~ ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival ~
ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival moves to Münster, issues call for entries
ZEBRA, the world’s premiere poetry film festival, has been held in Berlin every other year since 2002, a project of Literaturwerkstatt Berlin (which is in the process of changing its name to Haus für Poesie). Though spin-off events derived from the main festival regularly occur all over the world in cooperation with local arts organizations, in 2016 the festival has a new home altogether—Filmwerkstatt Münster—and a new website at zebrapoetryfilm.org (with an English-language option).
The international ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival has a new home in Münster. From the 27th to the 30th of October 2016, for the very first time the Filmwerkstatt Münster, in cooperation with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie, will host the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin.
The idea for a festival for short films combining poetry with moving pictures was created in 2002 by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie. They organized the festival in Berlin until 2014 and have established it as the biggest platform for the genre poetry film. At the initiative of Kunststiftung NRW, the relocation is anticipated to carry the genre beyond the borders of the capital and anchor it in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In Münster, ZEBRA is going to take place every other year – alternating with the Filmfestival Münster and the Lyrikertreffen. With special offers for schools, the kids programme ZEBRINO, film presentations about diverse topics, discussions and poetry readings, the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin invites a wide audience to discover the poetry film for themselves.
The ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin will be held from the 27th to the 30th of October 2016 at cinema Schlosstheater in Münster. On the 31st of October 2016, the winning entries and a selection of the best films will be presented in Berlin.
Of most interest to the filmmakers and videopoets reading this, I suppose, is the other article currently on their front page:
Submissions for the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival Münster|Berlin begin on the 1st of February 2016
From the 1st of February 2016 artists from all over the world can submit their contributions. A total of five prizes, among them two audience awards, are endowed together with 12.000 €. Eligible for submission are poetry films with a maximum length of 15 minutes that were finished after 1st of January 2013. Deadline for entries is the 1st of July 2016.
The international competition is the heart of the programme, which will be comprised of approximately 200 films in total. A programme commission consisting of film, poetry and media experts is going to nominate the films for the festival and the competition. An international jury will choose the winning films, which will also be shown by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin/Haus für Poesie in Berlin.
The festival is also inviting entries of films based on this year’s festival poem, »Orakel van een gevonden schoen« by Mustafa Stitou. The directors of the three best films will be invited to Münster to meet the poet and have the opportunity to present and discuss their films. You will find the poem with a sound recording and various translations at lyrikline.org.
Visit zebrapoetryfilm.org for contact information. I’m pleased to see that Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel will continue as ZEBRA’s artistic director, suggesting that there will be a high degree of continuity despite the switch from sponsorship by an organization focused on poetry to one focused on film. He’ll be joined by managing directors Risna Olthuis and Carsten Happe, who have also run the Münster Film Festival since 2014.
Upcoming poetry-film screenings: Minneapolis, Edinburgh, Lublin and London
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss and MPR ‘movie maven’ Stephanie Curtis. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
May 28 in Lublin, Poland
A screening of films from the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival as part of Festiwal Miasto Poezji (City of Poetry Festival).
June 13 in London
Mahu in Video at the Hardy Tree Gallery.
The emerging medium of poetry film or cinepoetry, crossing poetic principles with video art has often been overtaken by limited, dualistic collaborations. This evening aims to screen the more complex understandings of this new potentiality, another weapon in the pocket of the contemporary poet – the moving image. Co-curated by Dave Spittle & Gareth Evans
– Films from Joshua Alexander, David Kelly-Mancaux, Simon Barraclough, Caroline Alice Lopez, Robert Herbert McClean & more
June 21 in London
PoetryFilm Solstice at The Groucho Club.
Submissions are now being considered for this event, the post says. Here are the guidelines.
Please note that, contrary to what I had previously suggested here, the Laugharne Castle Poetry and Film Festival does NOT appear to be happening this year. (I had mis-read the website.)
Upcoming poetry-film screenings in Münster, Weimar, and Leeds
As reported last week, this is coming up on Wednesday:
May 6 in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: AUSLESE. The third of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel.
Aus den Einsendungen des ZEBRA 2014 präsentieren wir das breite Spektrum des deutschen und internationalen Poesiefilms. Krisen, Sehnsüchte, Angst, Lust und Liebe bilden eine gelungene Mischung.
