Selfie with Marilyn WINS FIRST PRIZE at Maldito Video Poetry Festival, Albacete, Spain
Totally blown away – Selfie with Marilyn has won First Prize at Maldito festival, Spain! Congratulations to the wonderful poet Heidi Seaborn, and to the shining lights Hatti (Marilyn) and Georgie (stills) Rees xxx Marilyn is over the moon!!! She purrs
‘Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.’
The film was initially a commission from the New York-based Visible Poetry Project, and is from the poem in the prize-winning collection An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (PANK books 2021) by leading US poet Heidi Seaborn. I recommend the book to anyone for an extraordinarily eloquent, nuanced and poignant read. The poetry film (with British artist Hatti Rees playing Marilyn) is about representation, learning the lines of a poem / script and how we assume a persona, even/especially Marilyn, when she must have longed to just ‘be herself’. In the poem a Marilyn who has been around the block a few times talks to her younger self, whilst revealing small, human incidents that she holds close. It is also about the screen image itself, and how repeating the same triple image can create a different screen in terms of identity, meaning and rhythms.
The films were screened on site, on October 6 at 8:30 p.m. at the Teatro Circo de Albacete (Spain). They are also available online on their channel – the FILMIN platform – from October 7. Finalist works will remain continuously on FILMIN, along with the finalist works from past editions that are already on the platform.
A professional jury was in charge of choosing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd. prize. The Special Public Prize was also voted on October 6 via the on site pass, by the participant audience.
For more about the making of the film go to an earlier post on this site:selfie-with-marilyn-in-zebra-2020-representation-who-makes-the-image/
