~ March 2018 ~
Elephant by Elisabet Velasquez
Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican poet Elisabet Velasquez took the top prize in Button Poetry’s 2017 Video Contest with Elephant, which she calls
a short choreo-film entirely produced by women of color against street harassment. The video is the collective effort of a group of interdisciplinary artists from New York City who came together to highlight the importance of looking at street harassment from a lens of reclamation of power.
We believe that all people who identify as women as well as gender nonconforming individuals who are impacted by street harassment have a right to their bodies and in this video we take our bodies back.
If you or any one you know has been impacted by street harassment in any way we invite you to share.
Peruvian filmmaker Connie Chavez directed the film and Keomi Tarver is the dancer and choreographer, with body art by Alicia C. Cobb.
Kinsugi by Safia Elhillo
I’ve had some critical things to say over the years about the use of poetry in advertising, but this Under Armour ad does it right. First off, they hire a contemporary poet, Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo, rather than re-purposing some out-of-copyright Walt Whitman or whatever, and they give her credit right up front: “words by Safia Elhillo.” (I saw a performance poetry-style ad for Transport for London two years ago that didn’t credit the poet at all.) Second, it actually feels like a real filmpoem: the words and images go together in a fresh and interesting way, suggesting that the poet worked closely with the (uncredited) filmmakers. I’m especially impressed considering how tired and cliched this kind of athlete-triumphing-over-adversity narrative has otherwise become in American television.
Perhaps that’s why the Under Armour advertising people decided to hire poets. This is one of a series of poetry-film ads they’ve produced, each with a tie-in to the Winter Olympics. An article in the Baltimore Sun by Lorraine Mirabella, “Under Armour unveils Lindsey Vonn film ahead of Olympics,” has the whole story:
Under Armour has put out a short film on Lindsey Vonn in its Unlike Any women’s campaign, just days before the start of Winter Games in South Korea, where the world champion skier will compete in her first Olympics since 2010.
The campaign, which celebrates female athletes who shatter expectations, looks at ways in which debilitating injuries and setbacks have served to motivate Vonn. The alpine skier missed the 2014 Olympics because of a serious knee injury. Last year, while training, she broke an arm.
The video is set to a poem by Safia Elhillo, author of last year’s The January Children, who wrote the piece specifically for Vonn. It’s called, “Kintsugi,” the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum.
“This is what I became each wound filled with sunlight to bond my old self to my new,” the poem goes, recited in its debut in the film by the poet.
Under Armour has been working with Elhillo over the past few months on the poem and film, which is a new, remix of Vonn’s original Unlike Any video released last fall.
“It accentuates not just my strengths, but also my weaknesses and my story and coming back from adversity,” Vonn said in a Sun interview in October. “I’m strong because of everything I’ve been through.”
The sports brand launched its Unlike Any campaign in July. Each of five films featured spoken word artists who created poems to fit stories of each of five athletes, Misty Copeland, American Ballet Theater principal ballerina; Alison Desir, founder of Harlem Run Crew; sprinter Natasha Hastings; professional stuntwoman Jessie Graff and Chinese taekwondo champion and actress Zoe Zhang.
Under Armour said the latest Vonn video, coming off her World Cup wins this past weekend, was inspired by the athlete’s “undeniable strength and dedication to her sport…Lindsey is more than ready for gold.”
Still There by Lucy English
A recent addition to Lucy English‘s collaborative, online poetry-film anthology The Book of Hours by the Indiana-based multimedia poet Matt Mullins.
Terms and Conditions by Tania Hershman
A videopoem by Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron for the title poem from Tania Hershman‘s debut poetry collection with Nine Arches Press. A song by Tania’s brother Nick Hershman, “You Get What You Deserve”, is also incorporated into the soundtrack, and the interplay between the two texts is part of what makes this work so well, I think.
Call for entries: Silk Road International Poetry Film Festival
A new-to-me poetry film festival in Kazakhstan is soliciting poetry films and videos for the second year in a row. The Silk Road International Poetry Film Festival has a Facebook page, but the main English-language site for their 2018 festival is this page on sway.com.
II International Poetry Film Festival Silk Road will be held on June 21, 2018. The festival will be conducted within the frameworks of the Almaty International Literary Biennale in the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Almaty).