I’ve also learned of two more screenings to be held on the following days:
May 7 in Weimar
ESP//Babelsprech//Poetryfilmkanal Poesie-Film-Performance
Poesie-Film-Performance
Filme: Meng Chang, Katharina Merten, Eva-Maria Arndt, Juliane Jaschnow
Lesung: Daniel Schmidt, Antje Kersten
Performance: Oravin, Zuzana Husárová, Amalia Roxana Filip
Moderation: Max Czollek & Aline Helmcke
May 8 in Leeds
Words In Motion – an evening of video poetry and performance
Leeds launch of Paisley Quilt and Pillion by Bristol film-maker Pru Fowler and Leeds poet Becky Cherriman. Introduced by Siobhan MacMahon with a special showing of her film Forgotten Memory. Features performances by poets Michelle Scally Clarke, Antony Dunn and Char March, and an open mic element.
Poetry-film screenings and exhibitions in May
This is everything I have a date and link for at present. (Upcoming events for PoetryFilm also include a “PoetryFilm event at The Groucho Club, London (UK)” sometime in May.)
All month (through June 7) in Taichung, Taiwan
TYPEMOTION: Type as Image in Motion exhibition.
All month (through July 5) in Montreal
Carrefour Vidéo-poétique video installation.
May 6 in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: AUSLESE. The third of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel.
Aus den Einsendungen des ZEBRA 2014 präsentieren wir das breite Spektrum des deutschen und internationalen Poesiefilms. Krisen, Sehnsüchte, Angst, Lust und Liebe bilden eine gelungene Mischung.
May 21 in Minneapolis
Motionpoems Season 6 World Premiere.
For season 6, we’ve partnered with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts to produce a season by incredible female poets and a diverse array of amazing independent filmmakers from around the world.
We’ll premiere them for the first time on the big screen at the Walker Art Center Cinema in Minneapolis on May 21, and you’re invited.
Two screenings: 6:00pm and 8:00pm with a half-hour panel discussion taking place after the 6 pm screening. Each screening will last less than 60 minutes and will be hosted by Motionpoems Artistic Director Todd Boss. Many featured poets and filmmakers will be on hand. It’ll be a night of great poetry brought to cinematic life!
For more information (including a list of all 20 films), see the Motionpoems news page.
May 24 in Edinburgh
Filmpoem Festival Fifteen at Hidden Door.
Filmpoem Festival 15 will be an open-ended series of events and screenings. After our successful Antwerp festival in 2014, we are working this year with The Poetry Society and a series of universities and poetry festivals, presenting Filmpoem’s established mix of poetryfilm, live film performance, poets, filmmakers, and discussions.
April poetry film events in the UK, Germany, Quebec and Greece
Back on March 7, I posted a list of poetry-film screenings and festivals for the spring in which I lamented the apparent lack of events in April. Since then, I’ve learned about quite a few, thanks to web and Facebook postings from Zata Banks (nee Kitowski), Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel, and Helen Dewbery.
11 April in Swindon, UK
Poetry Film Workshop with Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery. According to the Facebook event page, there were only eight places available as of March 22, so don’t delay if you’re interested in signing up.
The objective is for participants to create a poetry film.
Part One: Short introduction on the history of film poetry with examples.
Part Two: Exercises using sound, words and images.
Part Three: Creating a film poem using newly created poetry and images.
Equipment: participants bring their own laptop, camera/phone if they have them.
With permission, and if suitable, the films will be shown at this year’s Poetry Swindon Festival in the Central Library on National Poetry Day (1st October 2015)
17 April in Hawick, Scotland
TRANSMUTATIONS programme at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival.
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival and Zata Kitowski from PoetryFilm have co-curated this special screening, mixing films from our open submissions with classics of the genre. It features a diverse selection of film artworks, chosen for their alignment with poetry, with poetic structures, with poetic experiences, and with the visual, verbal and aural languages of poetry in various forms. The 45 minute screening will be followed by a 15 minute Q&A with some of the filmmakers, including Richard Bailey (USA) and Sean Martin (UK).
20-24 April in Münster
Poetry Film – Seminar mit Daniel Huhn & Julian Isfort. It’s great to see these workshops cropping up. This one, sponsored by Filmwerkstatt Münster, sounds very intensive, a five-day-long seminar with basic filmmaking knowledge recommended for participants.
