PoetryFilm News: October 2014
Archive for
Oct 31
PoetryFilm Trademark
PoetryFilm has been awarded a Trademark Registration Certificate by the Intellectual Property Office.
A Month of Film Festivals
It has been a busy month of film festivals and I enjoyed both the BFI Film Festival (in London) and the Zebra Poetry Film (in Berlin).
Regulate Exhibition: Preview, Friday 7 November 2014
Regulate is an exhibition showcasing recent works by 12 artists who responded to the theme of routine and repetition in contemporary art:
Thomas Bridle, Gemma Cossey, Steve Evans, Michelle Fava, Vanessa Lewis Jones, Jiwon Kim, Zata Kitowski, Roisin Mcgowan-Green, Hannah Meadwell, Audrey Salmon, Rachel Smith, Deborah Westmancoat, Gemma Cossey
Throughout the evening, artist Rachel Smith will produce durational drawings, creatively documenting the event. Overheard conversations from the evening with be used to create drawings – the words will visually merge to document overlapping and truncated narratives from the noise and dialogue around the exhibition.
Friday 7 November, 6-9pm.
Free entry.
Oct 22
Zata Kitowski’s “Full Stop” selected for Regulate art exhibition
I am delighted to hear that Full Stop has been selected for the forthcoming Regulate art exhibition. In this manifestation, the work will be experienced as a Morse Code audio recording (via headphones) and as a framed A1 hanging print at the gallery.
The Regulate exhibition is on the theme of routine. The exhibition will explore behavioural, visual and customary elements and present two dimensional works discussing a broad range of artistic interpretations of the habitual and optical pattern.
Key words: reflex, behaviour, form, structure, repetition, automatism, (un)conscious acts.
Regulate will be held from 7 November-5 December 2014 at The Montgomery, a multi-purpose space based in the heart of Sheffield City Centre. Various creative events and workshops will be held in the space during the exhibition.
The Zebra Goethe Institute Prize awarded to Pipen / The Pipes
Words & voice by Øyvind Rimbereid
Organ by Nils Henrik Asheim
Design & animation by Kristian P.
—
The Pipes (Norwegian: Pipene)
Written for the opening of the Stavanger Concert hall and its custom built organ, The Pipes is an ode to industrial history – the former backbone of the city’s economic and social life.
Read more
The Zebra Radioeins Prize awarded to Self-Evident Things by Piotr Bosacki
I was delighted to be invited to be a Jury Member and invited to award the Radioeins Prize at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival. Below are the comments I made before announcing the winning film and awarding the Diploma to Self-Evident Things by Piotr Bosacki.
The film was chosen on the basis of a majority vote by the audience jury team and the film was chosen for a number of reasons:
- For the strength and quality of a profound philosophical poem exploring the big questions about the human condition
- For its balance of rational and emotional, art and science, logic and feeling, mathematics and poetry
- For its kinetic visual metaphors alluding to the machines and systems of the body, as well as to the machines and systems of society, nature, and the world in which we live
- For its simultaneous timelessness and importance in the modern world today
- For its simultaneous complexity and simplicity
Zata Kitowski awarding the Radioneins Prize Diploma. It was received by Boris Nitzsche from Literaturwerkstatt Berlin on behalf of Piotr Bosacki.
Film still from Self-Evident Things / Rzeczy Oczywiste by Piotr Bosacki.
Zebra Winners Announced
The winners of the 7th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival have been announced. Congratulations to:
La’eb Al Nard / The Dice Player
Film: Nissmah Roshdy – Egypt 2013, 3 min
Poem: La’eb Al Nard by Mahmoud Darwish
Pipene / The Pipes
Film: Kristian Pedersen – Norway 2014, 3 min
Poem: Pipene by Øyvind Rimbereid
essen – stück mit aufblick
Film: Peter Böving – Germany 2013, 10 min
Poem: essen – stück mit aufblick by Ernst Jandl
The Aegean or the Anus of Death
Film: Eleni Gioti – Greece 2014, 7:30 min
Poem: The Aegean or the Anus of Death by Jazra Khaleed
The ZEBRINO prize for the Best Poetry Film for Children and Young People was won by:
Death for a Unicorn
Film: Riccardo Bernasconi, Francesca Reverdito – Switzerland 2013 15:00 min
Poem: Death for a Unicorn by Francesca Reverdito
The radioeins Audience Prize, awarded by a jury of radioeins listeners, has gone to:
Rzeczy oczywiste / Self-evident Things
Film: Piotr Bosacki – Poland 2013, 10 min
Poem: Rzeczy oczywiste by Piotr Bosacki
PoetryFilm Archive: Érik Bullot (interview article)
Faux Amis by Érik Bullot was shown at PoetryFilm Equinox in September 2014. Another of his films, Tongue Twisters, is also in the PoetryFilm Archive. Below is an insightful interview with Érik Bullot* about language, sound and cinema.
