Posts By Dave Bonta
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.
The Applicant by Sylvia Plath (3)
A unique twist on the performance poetry video genre from my new favorite channel on Vimeo, Tootight Lautrec’s This Be the Verse.
Tootight Lautrec, the Drag Laureate of the sub-sub-sub basement at PS 75 The Emily Dickinson School, brings you poetry–often as a drag queen lip-sync from archival recordings of poets–This Be The Verse: Poetry for Adults.
This wouldn’t work if Lautrec weren’t very, very good at lip-syncing. In all the years I’ve been combing YouTube and Vimeo for poetry videos, I can’t remember anyone taking this approach before, let alone pulling it off with such panache.
This is the third video for “The Applicant” that I’ve shared here over the years. See also Josep Porcar’s video remix and Maggie Bailey’s interpretative dance.
You Are 6 Years Old and She is Teaching You How to Ride a Bicycle by Stephanie Dogfoot
https://vimeo.com/134787597
Stephanie Dogfoot is a performance poet with numerous slam championships in Singapore and the UK under her belt, but here filmmaker Sarah Howell of the Dream Bravely production company has made the unusual (for performance poetry) decision to focus not on the poet but on the poem, with salutary results. This is also a great example of how to use video to drive home the political message of a poem. It was made in collaboration with the Haque Centre of Acting & Creativity for “the August [2015] installment of their storytelling night Metaphors Be With You: Childhood Stories,” according to a blog post by Dogfoot. Michael Lim was the cinematographer, with music by Celer and Konrad Feucht.
This is one of the films in the Zebrino Competition at the upcoming ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival next week, and I need to give a tip of the hat to the ZEBRA Poetry Film Club channel on Vimeo, which has been adding films at a great rate in the build-up to the festival. I’ll be sourcing films from that channel for weeks to come, but if you can’t wait, go there now and gorge.
On Your ‘A 1940 Memory’ by Daljit Nagra
This is Across Fields, a film by Tim Davies incorporating British poet Daljit Nagra‘s tribute to the great World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, who fought in the Battle of the Somme, paired with “Site-responsive video recorded in and around the Bois de Mametz in the Somme Valley,” as the credits inform us. The poem and film were commissioned by a poetry project called Fierce Light:
Perhaps no art form captured the complexity and terror of the First World War more acutely than poetry. Drawing on their experiences, poets used their art to reflect on the war’s impact: from the horrors of the battlefield to the ways in which the conflict rendered a familiar world unrecognisable to those left living in it.
Fierce Light brought together leading poets from countries that participated in the First World War, including Yrsa Daley-Ward, Jackie Kay, Bill Manhire, Paul Muldoon and Daljit Nagra, to create new works that endeavour to understand the incomprehensible; exploring contemporary events while also contemplating the First World War. These works were presented alongside a series of specially commissioned short films, each made in response to the new poems and themes raised within them. […]
Launching with an exhibition and a special live event, Fierce Light featured the poets during the City of Literature programme at Norfolk & Norwich Festival, before the poems and films were presented on radio, at other literary festivals and online.
I have stolen everything by Abeer Hoque
This is one of three short films by the New York-based filmmaker Josh Steinbauer based on poems by Nigerian-born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer Abeer Hoque, all from her book of linked stories, The Lovers and the Leavers (HarperCollins India, 2015). The third partner in this collaboration was the band Dragon Turtle Music, which supplied the soundtrack for each of these deceptively simple videopoems. Watch all three at Scroll.in (but be careful: it’s one of those annoying sites that sends you off into a new article if you scroll down too far).
The Damascene Collar of the Dove by Mahmoud Darwish
This is In Damascus (في دمشق), a stunningly beautiful film by the Syrian filmmaker and motion graphic designer Waref Abu Quba. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
Winner | Outstanding Cinematography in the Autumn Shorts Film Festival, Somerset, Kentucky USA 2015.
Official Selection:
• ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin – 2016
• Arab Film Festival, San Francisco, CA – 2016
• 9th Annual Houston Palestine Film Festival – 2015
• Autumn Shorts Film Festival, Somerset, Kentucky USA – 2015Watch In Damascus VFX Breakdown and read the description for technical Information about the film on this link.
This film is about Damascus, an 11,000 years old city, the most ancient & precious of cities, set to the poetry of the world famous Palestinian poet / author Mahmoud Darwish.
More than three years have passed since the idea inception up to this moment. This project was my companion during my staying abroad, it was like a friend and an enemy at the same time, sometimes I spend hours working on it, and sometimes I leave it for months.
Now after two months of heavy work, I’ve finished it, and I would like to present it to you … I hope you like it.
Be sure to watch it on the largest screen you have.
