Posts By Dave Bonta
Bun Stop by Paul Summers
https://vimeo.com/189766748
This oddly compelling film from photographer Dan Douglas, poet Paul Summers, and composer Roma Yagnik “sets out to discover beauty in even the darkest parts of Newcastle upon Tyne,” according the Vimeo description. So many online poetry videos deploy slowly moving still images — the “Ken Burns effect” — but this does the exact opposite, using a stationary camera to frame beautifully composed shots through which people, cars, and pigeons move, an approach which seems to mirror the score’s minimalism and Summers’ poetic strategy: an understated yet expressive recitation of a praise-poem full of interesting juxtapositions and word music.
Douglas posted the video to his website, where it has attracted some revealing comments from Newcastle residents and natives. He notes that
we hope [Bun Stop] is the first of a few short poetry films about the North East. We want to work with other local composers and actors, the overall project will be called Confluence.
Upcoming poetry-film and videopoetry screenings
Autumn is usually a busy time for poetry-film events around the world, and I never quite manage to announce all of them, but it’s interesting to note their number and diversity even if this comes too late for some. In that category goes this past Friday’s screening of videopoetry in Mallorca, Sinestesia, with twelve films from Spain and abroad. It’s not too late, though, for anyone in Argentina this week to make plans to attend one of VideoBardo’s 20th anniversary festival screenings from the 8th to the 12th. And even those of us who can’t make it should extend our congratulations to the festival’s organizers for an extraordinarily long and successful run.
Coming up a week from Wednesday, on November 16, the winning films from this year’s ZEBRA festival will be screened in Berlin at the Zebra Poetry Gala.
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster/Berlin celebrates its prizewinning films. Shortly after the 8th edition of the festival has been brought to a close in Münster, the winners of four competitions come to Berlin. “Kino-King” Knut Elstermann from radioeins presents the winning films and filmmakers, along with musical guests.
And finally, I’ve gotten word of one more screening of Justin Stephenson’s poetry film The Complete Works, for a total of two remaining in 2016: the first at the Niagara Artists Centre in Saint Catharines, Ontario on November 23 at 8:00 p.m., and the second in Winnipeg at the Cinemateque on December 15 at 7:00 p.m.
I should also note that although no date has been set yet for International Film Poetry Festival in Athens (sometime in December, I guess), submissions remain open through November 20.
Chamada Geral / Calling All by Mário-Henrique Leiria
“Calling all! A man walks free,” reads the description at ZEBRA, where this film by Manuel Vilarinho of a poem by Mário-Henrique Leiria was awarded Special Mention in the Prize for the Best Film for Tolerance. The ZEBRA website also has a short bio for Manuel Vilarinho:
Born in Portugal, 1974. Graduated in Tecnologia da Comunicação Audiovisual by IPP, Instituto Politécnico do Porto in 2004. He won several awards at video film festivals and currently works on TVI, Independent Television in Portugal.
The English Wikipedia entry for the poet is similarly brief:
Mário-Henrique Leiria (1923–1980) was a Portuguese surrealist poet. Born in Lisbon, he studied at the Escola de Belas Artes. He and his fellow surrealists were involved in an absurdist plot to overthrow the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. He is best known for his books Contos do Gin-Tonic (Gin and Tonic Tales, 1973) and Novos Contos do Gin (More Gin Tales, 1974). He died in 1980.
Music is Made Out of Smoke by Tanya Shirley
Iranian-British filmmaker Roxana Vilk with a poem by Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley. It’s described on the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival website as a “tribute to Jamaican reggae artist Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and an elegy to the sultry fields of the American South.” The Vimeo description notes that it was “Commissioned for Commonwealth Games 2014 by Scottish Poetry Library, British Council and Creative Scotland and executive produced by Scottish Poetry Library & United Creations Collective.” According to Vilk’s website, it was one of eight short films she directed and produced for her Composing the Commonwealth series in 2014 featuring four different poets, the camera work of Ian Dodds, sound and music by Peter Vilk, and editing by Ling Lee and Maryam Ghorbankarimi. Go watch.
Послушайте / Please listen! by Vladimir Mayakovsky
This wonderfully disturbing film by Natalia Alfutova was recognized by the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2016 jury as a Special Mention for the Goethe Film Prize. Be sure to click the closed captioning (CC) icon for the English translation. Here’s the description from the ZEBRA website:
The Dummy and its mirror-reflection are in the waiting room of God. They mimic the Human-talk and the God dancing.
