~ Versogramas ~
Ground-breaking documentary about videopoetry now at Vimeo On Demand
At long last, the documentary Versogramas or Verses&Frames by Galician director Belén Montero—a unique, multicultural look at contemporary videopoetry through the eyes of 14 filmmakers—is available to watch on the web:
We have great news to share with you: Verses&Frames is now available at Vimeo On Demand. Watch it here!
Now you can enjoy the documentary at home, at any time, for a really low price. Moreover, we have released all the different linguistic versions of Verses&Frames, so you can choose five screening possibilities: original version in Galician with Galician subtitles, Spanish version with Spanish subtitles, English version with English subtitles, reduced Spanish and reduced English versions.
This is how it works: For 3€ you can “rent” the screening of the version you choose. It will be available for 24 hours so you can watch the documentary as many times as you want. You can reproduce it on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast.
One of our main objectives when producing Verses&Frames has always been to contribute to the knowledge, research, enjoyment and diffusion of videopoetry. As well as the screenings conducted at festivals, museums and television, we believe that this is a good way to deliver the content of the documentary directly to the public, and to share with you all the emotions that videopoetry arises.
So, just a click away: Verses&Frames On Demand.
That rental price in US dollars is just $3.32. The Vimeo description doesn’t include links to the videopoets interviewed in the film, but you can find that on the project’s website (also available in three languages). I wrote a somewhat critical but generally positive review of Versogramas for Poetryfilm Magazine in 2018. I wrote, in part, that
The interviews are creatively shot and well edited, and the interviewees all come across as fascinating people with uniquely unconventional approaches to making poetry and art. There wasn’t one of them whom I didn’t want to immediately track down on the web and watch every one of their videos, and I was pleased by how many of them were new to me, either because their work had never been translated into English, or because they just hadn’t happened to have crossed my radar.
This is testimony to the sheer breadth of the international videopoetry community, I think. It’s impressive that the producers can focus on just one part of the world—Spain, especially the Galician region—add a handful of filmmakers and videopoets from outside that region, and still end up with a highly varied, complete-feeling snapshot of the state of videopoetry in the 21st century.
So go check it out! I know I for one will definitely be watching it again.
Flicker film, and a review of the world’s first documentary on videopoetry
Two new English-language articles have recently been published in the online version of Poetryfilm Magazine, the bilingual journal embedded in the Weimar-based Poetryfilmkanal website and released annually in a print and PDF version. UK artist and typographer Jane Glennie, a couple of whose videos I’ve shared at Moving Poems, has an essay titled Flicker film and the videopoem:
A ›flicker film‹, as I have made them and understand them thus far, consists not of moving image footage but of a series of still images presented at around 24 or 25 per second. It could be described as an extremely rapid slideshow. Cinema film is also, of course, still images projected at 24 frames per second, but with the intention of transforming frames into seamless movement, whereas a flicker film disrupts the seamless with disparate frames.
Glennie gives a brief history of the technique, which dates back to 1966, then talks about its relevance today, and to her own practice:
Flicker film can also be perceived as reflective upon the broader culture of the online environment where so much time is now spent. Indeed, Parker’s film was derived from her Instagram feed. Image usage, sophistication and relevance continues to grow rapidly. In 2014, two thousand million photos were shared per day across five key social media platforms, rising to over three thousand million in 2015. Upcoming generations are expected to communicate with images even more than at present (happily videopoetry is part of this ever growing online scene). Flicker film can have instant visual impact in a short length and can capture attention in the brief, ephemeral encounters of social media. For instance, my film Being and being empty (2018) was selected for the world’s first Instagram Poetry exhibition at the National Poetry Library in London. But flicker film also offers challenges to the viewer: what can be perceived each time it is viewed? What images or messages might have entered the subconscious? If I continue to view the film – can I perceive more through practice or ›training myself‹ or do I enter a visual fatigue and ›see‹ less and less? A flicker film can be seen as a test of endurance and the brain’s ability to digest images at speed and through the subconscious. If we are to continue to consume images at ever greater volumes and pace, the flicker film begs the question – what are the limits that human cognition can take? Is there a point at which the message and/or the poetic is lost in the frenzy? I am interested in how the fleeting can be imprinted in the mind and create an overall impression through repetition, the subliminal message, and/or the blurring of the distinctions between discrete elements.