22 April in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: HEIMATKLÄNGE. The first of three events presented by Filmwerkstatt Münster in the Palace Theatre, each consisting of two, 45-minute screenings on a given theme, compiled and moderated by the ZEBRA program director Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel. (The others are on 29 April—see below—and May 6.) The description for the first one reads:
Der deutschsprachige Raum ist bekannt für seine mannigfaltige Dichtkunst. Konkrete, Digitale und Lautpoesie, Naturlyrik oder Lieder beweisen: Die Varianten sind schier unbegrenzt.
23 April – 5 July in Montreal
Carrefour Vidéo-poétique. A very cool-sounding video installation featuring videopoems from Québec and the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.
The Goethe-Institut and Vidéographe are pleased to collaborate on Carrefour vidéo-poétique, a video installation presented in the windows of the Goethe-Institut from April 23 to July 5, every evening from sunset to midnight.
This presentation of video-poems aims to offer a fresh perspective and a new way of hearing contemporary poetry, in addition to innovating on how it’s disseminated: Video becomes a new means of spreading the word, thereby making poetry accessible to the general public.
24-26 April in Athens
PoetryFilm programme on body and gender identity at sound acts.
sound acts will be the first such event in Greece, introducing the athenian audience to work not frequently seen and hopefully opening a dialogue about gender and identity politics within sound production.
25-26 in Wenlock, UK.
PoetryFilm at the Wenlock Poetry Festival
For the Wenlock Poetry Festival, PoetryFilm is contributing a curated programme of ten short poetry films, which will be played on a loop at The Edge cinema venue. A real festival first!
29 April in Münster
Best of ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2014: TANZREIME.
Tanz und Musik schwingen im Dreiklang mit der Lyrik. Moderne Rhythmen interpretieren bekannte Gedichte, ausdrucksstarke Tänze und Performances vermitteln uns die geballte Kraft der Sprache.
News roundup: Text(e) Image Beat exhibition, “Send and Receive” videos, Facebook video embedding and more
The videopoetry exhibition Text(e) Image Beat, curated by Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas, is now showing at the Galerie Sans Nom in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. It runs through May 1.
With: Heid E. Erdrich + R. Vincent Moniz, Jr + Jonathan Thunder; Hannah Black; Matt Mullins; Martha Cooley; John D. Scott; Tom Konyves; Swoon (AKA Marc Neys) + Howie Good; Michel Félix Lemieux; Kevin Barrington + Bruce Ryder; Maryse Arseneault; Fernando Lazzari; Matthew Hayes + Sasha Patterson + Lee Rosevere.
[…]
The call for Text(e) / Image / Beat did not specify particular themes. Through the necessity of paring down the choices and assembling a flow of works that complemented and gave space to each other, we became aware of recurrent elements. In spite of the fact that the videos originate from many distinct locations, ideas of awaiting / finding miracles and mysteries of living, are frequent. Each work exhibits innovation and imagination, calling upon a wide range of skills to layer meaning. Slam poetry, rants, softly spoken words, hand written notes, and remixes are all used to articulate.
Click through to read the rest of the detailed and annotated curators’ commentary.
*
I discovered this week that videos of presentations from the “Send and Receive – Poetry, Film and Technology in the 21st Century” conference at FACT in Liverpool have been posted to the web at artplayer.tv. The videos are embeddable, but with code that will probably not show up in feeds or email, so I will just link to the presentations here. Check out presentations by: Suzie Hanna; Zata Kitowski; Marco Bertamini; Deryn Rees-Jones; Jason Nelson; George Szirtes; Judith Palmer; and Roger McKinley (the host). They’re all worth your time, but I found Rees-Jones’ talk to be especially thought-provoking. (See also the earlier report at Moving Poems Magazine: “Conference on poetry, film and technology at FACT: three views.”)
*
News emerged this week from Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, that Facebook videos will soon be embeddable. Venturebeat reports.
A lot of poetry videos, especially of the more rough-and-ready sort (e.g. self-recorded recitations), are only uploaded to Facebook, so it will be helpful to have the freedom to share them on sites like this one. But Facebook launching a proper video hosting platform isn’t necessarily something I welcome, given the corporation’s poor track record with privacy and its ambition to swallow up the independent web, which Facebook succeeds in reproducing about as well as the Mall of America reproduces an agora.
*
More details are emerging about Media Poetry Studio, the multimedia poetry summer camp for girls in Silicon Valley. The website now lists the time and location (July 20-31 at Edwin Markham House in San Jose’s History Park at Kelley Park, home of Poetry Center San Jose). And a March 27 article in the San Jose State University newspaper Spartan Daily interviews camp organizers Erica Goss and David Perez:
In terms of tuition, Goss said the program is “pretty reasonable,” costing $799 for two weeks.