Natalia Alfutova
was born in Moscow and studied Mathematics at the Moscow State University, movie directing at ‘Higher Director’s Courses’ Moscow,, and multimedia art at The Rodchenko Art School (Moscow). In 2014 she founded “Mediamead” art studio. Artworks of this studio are based on the mix of math, cinema and multimedia art. In last two years Natalia made a number of installations, which were shown in different Moscow Museums and art places.
Much to my own surprise, this is the first Mayakovsky poem I’ve ever shared a video for. I was sure I must’ve found others over the years, but apparently not.
Those Drawn Alive by Jukka-Pekka Jalovaara
An author-made filmpoem by Jukka-Pekka Jalovaara, inspired by the archetypal Spaghetti Western villain Lee Van Clef. The description on its ZEBRA website page reads:
Every autumn I get heavily moody. This is caused by the loss of the light. Last summer I heard from the radio a tune called “The House of the Rising Sun”. At once I was on a wintery road, with a very low light – and having an impossible opponent against me – Lee Van Cleef.
Jukka-Pekka Jalovaara
born 1965 in Kuopio, Finland, attended the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and studied scenography and architecture. His work focuses mainly on drawing, photography and experimental motion pictures and has been shown in Finland and abroad.
The evocative soundtrack is by Samuli Kristian Saastamoinen.
Winners of the 2016 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival competitions announced
NRW competition (photo from the ZEBRA website)
The biannual ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, the world’s largest and most prestigious such event, has just concluded in Münster, and they wasted no time in updating their website with the results. I hope they won’t mind if I copy and paste the entire English-language text of the anouncement here, but do go visit their website when you get a chance. Among other goodies, they have photo galleries from each day of the festival.
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster | Berlin announced its winners on 30 October 2016. 80 films were nominated from the 1,100 entries from 86 countries and shown in the international and German-language competition. There was also a North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) competition featuring a further 18 films. More than 220 poetry films were featured in the competitions and programmes of the festival, which ran from 27 to 30 October in the Schloßtheater Cinema in Münster.
The award winners were picked by the festival jury. On this year’s jury were filmmaker and festival organiser Juliane Fuchs, Belgian video and sound artist Marc Neys and poet Sabine Scho. The prizes are worth a total of € 12,000.
The ZEBRA Prize for the Best Poetry Film, donated by the Haus für Poesie:
Off the Trail (GB 2015)
Director: Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
Poem: “Endless streams and mountains” by Gary SnyderThe Goethe Film Prize is donated by the Goethe Institute. It goes in equal parts to:
Goldfish (D 2016)
Director: Rain Kencana
Poem: “Golden Fish“, by Shuntaro TanikawaProcess:Breath (N 2016)
Director: Line Klungseth Johansen
Poem: “Process:Breath“ by Line Klungseth JohansenSpecial mention: PLEASE LISTEN! (RU 2014) by Natalia Alfutova (poem: “Please Listen“ by Vladimir Mayakovsky)
The Prize for the Best Film for Tolerance is donated by the German Foreign Ministry (Auswärtiges Amt). It goes in equal parts to:
Steel and Air (USA 2016)
Director: Chris & Nick Libbey
Poem: “Steel and Air“ by John AshberyHail the Bodhisattva of Collected Junk (TWN 2015)
Director: Ye Mimi
Poem: “Hail the Bodhisattva of Collected Junk“ by Ye MimiSpecial mention: Calling All (P 2015) by Manuel Vilarinho (poem: „Chamada Geral“ by Mário Henrique Leiria)
The “Ritter Sport Prize” in the German language competition, donated by Alfred Ritter GmbH und Co KG:
The wolf fearing the wolf (D 2014)
Director: Juliane Jaschnow
Poem: “Die Angst des Wolfs vor dem Wolf“ by Stefan PetermannSpecial mention: Vacancy (D 2016) by Urte Zintler (poem: „Leerstelle“ by Hilde Domin).
The audience prize in the NRW competition, donated by Deutsche Lufthansa AG:
Birds on wires (D 2014)
Director: Dean Ruddock
Poem: „Vögel auf Stromleitungen“ by Dean RuddockThe ZEBRINO Prize for the Poetry Film for Children and Young People went to:
Autumn (F 2016)
Director: Hugo de Faucompret
Poem: „Automne“ by Guillaume Apollinaire
The award winning film was chosen by the young audience. The prize is worth € 500.The winning films will be shown in Berlin at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Gala on 16 November 2016, 8 pm, as part of the interfilm – International Short Film Festival Berlin. Location: Hackesche Höfe Cinema, Rosenthaler Str. 40-41, 10178 Berlin
www.haus-fuer-poesie.orgThe festival was founded in 2002 by the Haus für Poesie, formerly the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, and is the world’s biggest platform for poetry films, which are short films based on poems.