Honorary chairman of the Festival Jury – a legendary, world famous poet, literary critic, diplomat, political and public figure, linguist and scientist Olzhas Suleimenov.
The purpose of the festival:
Poetry Film Festival Silk Road is a cultural and educational, nonprofit project. In the era of social media and technology people tend to read less, especially poetry. The purpose of the festival is to popularize the invaluable legacy of the poets of the East, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and other regions among youth through visualization of the poetry by presenting it in forms of short movies and video illustrations.
Extensive research of poems for film adaptations provides the participants with an opportunity to get acquainted with poetic works of authors of different eras, cultures, and world outlook.
The festival seeks to create an intellectual platform for the exchange of ideas for the adaptation of screen versions, for identification of new poets, for cultural exchange between participants from different countries. The same functions in time fulfilled the Great Silk Road.
All the works of the participants will be posted in the public domains for familiarization and voting (one of the Prizes – Audience Choice Award).
Participation in Film Festival:
Everyone can take part. We give full freedom of self-expression. The participation is free.
Everything that’s needed:
1. It is encouraged to use poems of the Middle Eastern, East Asian and Central Asian poets (but you can use poems of any poet from any region) of any epoch and create a short film in any genre;
2. You can shoot your film with any smartphone, video camera or photo camera;
3. Film duration from 1 to 10 minutes;
4. Your film should be presented in English, Kazakh or Russian. If you use other languages, please add subtitles in one of the listed languages;
5. Post a video on youtube, vimeo or instagram (if your full video lasts up to 1 minute) with the hashtag #silkroadfestival2018 and send us a link, full name and phone number by May 15, 2018 to silkroadfestival@mail.ru
Citizenship, country of residence and the age of participants does not matter.
Prizes:
Prizes include the Grand Prix for the Best Poetry Film, Special Prize from festival’s sponsor and the Audience Choice Award. All participants will receive memorable certificates and festival laurels.
The finalists will be invited to a formal announcement of results and will be awarded the prizes on June 21 in the National Library in Almaty and International Literary Biennale. Some of the Biennale guests will include famous writers, poets, screenwriters and
playwrights from different countries.Finalist films will be shown for the jury and guests of the exhibition. Screenings will take place in the cinema of the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan and other sites of Almaty and Astana.
Click through for information about last year’s festival and finalists.
The Film and Video Poetry Society releases its 2018 symposium selections
The Los Angeles-based Film and Video Poetry Society, while remaining a bit of a cipher where its leadership and membership is concerned, does appear to be going ahead with the planned symposium on April 26-29. Despite the $18 submission fee, they seem to have had no shortage of submissions, because their just-released list of selections is not short:
The 2018 Film and Video Poetry Symposium, presented by the Film and Video Poetry Society, has announced its official program selections for the inaugural edition of The Film and Video Poetry Symposium. The Film and Video Poetry Symposium celebrates artistic excellence found through the union of poetry, film, video, and new media. The symposium brings together cinema enthusiasts, poets, filmmakers, video artists, and media artists to discover international work that represents this dynamic field.
This year’s symposium will screen over eighty films representing filmmakers, poets, and artists from over twenty countries, along with workshops, guided panels, and conversations. The Film and Video Poetry Symposium runs from Thursday, April 26 – Sunday, April 29, 2018 in Los Angeles, Ca.
New Liberated Words website
Congratulations to Liberated Words—Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English’s videopoetry- and poetry film-promoting organization—for their brand new website overhaul. It is now much easier to navigate, not to mention better looking than its predecessor. According to a post on their Facebook page, it’s the work of Peter Hunter. He adapted a three-column WordPress magazine theme, with a top navigation bar menu of major post categories that collapses behind a three-line “hamburger” icon on mobile view. The site loads quickly on my slow internet connection.
I’m relieved to see this, because previously I think new content was being added to the front page by editing and re-publishing it, which made for an incoherent archive and provided no way to subscribe to new content. Now there’s an RSS feed and everything, so I won’t have to worry about missing new posts… such as this introduction of two new members of their team, Caleb Parkin and Ursula Billington, or this piece on their judging of poetry films for the upcoming Newlyn International Film Festival. Well done.
