~ Filmmaker: Janet Lees ~

Secrets of the perpetually sick [redacted] by Jackie Morrey-Grace

On 11 June, 2020 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Janet Lees‘ first poetry film with a text by another writer sees her trying out a completely new filmmaking approach as well. Manx author and performance poet Jackie Morrey-Grace recites her poem ‘Secrets of the perpetually sick’ in a hospital, but does anyone hear her? As Janet wrote on the Poetry Film Live Facebook page,

We were filming in a hospital training room last year and I was drawn to the security camera footage which was showing on a screen in an adjacent room. I filmed this and slowed it down and really like the dark quality of it, simmering with the rage, despair and alienation Jackie has experienced due to chronic and severely crippling autoimmune health challenges. Redacting her much longer poem felt quite brutal, but in a sense that was also fitting, because in the system Jackie was often unheard and outright dismissed.

The music is ‘Anxious‘ by Sextile. For more of Jackie’s performance poetry, see her YouTube channel.

Consensus trance by Janet Lees

On 3 May, 2020 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: , | Filmmaker:

A new video from artist and poet Janet Lees, who calls it

A film poem for the end times
Words & imaging by Janet Lees, with thanks to Richard Heinberg for the title. Image taken on the last Thursday in April 2020.
Music, ‘On a Thursday in April’ by Crysalide Shoegaze

Huntress by Janet Lees

On 10 August, 2019 by Marie Craven with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Huntress is by Isle of Man poet and artist Janet Lees, who also shot and animated the images.

The piece encourages us towards a wider-awake vision, towards more sensitive ears, with attention facing both inwards and outwards, and on the perceptual spaces in between. True to the soul of our times, it is deeply moving and beautifully well-realised.

George Simpson is the creator of the soundtrack, providing a track called “Artemis”, from his album Still Points In The Turning World. Emotionally affecting, with an elegant and simple extended first movement, followed by expansion into expressive drama, the music coherently accompanies the visual and textual elements in an organic way.

All the elements of this video merge to become an audio-visual experience far more than any sum of its parts.

Ambulance ballet by Janet Lees

On 24 January, 2019 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Isle of Man-based poet and artist Janet Lees has long been an important figure in the international poetry film scene, often collaborating with Terry Rooney, but recently she’s been experiencing a creative surge, she told me, and one only needs to visit her Vimeo page to see the evidence: a number of new, generally very short films that showcase her range of interests and stylistic approaches. One constant in her work is the preference for text-on-screen. She also often deploys just a single shot, which works because—as I’ve come to learn by following her on Instagram—she has a terrific eye. Her one-line description on IG: “everything is poetry”.

The worst thing by far by Janet Lees

On 29 August, 2018 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

Janet Lees‘ latest poetry film: “Written & filmed by Janet Lees. Music – ‘Scriptures’ by Post War Stories. Edited by Glenn Whorrall.”

The music plays an unusually prominent role, but I found the interplay between the lyrics and Janet’s text on the screen intriguing. And because the music was so much a feature, the slow-motion single shot felt almost like an ironic commentary on the fast cuts and frenetic camerawork that characterize so many music videos.

The hours of darkness by Janet Lees

On 6 November, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

“Written & filmed by Janet Lees. Edited by Glenn Whorrall.” Thus the Vimeo description. But there’s much more information on the British poet and artist (plus her regular partner in videopoetry collaborations, Terry Rooney) in the new “Swoon’s View” column up at Moving Poems Magazine. Marc Neys describes their films as “short and sharp as a razor … a breath of fresh air in these times of cultural abundance and profusion of advertising.” And Lees provides some background on each of the four films Neys has selected. About this one, she writes:

‘The hours of darkness’ features footage of flamingos that I took in a wildlife park in the middle of winter. I found the sight of the flamingos in this big gloomy shed electrifying – there was something both prehistoric and post-apocalyptic about it. In my mind, I knew there was only one poem for this film – ‘The hours of darkness’, which I’d written about a year before, inspired by the anodyne yet always to my ear potentially sinister messages contained within in-flight announcements and other forms of mass communication. Here, the repeated phrase ‘May we remind you’ assumes an increasingly dark, Orwellian tone.

Go read the rest (and check out the other three films).

,