Posts By Dave Bonta
Spree by Ian McBryde
TV broadcasters’ cliches are literally dismembered in this riveting videopoem by Canadian-Australian poet Ian McBryde and videographer Martin Kelly.
these are a few of my favourite things by Janet Lees
U.K. poet Janet Lees and photographer and videographer Rooney are among my favorite poetry-film collaborative partnerships; every one of their too few videopoems is a small gem. Marc Neys profiled them back in 2014: “The Real and Pure Worlds of Janet Lees and Terry Rooney.” The above is a film he didn’t include in his piece, but to me it’s a great illustration of the poet’s dictum that less is more. Mayto Sotomayor is credited as editor.
Call for entries: Weimar Poetry Film Award 2017
Bauhaus University’s 19th annual Backup_festival will include an international poetry film competition for the second year in a row: the Weimar Poetry Film Award. The screening will be on the second day—May 18—of the five-day film festival, and the deadline for submissions is March 15.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Through the new Film Prize, 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 2014 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 Prize« is financed by Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen, Thüringer Staatskanzlei and the City of Weimar.
Entry deadline: March 15th, 2017.
Form for submissions [pdf] by mail or e-mail.
The »Weimar Poetry Film Prize« 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: May 20th, 2017.
More information about the program: www.backup-festival.de.
Clcik through to Poetryfilmkanal or visit FilmFreeway for the German text of the call.
Call for poetry films: MIX 2017 conference
Bath Spa University’s bucolic Newton Park campus may seem an unlikely venue for an important international conference on writing and technology, but apparently it has “the best specialist digital and studio resources for teaching in the South West [U.K.] – equal to anything found in top commercial organisations and broadcast companies.” The MIX 2017 conference sounds truly interdisciplinary, with “a vibrant mix of academic papers, practitioner presentations, seminars, keynotes, discussions and workshops. Alongside scholars and researchers, artists, creative writers and creative technologists interested in literary forms are welcome to submit proposals.” More to the point for our interests, the organizers have issued a special call for poetry films.
CALL FOR POETRY FILMS
MIX 2017: REVOLUTIONS, REGENERATIONS, REFLECTIONS
BATH SPA UNIVERSITY, NEWTON PARK CAMPUS. 10-12 JULY 2017
The themes for this year’s conference are revolutions, regenerations, reflections. We would like to encourage artists/poets and digital writers to submit poetry films/ film poems/video poetry to be screened during MIX in our Viewing Theatre at Newton Park campus. Poetry films/ film poems/ video poetry is an emerging genre that fuses the use of spoken-word poetry, visual images, and sound to create a stronger representation and interpretation of the meaning being conveyed.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR FILMS
Short films should be submitted via email using a direct link to Youtube, Vimeo or an open link to Dropbox or WeTransfer. The email subject line should read ‘Your Name; Poetry Film Submission’ and the body of the email should include a 50-word description of the film.
Maximum 2 submissions per artist, these can be sent in the same email. This email should be sent to mix@bathspa.ac.uk by Wednesday 1st March.
The films will be selected and curated by Lucy English, Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and Zata Banks (founder of PoetryFilm research art project https://poetryfilm.org)
VIEWING THEATRE TECH SPECS
4K HD projector and 5.1 surround sound
REQUIREMENTS
- Poetry films/ film poems/ video poetry up to 3 minutes.
- Submitted via email using a direct link to Youtube, Vimeo or an open link to Dropbox or WeTransfer.
- Email subject: ‘Your Name; Poetry Film Submission’; and the body of the email should include a 50-word description of the film.
- No more than 2 submissions per artist, these can be sent in the same email.
- Films must relate in some way to the conference’s themes: Revolutions, Regenerations and Reflections.
- English language or with English language subtitles.
- Deadline: Wednesday 1st March 2017.
If you would like to attend the conference please click on the ‘Bookings’ tab.
Aleppo by Howie Good
A new videopoem by Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon for a poem by Howie Good. Soundbites from Al Jazeera appear in the soundtrack together with Marc’s original music. When he shared it on Facebook, he included a brief note about its origin:
Howie Good wrote a strong poem, Aleppo. It called me and in one burst I created this video/soundpiece yesterday. Enjoy!