The three poet laureates started planning the camp last spring.
“We had to secure funding, we had to write grants, we had to come up with curriculum—which we’re still working on—we had to find a place to do it and a fiscal sponsor since we’re not a nonprofit,” Goss said. “There’s lots of work and we’ll be doing it right up until the day it starts.”
Goss said they want to be able to give each student individualized attention so there is room for about 20 young women.
The Indiegogo campaign is now 62% funded, with $3,075 raised toward a $5,000 goal.
*
And finally, speaking of Erica Goss, she has an essay in The Pedestal Magazine about her experience at the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival last October.
Poetry film festival news: upcoming screenings and calls for submissions
The autumn months may be the prime time for poetry film festivals, but two festivals are hosting special screenings in early March. On March 5, UK’s Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival will be reprising many of its 2014 selections in a two-hour screening called “Reflections” at The Little Theatre Cinema in Bath, as part of the Bath Literature Festival. “First shown in September at The Arnolfini, Bristol we are now including a new film from Bath Spa University students entitled Mesmorism,” says Lucy English on the Liberated Words Facebook page, which includes the full details.
Berlin’s ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival is also on the road, but traveling a bit farther: “The Literaturwerkstatt Berlin will present the best poetry films of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival at the German-Russian shortfilm festival ‘Vkratze!’ in Wolgograd [Volgograd]” in Russia on March 7, says Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel on Facebook, sharing a link to the event page. It sounds like an interesting festival over-all, “dedicated to the interaction of Germany and Russia in the field of short film as well as the involvement of young filmmakers and the audience in a diversified festival context.” The ZEBRA screening will include films from all over the world, but with a particular emphasis on Germany and Russia, as I understand it.
(The ZEBRA folks are unusually active in pursuing international screening opportunities; be sure to join their Facebook page and/or group if you want to make sure to stay informed about all of their activities. I don’t always get around to linking them here.)
Yet another Facebook page, the Filmpoem group, is my source for the next tidbit: Alastair Cook posted that
Filmpoem will be doing an open call for this year’s festival and events around the UK, opening on the 1st March and closing on the 1st May. This year we’ll do a digital as well as hard copy call, you may be relieved to hear! First event? Hidden Door in Edinburgh, home turf for once! We’re on Sunday 24th May. Get your tickets sorted, this one will be big!
See the Hidden Door website for more info on that event. And if you’re a filmmaker or videopoet, get ready to submit not only to Filmpoem but also to Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival in Worcester, Massachusetts. Submissions open on 27 February—next Friday—for its 2015 festival. See the Rules page for complete details. It looks as if they’ll be continuing their unique focus on poets as active filmmakers:
The work must be the submitter’s original work: the poetry must be by the submitter, and that person should be directly involved in the process of making the video. We want you to make the video, not hire someone else to make it. This is not to say that we think asking for help is a bad thing – we think teaming up is super, actually. Just, you know, respect the spirit of this thing, and don’t buy it, make it. If you’re a filmmaker making a video for a poet, you should submit together as a team. Just make sure the poet has a part in this filmy business other than just handing you the poem, natch.
Oslo Poetry Film 2015 schedule online
I’ve never been able to find much information in English about the annual poetry film festival in Oslo, which is coming up next weekend. In part, that’s because their website is kind of messed up (to use the polite term); I’m unable to scroll down and read the rest of the content in either Firefox or Chrome. Fortunately, I’ve just discovered that they also have a Facebook presence (not linked to from the visible part of the website). An event listing reproduces the schedule in full, which I’ll paste in below for the benefit of the Facebook-phobic. This looks like a terrific festival, with lots of useful talks to supplement the screenings. Wish I could attend.