In your artistic research, language and voice seem to be central themes. When and how did this interest start?
I have been always interested by the issue of language, especially the topic of imaginary languages. As you know, the medium of film was originally imagined as an universal language or esperanto. It was a political dream. When I began making films, I made many silent films with the purpose to get a visual language. During my first film made in video, I was very struck by the relationships between video and writing. I think there is a continuity between these different mediums. Video is a kind of writing machine. I made a first film, Speaking in Tongues (2005), based on imaginary languages. It was the first step of a series of films about translation, misunderstandings and puns: Tongue Twisters (2011), about tongue twisters, shot in Berkeley; Faux amis(2012), a film about false friends between French and English, shot in Buffalo; Geographical Fugue (2013), based on a musical piece by Ernst Toch; The Alphabet Revolution (2014), a documentary about the change of alphabet in Turkey. There are always many languages in my film. I like to use linguistic elements as plastic material likely to be deformed, transformed, translated. My dream is making slapstick films with language.
You mainly work with visual media, such as video, photographs, texts and performances. What are your artistic references for what regards sound?
I am interested by artists which work is located between visual and sound fields. I was very impressed for example by the blind avantgarde film made by the German artist and filmmaker Walther Ruttmann, Weekend: a black screen with just a sound piece on the soundtrack. I like very much the works of Cage (Roaratorio) and Kagel (his film Ludwig van) and the experimental filmmakers who work on multilingualism as Peter Rose, Werner Nekes or Michael Snow. I have also a strong interest for the linguistic dimension of slapstick tradition, especially the films of Marx Brothers where you can see a ventriloguist situation between the three brothers.
Zata Kitowski interviewed for Chased Magazine about the poetry film artform
I was delighted to be interviewed by Chased Magazine for an article celebrating the poetry film artform in the light of the forthcoming Zebra Festival in Berlin. The full article can be viewed here.
Zata Kitowski, a British artist and founder of PoetryFilm
1. How can poetry and film unite?
Both poetry and film either describe experiences, or are experiences in themselves, so in that sense they’re already united… there are poetic aspects to most films, and, equally, poetry uses techniques adapted from cinema such as jump-cut editing and montage, etc. The greatest potential in this context lies in using the Poetry Film concept as a point of focus for exploring and amplifying certain aspects.
2. Has poetry film become our last resort in an increasingly rational world?
A rational thought process is quite useful when crossing a road! It’s been argued that new languages emerge when there is some form of information overload, and poetry films offer opportunities for creating expressions, and communicating messages and meanings in new ways. We’re not yet in a position to assess whether poetry film is our “last” resort; we will be able to judge this at some point in the future, and maybe poetry film will be shown to have been the beginning of a movement.
3. How can poetry film be of value to us in our modern times?
Poetry films open up new ways of engagement, new audiences, and new means of self-expression, and provide rich potential for exploring the creation and perception of emotion and meaning. This in turn enables us to connect with and communicate with people in hopefully innovative ways.
4. Is love still possible in the EU?
Yes, of course.
Zata Kitowski’s Cut-Up Experiment VIII poem and poetryfilm used for a Poetry School course
I am delighted that my triptych cut-up poem Cut-Up Experiment VIII: Timers Run On and the associated poetryfilm of the same title will be used for a creative writing course run by The Poetry School. The course is called Fragments: From the Thought to the Page and it is run by Kathryn Maris.
“In this genre-bending course, you will look at poets, fiction writers, philosophers and psychoanalysts who think and write in fragments, use modes of interruption or whose work simply survives in fragment form. Fortnightly reading and writing assignments will aim to broaden your ideas of what is and isn’t a poem, demonstrate the value of omission and the unstated, and suggest new ways of observing yourself and the world, and of communicating those observations. The course will include texts by Sappho, Lydia Davis, Kimiko Hahn, Simone Weil, Adam Phillips, Wallace Stevens, Theodor Adorno, Gertrude Stein, Sam Riviere, Nuar Alsadir, Simon Smith, Anne Carson and others.”