And a few days later, he indicated it might lead to more Swoon videopoems this year. Fingers crossed!
“Trump Draws”: satirical micro-videopoetry takes Twitter by storm
Behold the wonder that is @TrumpDraws: a Twitter account dedicated entirely to animated GIFs of Trump signing executive orders. The description reads, “i’m the president and i like to draw”. Created just four days ago, @TrumpDraws has 319,000 followers. It began with “house”
house pic.twitter.com/AHAjqMazJ4
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
and moved on to “kat”, “horse” and “turkey” (evidently made with one of the president’s own, small hands)
turkey pic.twitter.com/t6OJ15Fsan
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
before arriving at Trump’s favorite subject:
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
These alternative executive orders may seem silly and absurd at first, but cumulatively they do speak truth to power, critiquing the child-like capriciousness of President Trump’s so-far incoherent attempts to govern via poorly executed fiat.
my plane pic.twitter.com/o7jDiam0vP
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) February 3, 2017
What sorts of orders are these? Is it enough for the powerful to point and speak?
dinosar pic.twitter.com/R629EU9WDh
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) February 1, 2017
Is it fair to children to compare their crude yet often brilliant, uninhibited creations with the rambling, self-centered utterances of a sociopathic septuagenarian?
pretty pic.twitter.com/h2pc3SpKCV
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) February 2, 2017
Like all effective poetry, these miniature videopoems lead not to any definitive solution but to a radical reappraisal of the quotidian, stripped of all deadening cliches. In an increasingly perilous political environment they offer levity, yes, but more importantly they serve the salutary goal, more often honored in the breach, of refusing to normalize what is in fact both deeply aberrant and abhorrent.
Daisy Chain by Lucy English
A recent addition to Lucy English’s ambitious, multi-filmmaker Book of Hours project, this time from director Eduardo Yagüe—his third for the project, I think—with music by Podington Bear, voiceover by Rebecca Tantony, and an appearance by the actress Gabriella Roy. The stark contrast between the wintry footage and the summery text creates an interesting spark gap for the imagination to leap.
Hybrid by Nigel Wells
A recent video by Marie Craven extends her experimentation with kinestatic videopoetry in an ekphrastic direction. She described the process in a public Facebook post (links added):
Hybrid: a new collaborative video. The process of making it started with the original art by Marguerite de Mosa. Then came the music by SK123. Then finally the words, written by Nigel Wells in response to an early draft of the video. It’s a change in the order of how I usually put things together for a videopoem, and it was interesting trying things this way. Thanks to the great collaborators, Marguerite, Steve and Nigel, for working with me on this!
Dog by Richard Scott
An animation by Kate Jessop:
A young man comes to terms with his sexuality and confronts his bully in his home neighbourhood of Merton (London).
Specially commissioned for the Southbank Festival of Neighbourhood 2013, adapted from the poem by Richard Scott.
Click through to Vimeo for the text of the poem (or watch the newly uploaded version with subtitles).
Call for submissions: Rendez-vous vidéo-poésie du Festival de la poésie de Montréal 2017
I missed it last year (in part because I’m completely out of the loop with the Francophone videopoetry scene), but for the second year in a row, the Montreal Poetry Festival will include a videopoetry competition. Entries must have been made in 2016 or 2017, and either be the work of a Quebec artist or include extracts from Quebec poems. The deadline is March 6.
Video-poetry Rendez-vous will take place in the programming of the upcoming Montreal Poetry Festival, which runs from May 29 to June 4, 2017.
10 videopoemes will be selected to be screened at an evening at the Festival.
A jury of active members of the poetic and video community will present a prize of $ 500 to the winner of the competition.
Thus Google Translate. Here’s the whole call in French. It’s not clear whether videopoems in the other languages of Quebec, such as English or Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi, would be considered.
Marchant grenu / Walking Grainy by Henri Michaux
This film version of an Henri Michaux poem by Francois Vogel was one of my favorites at the 2014 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival. The program description:
A whimsical look at movement in the city. While reciting the poem, Francois Vogel »walks grainy« on the stairs of Montmartre, in Paris.
For this version, Vogel recites an English translation of the poem, but if you know French, the original is also on Vimeo.
(Hat-tip: ZEBRA Poetry Film Club.)
