2014 November | PoetryFilm

Nov 28

ICO Archive Screening Day Programme: This Is Now

This-is-Now In the early 1980s clubbers, art students, new romantics and members of the post-punk scene used inexpensive, domestic technology to find new modes of expression and subvert the mainstream media. The DIY approach of punk was powerfully reborn.

The period also saw new perspectives and voices emerge. More female, gay and black filmmakers pushed themselves forward and often they were friends; squatting flats, clubbing and developing new styles and techniques together. ‘Scratch video’ artists meanwhile cut-up pre-existing material to create startling new juxtapositions and reveal hidden meanings, and had an extraordinary impact.

These films focus on work from the early 80s that explored the blurred lines between media images and identity, creating new dialogues between the self and the world. Technology appeared to ease life, make things more exciting yet also create gaps between people. Artists considered what images and technology could mean and be in their fullest sense.

Weaving film and video together, often utilsing religious imagery, and introducing colour, effects and surface texture, filmmakers generated a new, vividly transcendental style by the end of the post-punk era. Key examples of this sensual, visually mature work are presented alongside other dynamic pieces that explore the dreamlike state.* The films are listed below.

Nov 28

ICO Archive Screening Day Programme: The Wonderful World of Colour

Wonderful_World_of_Colour

Colour has been used in silent film since its very beginning – as spectacle in its own right, as a means of underscoring a narrative by addressing the senses and emotions of the audience, and in relation to the opening up of a world of colour in other popular art forms.

In this selection you will find glorious examples of hand colour, tinting and toning, stencil colour from the sound era as well as Gasparcolor and Technicolor from the sound era.*

Nov 28

PoetryFilm invited to attend the ICO Archive Screening Day at the BFI, Thursday 4 December

PoetryFilm has been invited to be a delegate at the Archive Screening Day event at the BFI Southbank organised by the ICO (Independent Cinema Office). Designed for independent exhibitors, this will be an industry screenings event showcasing films from the UK’s national and regional film archives – extremely rich resources.

The Archive Screening Day sessions are outlined below and the archive film programmes will be posted here separately.

Nov 28

Magic Mirror: Sarah Pucill

Magic Mirror translates the startling force of French surrealist Claude Cahun’s photographs into a choreographed series of tableaux vivants. Re-staging Cahun’s black and white images with selected extracts from her book Aveux Non Avenus (Confessions Untold), the film explores the links between Cahun’s photographs and writings. The kaleidoscope aesthetic that runs through the film serves not only to weave between image and word but also between the work of Cahun and the films of Sarah Pucill, creating a dialogue between two artists who share similar iconography and concerns. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Sarah Pucill and Helena Reckitt.*

3 December, 7pm, JW3 Cinema, London

Nov 28

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Zata Banks invited to contribute to the AHRC-funded “Pararchive” Conference at Leeds University

I am delighted to have been invited to contribute an academic presentation called The PoetryFilm Archive 2002-2015 to the Pararchive Conference at Leeds University.

This AHRC-funded conference and community showcase marks the climax of an eighteen-month multidisciplinary research project entitled Pararchive: Open Access Community Storytelling and the Digital Archive. The project is based at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds and seeks to build new interactive environments that explore issues of ownership, public and institutional relationships and provide tools for collaborative community research and creative expression using digital heritage resources.

Many thanks to the team at Pararchive for the invitation.

Friday 27th March 2015 – Saturday 28th March 2015

stage@leeds, University of Leeds

Nov 28

Mirror Mirror: McAlpine Miller at Castle Galleries

“The idea behind the work is more important than the work itself.” – Stuart McAlpine Miller

Cited by art critics as “changing the course of art history” and having had his influence and appeal likened to Picasso, Stuart McAlpine Miller has catapulted to the forefront of the contemporary art scene.

His new collection, Mirror Mirror, goes above and beyond classic portraiture and offers a storyboard of social commentary. His work exposes the vanity and consumerism of modern society and reflects it back on the viewer. There is intelligence behind the gloss.

The exhibition will launch with a special private view in the presence of the artist on Thursday 4th December 6pm – 9pm in Mayfair. It will then run for three weeks.