Oslo Poetry Film 2015:
Festival for Digital and Visual Art
31.01 – 01.02.2015
KUNSTNERNES HUS, OSLO
–Free entrance–————————–
PROGRAM:SATURDAY, 31.01.2015
13.00 – 13.45
The Counter Machine to the Machine of Language: How can poetic language be translated to cinema? Talk by Alice Lyons (USA/Irland).14.00 – 14.30
Found in translation: Poetry between writing, sound and image. Niels Lyngsø (Denmark) reflects on poetry videos by Iben Mondrup, based on poems by himself. Screenings of tungenosser (2011, 03:43), rødmandblåmand (2011, 03:55), Besat af de tre tyranner (2013, 04:15), Slår flapperne ud (2013, 01:24).14.30 – 15.00
The making of a music movie: Kajsa Gullberg (Sweden/Denmark) on her music video MIN KITTEL ER FOR KORT, 2014 (03:45) – a collaboration with poet Mette Moestrup and musician Miriam Karpantschof.15.15 – 16.00
Highlighs from Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2014 – presented by director of ZEBRA Poetry Festival, Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel (Germany). Screenings of In the Circus of You, 2013, text by Nicelle Davis, video by Cheryl Gross (06:08), The Aegean or the Anus of Death, 2014, text by Jazra Khaleed, video by Eleni Gioti (07:21), Bacteria, 2014, text by Paul Bogaert, video by Paul Bogaert and Jan Peeters (06:18), Photon, 2014, text by Simon Barraclough, video by Jack Wake-Walker (04:52), The Thing With Feathers, 2014, text by Jinn Pogy, video by Rain Kencana, Jalaudin Trautman and Miguel Angelo Pate (04:00), and Walking Grainy, 2013, video by Francois Vogel (02:20).19.00 – 19.30
Reading standing up – Poetry, in the 21st century, should be read standing up with the same glancing disdain as advertising, billboards, logos and street signs. Talk by Derek Beaulieu (Canada).19.30 – 20.00
Formal Possibilities for the Poetry of the Internet: Steve Roggenbuck (USA) on his favorites among image-based poetry, video-based poetry, and plain text as distributed in social networks. What kind of poetic exploration can we expect in the future?20.30 – 21.00
Screenings: Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Denmark): Maske (2:50) Solcreme, 2015 (2:50). Kristian Pedersen (Norway): Pipene, 2013 (03:15), KUUK (Norway): HOR, 2014 (4:45).21.00 – 21.30
SHAPESHIFTING POETRY: Different Ways to Communicate Poetry – Žygimantas Kudirka aka. MC Mesijus (Lithuania) presents his film Hands off the blue globe, 2013 (4:23).22.00. – 23.00
Readings: Derek Beaulieu (Canada) Niels Lyngsø (Denmark), Marie Silkeberg (Sweden), Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Denmark), Steve Roggenbuck (USA) and Žygimantas Kudirka (Lithuania).23.30 – 23.50
She´s a show – concert with Mette Moestrup (Denmark) and Miriam Karpachof (Denmark).————————–
SUNDAY, 01.02.2015
13.00 – 13.45
Strategies for Building Poetry Audiences Online. Steve Roggenbuck (USA) provides practical, usable strategies for how we can build audiences for poetry projects on the Internet.14.00 – 14.30
New media and distribution: Reaching out through new media. Experiences and hypotheses from the publisher’s point of view. Talk by Harald Ofstad Fougner (Norway).14.30 – 14.50
Poesi på G is a innovatory free poetry app. One poem a day for a month, is read by famous artists, comedians, actors and sportsmen- and women. Presentation by Sara Paborn (Sweden), who created the app.15.00 – 16.15
Presentations: Scott Rettberg (USA/Norway) on the project TOXI-CITY, 2014, Marie Silkeberg (Sweden) on two collaborations with fellow poet Ghayath Almadhoun, The Celebration, 2014 (8:53) and The City, 2010 (07:00), Terje Dragseth (Norway) on his and Rolf Asplunds video POEMA NAPOLI DEL 2, 2012 (05:04).18.00 – 18.30
Screenings: Vidar Dahl/Jøran Wærdahl (Norway): Byttedagen, 2013 (4:15) and Erkjenning, 2011 (3:05), J. P. Sipilä (Finland): #002_out_of_the_forest (sleight of tree) (2:56), #004_a_tourist (sleight of tree) (2:50) and #006_lost (sleight of tree) (1:25).18.30 – 19.00
It was mine – short film in production. Is there really such a thing as coincidence? Director Kajsa Næss and compositor Kristian Pedersen will screen scenes and explain their thoughts around the making of their work in progress, It Was Mine, based on a short story by Paul Auster.19.15 – 19.45
Steve Roggenbuck (USA) presents make something beautiful before you are dead, 2012, (3:25) and other works.19.45 – 20.15
Screening of Bella Blu 2012, (23:00) by Terje Dragseth (Norway).http://oslopoesi.no/film
Thomas Zandegiacomo Del Bel: Ten Favorite Funny Poetry Films
“Always look on the bright side of life” (Eric Idle). So here are ten funny poetry films which have participated in past editions of the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, a project of the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with interfilm Berlin. Enjoy!
