
The biggest difference I had in producing this piece is that I edited it backwards. I can’t say for sure why, but it was easier for me to reconstruct the poem visually starting with the end first and moving backward towards the beginning. This seems a bit crazy, but after some reflection perhaps it had more to do with my wanting to merge moth imagery I shot last summer with a nuclear cloud clip downloaded from Pond5. Some type of metaphor clicked for me, and I started with that first—from there it all just glided along.
While I knew which clips I wanted to use, I moved imagery around based on my connection to the words and experimented with collaging images together. I have a tendency to be abstract in my approach to filmpoetry, but I felt figures were needed, especially since the overwhelming sense I got from the poetry is one of independence—something that resonates with me on a personal level.
I played around in Motion to create the title sequence and while I collected some sound effects along the way, as usual I left the soundscape to the end. I was so happy to finally use my footage from an underground train in Belgium. I tried to use the imagery too, but it didn’t work. As audio goes, I have found Freesound to be a great resource, but it’s time consuming trying to find what feels like just the right effect, or music. In the end I always hope I do justice to the poetry and that viewers enjoy watching and listening to it as much as I have creating it.
Carbon Culture offers $1000 poetry film prize
Carbon Culture is a print and online journal at “the intersection of technology + literature + art.” This week they announced a unique poetry film contest:
Poetry Film Prize
We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film using the complete text of John Gosslee’s poem “Portrait of an Inner Life.” The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across a number of networks, note in a one page ad alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. All entries are considered for sponsored entry to our list of film festivals and poetry film festivals. Deadline for submissions is January 1, 2016.
Rules for Submission
1. Create a video adaption of John Gosslee’s poem “Portrait of an Inner Life” using the full text of the poem and the author’s name
2. Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live
3. Submit the piece as an Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.Prize Announcements will be made in April 2016
Film Types
All visual and textual interpretations of the poem are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal or non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.
Eligibility
The prize is open to students, individuals and teams.
Click through for the text of the poem (which is very brief) and the link to submit. Fjords Review (which Gosslee edits) included the poem in a video interview, filmed by Roberta Hall at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco:
Poetry at the movies: “Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet” and “Endless Poetry”
There was news this week of two more feature-length movies in which poets and poetry play a leading role. The animated film Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is due to be released in North American theaters next summer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Animation distributor GKIDS has acquired North American rights to Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, the animated featured produced by Salma Hayek that is based on the well-known book by Kahlil Gibran. The film, which was introduced at Cannes and made its North American premiere in Toronto, will be released this summer.
The film features a narrative story written and directed by Roger Allers with individual sections based on Gibran’s poems that were designed and directed by animation directors from around the world, including Tomm Moore (an Oscar nominee this year for Song of the Sea), Joan Gratz, Bill Plympton, Nina Paley, Joann Sfar, Paul and Gaetan Brizzi, Michael Socha and Mohammed Harib.
Its voice cast includes Hayek, Liam Neeson, Quvenzhane Wallis, John Krasinski, Frank Langella and Alfred Molina. The score is by Gabriel Yared, with additional music by songwriters Damien Rice, Glenn Hansard and Lisa Hannigan and performances by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
And the Chilean poet Alejandro Jodorowsky will sit in the director’s seat for a movie based on his autobiography, Endless Poetry (Poesia sin Fin), as Variety explains:
Alejandro Jodorowsky is set to produce and direct “Endless Poetry,” the continuation of his latest film “The Dance of Reality,” which played at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight.
A Chilean-French-Japanese production, “Endless Poetry” is a fantasy-filled autobiographical tale based on the last chapters of Jodorowsky’s book “The Dance of Reality.”
[…]
The film recounts Jodorowsky’s teenage years in Santiago, Chile, and chronicles his struggle to overcome family pressure and find his path as an artist and a poet. Jodorowsky emerged along with Enrique Linh, Nicanor Parra and Stella Diaz as one of the most influential poets of Chile in the 1940s.