Nov 28

Regulate art exhibition ends on 5 December 2014

The Regulate art exhibition in Sheffield runs until 5 December 2014 at The Montgomery in Sheffield. The show features work by 12 artists exploring the theme of repetition, including Full Stop by Zata Kitowski.

Nov 25

Next stop: Dublin

Following the PoetryFilm event in Cork, today PoetryFilm is heading to Dublin.

Nov 20

“gap in the air” Festival of Sonic Art at Talbot Rice Gallery

GAP

Nov 20

Christopher Orr at Talbot Rice Gallery

Photograph taken at the launch of Christopher Orr’s show at Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh.

The picture of the painting in the catalogue is nearly exactly to scale.
Orr

Nov 20

The Door Ajar: Antonin Artaud

Travelling to Cork today reminds me of a film about Antonin Artaud I saw last year at the Portobello Cinema called The Door Ajar. Thanks to Niall McDevitt for bringing this valuable film to London.

Door Ajar

*On August 14th 1937 the French poet and theatre director, Antonin Artaud, arrived in Cobh in County Cork, bringing with him a stick which he believed St. Patrick owned. His intention was to return the staff to its rightful owners and, with their help, to rediscover some fundamental truths.

His journey didn’t turn out exactly as planned and, on September 23rd, he was arrested while trying to gain entrance to a religious house on the outskirts of Dublin. Other than these facts, little record remains of his journey, except for a scant outline of his movements provided by two unpaid bills and some postcards sent from Galway.

The Door Ajar examines Artaud’s back-catalogue of poems, letters and essays and uses them to create a possible account of the weeks he spent travelling in Ireland, revealing a fascinating portrait of a man hell-bent on a search for truth and driven by a longing to penetrate to the very core of existence. The unmistakable rigour and style of Paddy Jolley’s art brings Artaud’s journey to life – and his brilliant new film will inspire and enthral fellow filmmakers and audiences alike.

Director: Paddy Jolley
Producer: Edwina Forkin

*Text by Gráinne Humphreys, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

Nov 20

Next stop: Cork

PoetryFilm heads to Cork today in advance of the O’Bheal Winter Warmer Festival, 21-22 November. Festival documentation will be posted here shortly.

Nov 19

Bob Jubilé: a year-long celebration of Bob Cobbing

Bob Jubilé is a year-long programme of displays and events devoted to the career and legacy of Bob Cobbing, curated by William Cobbing and Rosie Cooper.*

Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) was ‘the major exponent of concrete, visual and sound poetry in Britain’ (Robert Sheppard, The Guardian). His performances of printed sound poems involved stretching language through the deployment of shouts, hisses, groans, interspersed between more recognisable tracts of spoken word.

Bill Jubobe
Chelsea Space
19 November – 19 December
16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU
11am – 5pm Wednesday-Friday

cobbing_s_02

Nov 19

Frenkel Defects: a programme of 16mm hand-made films

no.w.here presents Frenkel Defects. Wednesday 19th November 2014, no.w.here, third floor, 316 – 318 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 0AG. 7pm start.

Frenkel Defects* is a programme of hand made 16mm films from artists working in DIY labs worldwide. These works have been curated by Kevin Rice from Process Reversal a lab collective based in Colorado USA. Photosensitive film material is formed of a multitude of silver halide crystals, suspended in gelatine, without which we would not be able to record a latent negative image. A Frenkel Defect is a fault within the silver crystal structure of the film emulsion. NOWHERE 1 Image by Andrew Busti

The most interesting aspect of a Frenkel Defect (at least in the vein of this program) is not specifically its photo-mechanical properties, but the implication that film must be imperfect to function. In this sense, the silver halide might also be seen as a reflection of our films and ourselves, both which, arguably, necessitate a mode of imperfection. Further, we might also consider that projection is a form of photography, one whereby we, the audience, are the photosensitive material – full of defects – that is allowed to be imprinted with a latent image. The full programme can be viewed here. *Text taken from no.w.here

Nov 19

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PoetryFilm Solstice: Tickets Released

The tickets for PoetryFilm Solstice at the ICA Cinema on Sunday 21 December at 3pm are now available to purchase from the ICA website. Tickets are priced £7 – £11.