The festival was organised and hosted by the Filmwerkstatt Münster in co-operation with the Haus für Poesie. It was made possible by the support from the Kunststiftung NRW, the LWL Kulturstiftung, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Münster, the Stiftung der Sparkasse Münsterland Ost, the Kulturrucksack NRW, and from the Consulate General of the Netherlands and the Flemish Representation. The festival is also supported by the Münstersche Filmtheater-Betriebe, by GUCC grafik & film, by the Factory Hotel, by interfilm – International Short Film Festival and by the filmclub münster.
Congratulations to all the winners, as well as to everyone accepted for screening at the festival.
Interrupted Nap by bpNichol
Another short excerpt from Justin Stephenson‘s terrific film The Complete Works, based on the poetry of bpNichol. (See my post of the “White Sound” excerpt for more about the project, including my thumbnail review of the film.) “In this segment, Nichol reads his visual text, Interrupted Nap. The film translates the reading into an animated sequence,” Stephenson notes on Vimeo. He also has a post on the film’s website which goes into more detail, and includes images of the source text (click through for those).
Interrupted Nap is a recording from the 1982 collection, Ear Rational. In it we hear snippets of a narrative, “Once upon a time…,” which are interrupted by bursts of vocal sounds. It sounds as if the narrator is having difficulty telling the story. The word “aphasia”, the inability to make sense in language or of language, appears at the end of the piece. In Interrupted Nap, either the listener has receptive aphasia, or the narrator has expressive aphasia.
The source text is a series of visual panels that appear to have been reproduced from pages on which someone has used a magic marker to write. The marker has bled through each page to the subsequent pages onto which new material has then been written.
Nichol presents the text as if his visual and speaking faculties operate like the head of a magnetic tape recorder, reading and speaking the information on the page including the “noise” from the marker bleed.
Firearms by Nikkita Oliver
Another powerful blend of videopoetry and performance poetry video, today from poet Nikkita Oliver and filmmaker Bryan Tucker. Here’s the Vimeo description:
If the gun that was used to murder Trayvon Martin could talk, what would it say?
Firearms was written by Nikkita Oliver – a Seattle-based creative, teaching artist, and anti-racist organizer. Nikkita is an attorney and holds a Masters of Education from the University of Washington.
Written & Performed By: Nikkita Oliver
Directed, Filmed & Edited By: Bryan Tucker
Produced By: Bryan Tucker & Nikkita Oliver
Audio Recording: Tomi Adewale
Protest Photos by Naomi Ishisaka {naomiishisaka.com}
Special Thanks: Washington Hall, Robin Rojas, Brian Lee, Aselefech & Zariya, Niki Amarantides
Music: “The Way Home” by Tony Anderson (licensed via The Music Bed)
H/t: “New Video Poem by Nikkita Oliver Imagines Trayvon Martin Shooting from Gun’s Perspective”
Countdown by Prufrock Shadowrunner
You would think a politically minded poetic countdown from 100 might get a little draggy after a while. But you would be wrong. This collaboration between Prufrock Shadowrunner (poem, performance) and Rob Viscardis (video, music) blows me away. It was an official selection for the Reframe International Film Festival 2016 and the 2016 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival International Competition.
Nicknames by William Richardson
This is a great example of how a good soundtrack (here, the work of Luca Nasciuti, with voiceover by Alastair Cook) can really make a poetry film work. It’s from a new-to-me-project:
The fitba, the teams, the love for the game. Nicknames was written by William Richardson, read by Alastair Cook and filmed by Jane Groves. Nicknames was made as part of Luminate Festival’s Well Versed project. Workshops with Craigshill Good Neighbour Network were led by poet Rachel McCrum and filmmaker Alastair Cook. Nicknames was edited by Alastair Cook.
Scotland’s creative ageing festival, is held from 1st to 31st October across Scotland each year. The festival brings together older people and those from across the generations to celebrate our creativity as we age, share stories of ageing and explore what growing older means to all of us. Each year, there are activities all over Scotland – from art workshops and dance classes to music performances and authors’ events – and you will find Luminate in theatres, galleries, community halls, care homes and lunch clubs, as well as events online that take us to audiences everywhere.
The Well Versed screening was held last Saturday, apparently. The videos are now all online in the video gallery of the Luminate website.