“In my memories, my years in Chile had long been associated with suffering and loneliness… but today, at my 85 years of age I have not the least doubt that my encounter with poetry justifies my emergence in that country,” said Jodorowsky.
The producers are planning a Kickstarter campaign, to be launched on February 15.
Matt Mullins: Ten Notable Single-Author Videopoems
I really enjoy all forms of videopoetry, and collaborations have certainly led to some of the most groundbreaking and vital work out there, but I also have tremendous admiration for those people who work primarily as singular “videopoets.” To have the skill and talent to write a compelling poem and the ability to place that poem into an equally compelling visual and sonic context is an impressive artistic accomplishment.
But as I sat down to compile a list of ten single-author/author-made pieces that have influenced me, I quickly realized that there’s a tremendous amount of excellent work of this type out there. So I decided to narrow my list even further to focus on those poets who have demonstrated that they have the skills I mention above, and the ability to read their own poetry convincingly, and the ability to deliver the whole package in four minutes or less.
So in no particular order, here they are: Ten notable single-author videopoems under four minutes where the author also reads the poem.
Mouth
Timothy David Orme, 2012
Kleine Reise (Little Trip)
Claire Walka, 2010
The Dinosaur Book is Green Fire
Brenda Clews, 2011
the giant
Kate Greenstreet, 2009
Vowels
Temujin Doran, 2012
Where They Feed Their Children to Kings
John Gallaher, 2012
when you land in New Orleans
Ben Pelhan, 2012
Profile
R.W. Perkins, 2011
It turns out
Martha McCollough, 2012
Who’d have thought
Melissa Diem, 2013
Three poetry films in latest issue of TriQuarterly
TriQuarterly 147, Winter/Spring 2015 is out, and kicks off as usual with some high-quality poetry film: Situation 7, a video essay by poet Claudia Rankine and filmmaker John Lucas, and two “cinepoems”: John D. Scott’s In the Waiting Room (poem by Elizabeth Bishop) and Martha McCollough’s Indefinite Animals.
TriQuarterly remains one of the most prestigious literary journals to feature multimedia works. Submissions are open for five months, beginning on February 16.
Pond5 Public Domain Project gives free access to 10,000 historical film clips
Online multimedia marketplace Pond5 has just launched a Public Domain Project, which provides free access to a variety of media including nearly 10,000 public-domain film clips from various U.S. government sources and other repositories. It’s unclear what percentage of it has been uploaded to the web for the first time, but simply having such a large, curated collection available under one virtual roof and searchable by keyword should make it an important new resource for videopoets and other filmmakers. According to a help page,
Pond5 is thrilled to begin representing public domain content on our Website through the Pond5 Public Domain Project. We are making this content available to our customers and contributors without any charge, so they can rediscover part of mankind’s history and build upon it in their creative projects. We have designated Content on the Website as being “Public Domain Content” when we believe that it is in the public domain under the laws of the United States, meaning there are no copyright restrictions over that content.
[…]
What are Pond5’s sources of Public Domain Content?
We have generally obtained our public domain content from three categories of sources:
- U.S. government repositories of creative works.
- Other online and offline collections of public domain content that we believe are reputable.
- Content that our curators or contributors have reviewed, and based on that review, believe are in the public domain.
I’ve added the link to Moving Poems’ page of Web Resources for Videopoem Makers. Thanks to Anna Dickie for bringing it to my attention.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “Highway Coda”
Highway Coda by Matt Mullins (Mull)
Poem and video by Matt Mullins
Music by Michael Pounds
I usually look for collaborations between a video artist and poet, but in the case of Highway Coda, the poet Matt Mullins wears both hats. The visuals are a perfect setting for his poetry. The music by Michael Pounds complements the splendor of this piece. That is the actual partnership. It’s a wonderful soundtrack that takes an otherwise mundane journey and turns it into an adventure, allowing us to visit the past by way of entering lost time.