Oct 14
PoetryFilm Archive: “Full Stop” by Zata Banks
Click to watch Full Stop. The poem (from a sequence of “punctuation poems” published in Doppelgängers in 2005) is transcreated and presented aurally as Morse Code and visually as a moving telegram. (4 minutes, sound).
“Abstract Experiment in Kodachrome” by Slavko Vorkapich
Slavko Vorkapich was a Serbian-American film director and editor, former Chair of USC Film School, painter, and a prominent figure of modern cinematography and film art.
The Psychology of Colour Pencil Set
Available from The School of Life (click below to go to the site).
John Dunbar: Remember when Today was Tomorrow
4 October – 1 November 2014
John Dunbar (born Mexico City, 1943) is a British artist best known as co-founder of Indica, the avant-garde London gallery of the mid-1960s, and for his many friendships and connections within the art and music counter-culture. He has also consistently maintained an eclectic practice encompassing drawing and collage (particularly in notebook context); sculpture and assemblage; photography and film. This solo exhibition features Dunbar’s legendary notebooks of the past 50 years, displayed for the first time, alongside works and films produced over that same period.
The phrase Remember when Today was Tomorrow has resonated with Dunbar since he first wrote it on the wall of his apartment in 1967, becoming the starting point for a psychedelic mural which accumulated additions from visitors, including Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and acting as a kind of mantra: “We were the first post-war generation, and the biggest changes happened then. It was a very different time. Everything was on the move – it made you want to do new things, whether it was in art, film, music.” (John Dunbar quoted in Tate Magazine 2004).*
Oct 6
PoetryFilm at the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival in Cork, Ireland, 21-22 November 2014
PoetryFilm has partnered with the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Festival in Cork which will take place on 21-22 November in Ireland at the Sample Studios Amphitheatre. Copy from the festival website is pasted below.
“We’re pleased to announce Ó Bhéal’s second Winter Warmer festival weekend. Over twenty excellent poets will read and perform in the amphitheatre at Sample Studios, some of whom will be accompanied by musicians. Snatch Comedy Improv will be performing a set of poetry-focussed comedy games, Sawa-Le will be performing poetry-theatre, a selection of poetry-films from around the world will be presented by Malgorzata Kitowski (from PoetryFilm), and these will be followed with a judges selection from the 2014 Ó Bhéal poetry-film competition. There will also be a closed-mic for ten local poets.”
Free Admission to all events.
The full festival programme is below.
PoetryFilm at the Swindon Festival of Poetry (documentation)
PoetryFilm programmes available in a choice of colours.
Zata Kitowski introducing the event. Don Share, poet and chief editor of Poetry magazine in Chicago, is in the front row.
Guests enjoying the drinks reception after the event. Poet Cliff Yates is just visible under the corner pole of the staircase.
The entrance to the PoetryFilm venue at Swindon New College. Matt Holland (owner of Lower Shaw Farm) and Hilda Sheehan (Festival Organiser) stand under the Theatre entrance (both wearing black).
Programme: PoetryFilm at the Swindon Festival of Poetry
Below are programme details for the PoetryFilm screening at the Swindon Festival of Poetry, 6pm on Friday 3 October 2014.
Oct 2
A Poem for National Poetry Day: “Autotomy” by Wisława Szymborska
Autotomia / Autotomy is taken from Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems. Below are both the Polish and English versions of the poem.
Happy National Poetry Day!
Poemdrums (Liliane Lijn 2009-2011) are related to Lijn’s early work with text, Poem Machines (1962). Like the Poem Machines, they spin, disengaging words from the composed text.
Oct 1
Zata Kitowski awarded an Artist Residency in Iceland in 2015
I am delighted to have been awarded an Artist Residency in Iceland in 2015. I am looking forward to spending 5 weeks in Iceland producing new creative work in January and February 2015. My work will explore art, science and nature within the context of the Northern Lights, sulphuric volcanoes, boiling mud, and Europe’s most powerful waterfall.
Ongoing documentation of my residency is available to view under the “Iceland” tab (found on the bar along the top of this website, on the top right).
PoetryFilm 