Fascinating stuff. Do go read the whole thing.
The other article was my own, published just yesterday: ›Versogramas‹ and the Possibilities for Videopoetry.
Versogramas, the 2017 film directed by Belén Montero, is apparently the world’s first documentary about videopoetry, and as such, it’s likely that viewers may come to it with heightened expectations which will not be fulfilled. Taken on its own terms, however, I found it a delightful romp with a few glaring defects. It has great potential as a teaching aid in the poetry or film classroom—especially if, as I hope, its official web release is accompanied by links to all the videos and videopoets in the film. It’s also available as part of a bookDVD from Editorial Galaxia (which I have not seen).
Quoting oneself is always a bit awkward, but let me skip over the snarky bit and give one more excerpt:
It’s impressive that the producers can focus on just one part of the world—Spain, especially the Galician region—add a handful of filmmakers and videopoets from outside that region, and still end up with a highly varied, complete-feeling snapshot of the state of videopoetry in the 21st century. […] I liked the rootedness of this approach, and I enjoyed getting a sense of how Spanish and Galician poets and artists have been working with videopoesía in recent years.
And for all its playing around with definitions, Versogramas does not end up providing some kind of unified field theory of videopoetry, thank God. (Though it does give Konyves the last word, as is fitting.) What it does, and does very well, is present us with a series of possibilities: this is what videopoetry might be (the narrative sections); this is what a bunch of actual practitioners have found it to be (the interviews).
I had, of course, much more to say than that. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have seen the documentary, and if and when it becomes generally available online, I’ll be sure to share the link here.
VERSOGRAMAS launches crowdfunding campaign to make a documentary about videopoetry
VERSOGRAMAS is “a transmedia project about videopoetry.” This brainchild of Galician writer and film producer Celia Parra Díaz, with directors Belén Montero and Juan Lesta, involves making the world’s first full-length documentary about videopoetry, but they need additional funds to cover the remaining 20 percent of their budget. So this past week they launched a crowdfunding appeal through Verkami. Here’s the appeal in video form:
Their page on Verkami answers all the obvious questions, such as what they’ll use the money for, when the work is likely to be completed, and which videopoets are included. Here’s the synopsis:
A woman remembers the past and writes some words on a film projected on the wall, while a voice over narrates the origins of videopoetry. She then walks through a broken line, surrounded by a dreamlike, abstract setting. She finds differently shaped and coloured boxes along the way, each one metaphorizing a concept. In the first one she finds fragments of videopoems related to Language. A voice over explains the beginnings of the genre. Then we see interviews of videopoets speaking about the importance of languages in written literature and explaining how they are transmitted via image and sound. Videopoems are screened behind them while they speak. The woman keeps walking and finds other little boxes corresponding to the Body, Love, Solitude, Society, Evil and Change. These are also metaphors of concepts such as: the evolution of videopoetry, the adaptation of written text, graphics and design, the communication with the audience, the place videopoetry takes, its continuous innovation and change, the problems with the definition of the genre and its future perspectives. A journey that provides answers to what videopoetry is.
This is a really exciting project and I think it deserves our full support. In just six days they’re raised €1,610 toward their €6,500 goal, with 34 days remaining, and the most popular pledge level appears to be €55, which gets you the opportunity to contribute a verse on the theme of love for a collective videopoem. What’s not to love? Here’s the link again.
New content at Poetry Film Live and other websites
The editors of Poetry Film Live have just released their second issue, which in practice means that four new videos and an interview have been linked from their front page, below an introduction which I’ll paste in here as an added inducement to go visit:
This issue features poetry films from the UK.
The interview this month is with Adam Steiner. We spoke to Adam on the day Disappear Here was being launched. We particularly wanted to find out about the Disappear Here Project, which involved 9 poets, 9 filmmakers and 27 poetry films. We also talked to Adam about his not-for-profit publishing company, his time working for the NHS and his new novel.Antony Owen is the poet and performer of The Dreamer of Samuel Vale House. Samuel Vale House is next to the ring road in Coventry. It was directed by Adam Steiner and was the poetry film that led to the Disappear Here Project.