Concerning the video, the burn filter that Matt applies along with sound effects throws the viewer into a mid-20th-century atmosphere, very cool and nostalgic. The use of looping and reversing of the driving section of the video follows the poem perfectly, thus causing the rhythm of the piece to be emotionally disquieting yet engaging.
I love the unconventional visuals such as garbage and abandoned cars that the poet uses to symbolize icons and landmarks. A good example is the Chinese food container that was taken away by a crow. At first I was confused as to why he chose to show us wings and the crow. But when it’s explained that the crow took the container, realistically it makes perfect sense and adds a bit of humor. This is exactly what a scavenger would do, pick garbage and hold it in high regard as if it found a pot of gold.
There is a part of me that wants to know where the artist is driving, but then I ask myself does it really matter? He may just be coming or going from someplace routine. The impression I get from the video is that the artist resides in and identifies with the past. That’s his perception of life. This to me is what On The Road would look like if were made into a video poem.
Editor’s note: “The Art of Poetry Film” will be on hiatus for a week or two as Cheryl begin a three-month artist’s residency in Heidelberg, but she assures us she’ll still have time to write columns once she settles in, so filmmakers and videopoets may continue to contact her with suggestions of collaborative projects to review.
Call for videopoetry submissions: Atticus Review
Writer and videopoet Matt Mullins asked me to share this call-out:
The Atticus Review, an online literary/mixed media magazine, seeks filmpoems/videopoems of between one and eight minutes in length for publication. You can submit via Submittable at the Atticus Review website, or you can email mixed media editor Matt Mullins directly at m-mull at hotmail dot com.
How to exhibit videopoetry in a bookstore: Swoon’s “Gathering Light” exhibition
Here’s a kind of poetry-film screening that ought to be more common than it is. I’d been following the Facebook event page with much interest (and not a little regret that I can’t be there), but since I don’t know Dutch, I’m grateful that Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon has put up a short blog post, complete with pictures. I lifted a couple for this post, but do click through and look at the rest, because Marc et al. appear to have implemented this really well:
The cultural centre of my hometown (Mechelen) asked me if I was interested in a solo exhibition with my video’s.
Yes.
I asked my favourite bookstore if we could set up the exhibition in their store. Putting up different screens in between and on top of books.
Yes.
After a few days of setting everything up (a big thank you to the technical team of CC Mechelen), we opened ‘Gathering Light’ last week (on my birthday, talk about a present)
No more than 20 screens (of different size and age) spread out over this fine store. A selection of what I’ve been making over the last 5 years.
If you’re thinking of making the trip, March 6 might be a good day to visit:
The exhibition runs until march 8 and we’ll end with a finissage dressed up as a showcase on videopoetry with live readings in ‘De Kapel van Contour’ on march 6 (more on that later)
Last call for submissions of remix-ready poems to the Poetry Storehouse
After consultation with her board of advisers (me included), Nic S. has made the difficult decision to phase out submissions to The Poetry Storehouse, with a deadline of 28 February. Filmmakers and other remixers will have a bit longer: she’ll continue to archive videos and other material on the site through September. After that, the site will become dormant — though all of its content will remain online indefinitely, and filmmakers will continue to be able to use it as a source of material and inspiration.
I’ve enjoyed the project immensely but it’s becoming clear to me that it has gone as far as it can in its present configuration – ie as a one-person all-volunteer show for daily operations. To get to the next level, the Storehouse would have to think about expanding its volunteer staff and/or trying to attract investment that would allow the operational staff to grow.
The past 14 months have proved the concept of the Storehouse and shown there really is considerable untapped energy behind the concept among poets, readers and remixers alike. I think both community and buy-in exist to take the Storehouse to the next level. The way my life is going, however, I know definitely that I have neither the time nor the desire to administer additional staff and/or resources.
Read the rest of Nic’s blog post for the full details.