Oedipus (poem by Nathan Filer)
Rong, 2005
The Art of Drowning (poem by Billy Collins)
Diego Maclean, 2009
Missed Aches (poem by Taylor Mali)
Joanna Priestley, 2009
https://vimeo.com/13830005
Der Conny ihr Pony (poem by Gabriel Vetter)
Robert Pohle and Martin Hentze, 2008
Financially strapped (poem by Katrin Bowen)
Katrin Bowen, 2008
Höpöhöpö Böks (poem by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl)
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, 2008
Dialog über Österreich (poem by Gerhard Rühm)
Hubert Sielecki, 2012
Giraffe (poem by Annelyse Gelman)
by Annelyse Gelman and Auden Lincoln-Vogel, 2013
On Loop (poem by Christine Hooper and Victoria Manifold)
Christine Hooper, 2013
Carnivore Reflux (poem by Eddie White)
Eddie White, 2006
Poetry filmmakers Sina Seiler and Eduardo Yagüe featured in The Third Form
This month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press, poetry-film critic Erica Goss profiles and interviews two filmmakers who should be familiar to regular readers of Moving Poems: German documentary filmmaker Sina Seiler and the Spanish freelance director and poet Eduardo Yagüe. I learned a lot about both directors. For example,
Sina served as an intern at the 2008 Zebra Poetry Film Festival, and was involved in the pre-screening process (no small feat, as Zebra receives close to one thousand submissions). She remembers how it felt to watch so many poetry films: “It was so great that something like this existed. I immediately had the idea to make my own poetry film.” “Elephant” is the result, based on a poem Sina wrote. She added, “I have been writing poems since I was young, but I didn’t publish them – they were just for me. Nothing commercial.”
And this about Yagüe:
Eduardo’s influences include the German choreographer Pina Bausch, the British performance group DV8 Physical Theatre, and the work of Samuel Beckett. Themes of emotional and sexual tension are evident in Eduardo’s work, which his many talented actor friends aptly express.
“I know a lot of actors,” he said. “I am lucky that they want to be in my films. I love actors and poetry, so that’s what I want to do: mix the things that I love. And most actors are comfortable with poetry. We study poetry; it helps us learn to speak properly. Much of the spoken part of theater is poetry: Shakespeare, for example.”
Do read the rest (and watch the films). What each filmmaker has to say about their process is especially interesting.
Why I Write by Kosal Khiev
I’m guilty of a lot of oversights and memory failures, but it’s hard to believe I never got around to posting this visually stunning film featuring the exiled Cambodian American spoken-word poet Kosal Khiev. Directed by Masahiro Sugano, it was released in 2011 by Cambodia-based Studio Revolt and was screened at the 2012 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin, where it won a prize for Best Poem Performance on Film.
Why I Write was the first of a series of short films that culminated in Sugano’s feature-length documentary about Khiev, Cambodian Son, which debuted in April. Here’s the trailer:
In the Vimeo description for Why I Write, Sugano shared a lengthy essay about how he came to meet and work with Khiev. I particularly liked this bit:
The truth is. I don’t really understand poems. It’s mostly the language issue. English is my second language. I don’t really hear lyrics in songs. Forget rappers. Poetry usually passes over my head as well. So what he was giving, I did not really get. Those rhymes confuse my immigrant ears. But I got what he was telling. It wasn’t the word. This guy knew what it was all about. He was making it real. He captivated me despite my limitation on poetic appreciation. It was very clear to me from the very first line. It wasn’t the poetry. It was him. He was showing and revealing himself, his emotions, through the vehicle of words called poetry. I had this incomprehensible chills in my spine throughout his performance. This is called transcendence. There are few people in the world who can move you beyond category or background. He was one of them. He was transcending his genre of spoken word poetry. His poetry did not call for comprehension. It only engaged and revealed, for which you do not need knowledge. That’s where he was playing. And it was kicking my ass.
He performed another piece for me. I learned soon afterwards spoken word artists use the word “kick” to mean perform. So instead of perform or share a piece of poetry, you “kick” a piece. I’m not a very cool person so I would make you blush if I said something like, “Can you kick a piece?” So I am not using that term, but I think it’s like the official term. Anyhow, the dude “kicked” another piece for me. And we said good-bye.