Act was written by Maggie Sawkins and was recorded for ‘Zones of Avoidance’, the live literature production which went on to win the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Act was filmed by Abigail Norris.
Rachel McGladdery’s poem My Dead Dad is a powerful and moving poem, filmed by Bryan Dickenson. The film gives space for the viewer to take in the words without distraction; Bryan’s aim was for the viewer to ‘defocus’ on the screen.
Martin Evans poetry film Numbers is intriguing – in the Welsh mountains is a numbers station broadcasting in Welsh. Martin explains how numbers stations were used in the Cold War to broadcast on short wave frequencies to spies out in the field. I’ll leave you to enjoy the film and ask the obvious questions ….
Next month there will be international poetry films by Cheryl Gross, Eduardo Yagüe and Lucy English, José Luis Ugarte and Patricia Killelea, plus an interview with Mab Jones who is one of the 9 poets who took part in Disappear Here.
I found the interview with Adam Steiner especially inspirational. Here’s a snippet:
PFL It was said that Disappear Here will ‘make people see the city of Coventry in a different light; whether they are new or have lived here for years. And will inspire others to write/read/experience poetry in its many forms; live and on the page, as well as sparking interest in the new and developing genre of poetry films’. To what extent have these aims been achieved so far?
AS Yes I do think we have done that, by working with great collaborators and the current audiences in Coventry and poets I know here in Coventry. And the people who run the monthly open mike nights are starting to get interesting guests from the midlands and beyond. It is a great way of having our poets working as ambassadors for the city and then poets from other places bringing their stuff here. It’s created whole new collaborations with people publishing other people. I don’t think it will bring loads of people putting pen to paper but I think it will shatter and reinvigorate some conceptions of poetry and what poetry can, or could be, in the future, especially with the films, which are a very accessible and immediate format. If you watch a poetry film, or see a great performance and it stays with you, if a line or two of poetry sticks, it has done its job – if your lines carry on through a person that’s all you can ask for as a poet.
I’ve been giving a lot of attention to Poetry Film Live because they’re new and deserve support, but be sure to keep an eye on other film/videopoetry-related sites, too, or you might miss developments such as:
- The Haus für Poesie (formerly Literaturwerkstatt Berlin) website has added a new section of pages to its ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival section embedding all the winning films (or trailers) available on Vimeo or YouTube for the complete run of festivals they coordinated, 2002-2014. Start here.
- So far the new website at zebrapoetryfilm.org has not followed suit. BUT the ZEBRA Poetry Film Club Vimeo channel continues to locate and add films from among all the films ever screened at ZEBRA, a huge undertaking that’s been going on for more than two years now (and which has made my own job as Moving Poems curator much easier).
- And the ZEBRA Poetry Film Club group on Facebook remains the number one source for international news about the genre. (They’re also on Twitter for the Facebook-averse.)
- The Vienna-based Art Visuals & Poetry website also regularly adds new content, especially in its Outstanding poetry films section, though it can be a little difficult to navigate. The easiest approach is to subscribe to their partial-content RSS feed for notification of new content, which seems to appear about two or three times a week.
- Poetryfilmkanal (Poetryfilm Channel), the other major German and English-language website for the genre, is worth visiting at least once a month for their Film of the Month feature. (For those with no German, like me, Google Translate is more than adequate these days for conveying the gist of German prose.) They’re currently soliciting essays on Typography and Text as Image for the third issue of their magazine.
- The website for the forthcoming VERSOGRAMAS documentary about videopoetry, directed by Belén Montero and Juan Lesta, recently added a page with links to all the videopoets who will be interviewed in the film. (At least, I think it was recent. Since it’s a static page, it didn’t show up in the feed.)
Here’s the latest VERSOGRAMAS teaser, for those who haven’t seen it. For a die-hard videopoetry fan like me, this is more exciting than the latest Star Wars movie trailer:
