Posts By Dave Bonta
Heartbreak by Emmet Kirwan
An exemplary spoken-word poetry film directed by Dave Tynan, featuring actors Jordanne Jones and Deirdre Molloy as well as the poet himself, Emmet Kirwan. It was selected for Special Mention this past weekend by the jury of the Weimar Poetry Film Award, on which I was honored to serve along with animator Ebele Okoye and writer Stefan Petermann. Our statement, translated from the German:
What questions can a poetry film take? Perhaps: in what kind of a world do we live? And in what kind of world do we want to live? In a stirring manner, Heartbreak pursues this question. The film by Dave Tynan tells the story of a young, Irish girl who unintentionally gets pregnant and had to raise her son all on her own. At the same time it is the history of a misogynist structured society and this, not only in Ireland, but everywhere in the world. Carried by the passionate, multi-faceted oration of the Spoken- Word poets Emmert Kirwan, an efficient camera and a wise narration Heartbreak plays around the questions of self-determination about own bodies, objectification, sexism and gender roles. The film succeeds in an impressive way, to translate the powerful words into touching images while remaining clear and direct. Tynan and Kirwan know how to arouse empathy, stimulate thoughts concerning a situation, but above all, anger!, yet, looking into the future with confidence. Heartbreak is a feminist poetry film for women and men. Courageous, angry, heartbreaking; an exclamation mark. A film the world must see. C’mere, C’mere, C’mere.
The YouTube description notes that it was “commissioned and developed by THISISPOPBABY as part of RIOT, Winner of Best Production at Dublin Fringe Festival 2016.” To date it has been viewed over 1.3 million times on Facebook and 201,000 times on YouTube, where it has inspired a lively discussion, with the usual #notallmen idiots vastly outnumbered by those resonating with its message.
Juteback Poetry Film Festival 2017 announces new date, location
Juteback Productions announced two days ago on Instagram and Facebook that this year’s festival has been re-scheduled for June 23 at 7:00 PM at the Wolverine Farm Publishing’s Letterpress & Publick House, Fort Collins, Colorado (USA). It had originally been scheduled for May 20. Advanced tickets aren’t necessary, according to the web page.
JPFF is the continuation of the Body Electric Poetry Film Festival from a few years back, with the original director, R.W. Perkins, sharing the programming duties with Matt Mullins. No word yet on their selections.
Lucy English on poetry-film collaboration
The British poet and poetry-film scholar Lucy English has a very interesting essay in Sabotage recounting the genesis of her Book of Hours project and how she’s adapted her poetic style to the exigencies of collaborative poetry-film creation.
When I tell people I am working on a poetry film project they make the assumption that I am creating films of myself reading or performing poetry. This is a natural response as I am a spoken word poet and, typically, my work is delivered live to an audience. My desire to create poetry films has made me re-evaluate the type of poetry I write, what word choices to use and what form it takes. As I developed The Book of Hours I have experimented with the placement of spoken poetry in a poetry film and formulated definitions of how a ‘poetry film’ differs from other filmic interpretations of poetry such as films of poets reading their work or ‘film poems’; short poetic films. The poetry I have written for this project is leaner, and more focused. There is more ‘space’ within the words for the moving images to interact and more silence. In The Book of Hours I have attempted to bring the delicate poetry film form, which is a growing but niche area of poetry, into the populist and digitally distributed arena of spoken word.
SINESTESIA releases 2017 videopoetry line-up
The annual SINESTESIA videopoetry screening in Barcelona is scheduled for next Friday, May 19. Here’s a quick-and-dirty translation of their post announcing this year’s selection:
As we announced a few days ago, the latest edition of Barcelona’s SINESTESIA International Videopoetry Show will be held on May 19 at the Bonne Centre de Cultura de Dones Francesca Bonnemaison. This year as always, thanks for their cooperation to the videopoets and other individuals and entities interested in this discipline, above all for announcing the call in videopoetry-related websites. We have received more than 180 works from 66 artists from all continents, so we must say THANK YOU to everyone for your support.