“The ICA supports radical art and culture.”

Nov 14

TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson (2006)

The recent comments by Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, brought to mind Sir Ken Robinson’s well-known TED Talk in which he makes a case for creating an education system that nurtures and encourages creativity.

The full transcript of the talk is below (with timings).

Nov 12

Regulate Launch

Some photographs from the Regulate launch at the Montgomery in Sheffield on Friday 7 November. Many thanks to Dora and the Regulate Team.

Nov 11

Prize Giving at the Southbank Centre, July 2014

Below are photographs from the Prize Giving for the Shot Through the Heart poetry film competition (Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, July 2014). Congratulations to Ella Jane Chappell and Katie Garrett for the winning film Rolling Frames. Thanks to Rachel Cherry and Southbank Centre for the photographs. Zata 4

Nov 11

John Dunbar at England & Co

Some photographs of John Dunbar’s show at England & Co.

Dunbar match

Dunbar lips

Nov 6

“Abstract Geometry” at Rook and Raven Gallery, 21 Nov – 20 Dec 2014

“Rook & Raven are proud to present Abstract Geometry, an exhibition inspired by the development of the Fibonacci sequence in visual culture. Informing each featured artist’s work, the sequence appears in various manifestations, constant throughout, in a manner paradigmatic of Leonardo Fibonacci’s theorem, published in his 1202 landmark text, Liber Abaci. The text recounts the correlation between geometry and nature, leading to a shift in artistic practice, still evident today, in its similar link to the Golden Section, historically used by many artists as a visual tool.

‘Line is the sole element of construction and creations… Line is trajectory, movement, collision, attachment, slicing apart, joining. Line is first and last in both painting and in any construction whatsoever.’

(A. Rodchenko, The Line (1921), translated in Art Into Life: Russian Constructivism 1914-1932, Seattle 1990, pp.72-3.)

Bringing together the work of Vanessa Jackson, Rupert Newman and Vanessa Hodgkinson, whose works are concerned with the use of shape, colour and composition, and the sequences and relationship between such properties, Abstract Geometry is the result of the interrelation of mathematics, nature and art, focusing on how the past is present in contemporary abstract art.”

The full Press Release is here: ABSTRACT-GEOMETRY1

Vanessa Jackson Fling

Fling by Vanessa Jackson

Nov 6

“The Eternal Moment” – a radio play by Peter Blegvad and Ian Chambers

“In this new radio drama from Peter Blegvad and Iain Chambers, the transformative power of storytelling is explored through Zoe, a psychiatric patient who believes she is the Queen of Time. Zoe is confident that her map-like drawings can evoke the ‘eternal moment,’ in which she’ll be set free of time itself. She also believes Cody, her art therapist, is the other half of her divided self – the King of Time.

Radiotonic proudly presents The Eternal Moment in conjunction with ABC-wide programming in support of Mental Health Week.” (ABC = Australian Broadcasting Company)

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/radiotonic/the-eternal-moment/5782860

Eternal 2

Nov 6

PoetryFilm Solstice, ICA, Sunday 21 December 2014, 3pm

The PoetryFilm Solstice event will take place on Sunday 21 December at 3pm at the ICA Cinema in London.

Tickets will go on sale in mid-November and full programme details will be announced shortly.

Nov 5

Lecture: The Rise (and Fall and Rise Again) of the British Film Industry

Yesterday I attended this fascinating and engaging lecture given by John Woodward. Many thanks to the University of Westminster for the invitation to attend.

Speaker biography: In his career, which includes top leadership roles at the British Film Institute, the UK Film Council, and, currently, Arts Alliance, John has played a key role in the re-birth of the British film industry and he has also overseen millions of pounds worth of investment into British films such as The King’s Speech.

Nov 5

The Poetry Challenge Recitational Fundraiser

Zata Kitowski performing at the Poetry Challenge recitational fundraiser at the October Gallery in October 2014. Zata recited her poem Ampersand. Many thanks to Josefine Speyer for the invitation and photograph. My nominated charity was the British Heart Foundation.

Zata PC Fundraiser