Even though this is the third year that SINESTESIA has been held, it is still a growing project and we do not have enough time to be able to screen all the received videopoems, although we would love to. We have also been surprised by the high quality of the work in general, which has made the selection process very difficult. So after watching over and over, we have selected these 24 works for SINESTESIA 2017.
THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING AND MAKING THIS GROW!
Fucking him / Adrián García Gómez
Poema Cas’leluia & Final Brega / Bagadefente
To lend a tongue / Celia Parra
The afternoon / Charles Olsen
The hero is light / Eduardo Yague / Matt Mullins
Equus Caballus / H. Paul Moon
You will not return / Hernán Talavera
Words / James Pomeroy
A wave of thoughts / José Luis Ugarte
A few maxims / Kevin Cameron
The expiration / Lotus Hannon
Numbers / Maciej Piatek
Kill oneself / Manuel Onetti
I do not enjoy any reprieve / Maria Khan
First grade activist / Marie Craven
From nowhere with love / Mariia merkulova
Variations / Martín Klein
The garden of love / Miguel Maldonado
Smartuser / Kuesti Fraun
Allegory / Nobillis Bellator
More / Elena Chiesa
Opmeit / Ramon Bartrina
Aleppo / Swoon
Last message from Mr Cogito / Anna Woch
Words When Bored by Bob Holman
Marc Burnett animated this Bob Holman poem for the Visible Poetry Project.
Felis by Josh Jacobs
In some ways I feel it’s more difficult to make a super short videopoem than it is to make a long one, but animator Liah Honeycutt pulls it off. She notes that this is
The third installment in my visual poem collaboration with Josh Jacobs. This piece explores the themes of distance (in time and in physical space) and apathy, and attempts to capture the empty nostalgia that comes with looking back on bad memories after the pain has worn off. I decided on a very analog approach to the execution after being inspired by Josh’s original portfolio layout, opting to let the imperfections show through and stand as a metaphor for the human experience.
Programs used:
After Effects
Premiere ProMusic:
Come Down by Sylvan EssoSpecial thanks to Dean Velez.
Misc. Church Sermon #6 by Malcolm Friend
Malcolm Friend‘s poem was turned into a film by Matthew Ericson for the Visible Poetry Project.
Call for submissions: 5th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition
The Cork, Ireland-based Ó Bhéal reading series have just announced on Facebook that
Submissions are now open for the 5th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, in association with the IndieCork Film Festival AND we are thrilled to announce that esteemed Cork filmmaker Shaun O Connor will take part as one of this year’s judges (the other being a poet, TBC v soon!). Follow the link for submission guidelines & to view previous winners’ poetry-films.
The deadline for submissions is August 31, and the screening will be during the IndieCork festival (October 8-15). Past winners have hailed from Australia, the U.S., the Netherlands and Portugal. Check it out.
As a Child of Immigrants by Homa Zarghamee
This remix videopoem by Christina Ellsberg for the Visible Poetry Project incorporates a text and recitation by poet and economist Homa Zarghamee and historic footage from the Library of Congress.
Strangers (Die Fremden) by Rose Ausländer
A film interpretation of a Rose Auslander poem by the documentary filmmaker Lisa Seidenberg. I’ll be traveling to Europe soon myself, and this videopoem is helping me psych myself up for it.
Reading the English Wikipedia entry on Ausländer, I was struck by this factoid:
In the spring of 1943 Ausländer met poet Paul Celan in the Cernauti ghetto. He later used Ausländer’s image of “black milk” of a 1939 poem in his well-known poem Todesfuge published in 1948. Ausländer herself is recorded as saying that Celan’s usage was “self-explanatory, as the poet may take all material to transmute in his own poetry. It’s an honour to me that a great poet found a stimulus in my own modest work”.
Without the image, Celan’s poem wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful. Quite a “borrowing.”
