Angel Guinda sad news – dedication to him for Versopolis screening on February 4th
Unfortunately, I bring some very sad news – Aragonese poet Ángel Guinda passed away this weekend (Zaragoza 1948 – Madrid 29 January 2022). Charles Olsen, who worked with him, describes him as ‘a poet, friend and inspiration, both in his poetry and his way of being’. He says that ‘Ángel always had a lovely twinkle in his eye and was quite mischievous. At a birthday lunch he arranged in El Alambique, rather than ask everyone to move so he could get up, like a child he crawled under the table and a minute later reappeared as if from the ground, one finger raised to the heavens, announcing that he was resurrected!’
I feel very sorry to have missed meeting someone who obviously brought such joy and imagination to life – a rare commodity these days. Well-regarded in Spain, there is a wonderful tribute to Guinda in El País for those who can read Spanish.
Charles and I have dual video presentations on The Poetics of Poetry Film at Brave New Literatures festival run by VERSOPOLIS review on Friday 4th February. They were originally made for the 25th VideoBardo Video Poetry Festival @videobardo_ (Argentina) where they were first presented with festival director Javier Robledo in December.
We are now dedicating this event to Ángel. Charles Olsen’s documentary ‘Videopoetry in Portugal and Spain’ includes a fragment of ‘On the Eve of Death’ which filmmaker Sándor M. Salas made with Guinda in 2014. Sándor commented in his interview for The Poetics of Poetry Film: ‘[Ángel] is someone who understands other artists and therefore gives them the freedom and respect to create’.
Our featured image is a photo of Ángel Guinda from the poetry film Charles made with him – ‘Libro de huellas –The Book of Traces’.
I can think of no better videographic glimpse into Guinda’s craft in his later years than that made by Charles. In its quiet, yet controlled black and white depiction of the poet, it is as if he were submitting his identification details to a police authority, whilst summing up his life. As such the camera is allowed time with him, and the quiet, yet official sounds of an old typewriter occasionally rise to the surface. In the poem Guinda says ‘Like a fish in the air / have I lived in this world.’ … ‘I’m tethering my life / so the storm doesn’t escape me’. … ‘memory: What is it, but a book of traces’…. ‘And my final declaration:/ Don’t wait for me./ I’ve arranged to meet myself / and I’m in a hurry to arrive.’
In those prophetic, final words in the video poem we can leave our thoughts with him.
Interviews on the Poetics of Poetry Film at Brave New Literatures Festival by Versopolis Review
Brave New Literatures festival has begun! In combination with the Review and its readership itself, this is a vital, large-scale event organised by the stimulating, up-to-the-minute and eye-opening Versopolis Review.So pleased that there are two bilingual (Spanish and English) video interviews in it this year related to The Poetics of Poetry Film screening on February 4th. These are my interview with Javier Robledo, director of VideoBardo, celebrating 25 Years of VideoBardo (some very interesting questions asked); and Madrid-based poet and poetry filmmaker, Charles Olsen’s really informative interview with a selection of Spanish and Portuguese videopoets featured in the book. A link to the media page on Versopolis.com.
I would recommend checking out all the events at their website as they provide a great overview of the state of play in all aspects of literature, poetry and experimental media.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS to the Birds
To Everyone – have a happy and peaceful festive season. Here is my gift to myself for the birds – in these cold days. *******
See you in the New Year!
Fotogenia – Delluc Avant Garde prizewinner Ian Gibbins in Conversation with Laura Bianco
I was so very pleased that as a juror for FOTOGENIA festival, Mexico City this year, I selected The Life we Live is not Life Itself by Australian filmmaker Ian Gibbins and Greek poet Tasos Sagris (and produced by +the Institute for Experimental Arts, 2021) for the DELLUC Avant Garde prize. Although all the films were of a very high creative standard and of many different approaches, this film really stood out for its marriage of technical exploration and political sensibilities. Through complex techniques Ian has wholly created a fictional world that also appears recognisable. A world that is impossible yet also familiar. Where faces in ‘posters’ change their expressions, and the sea crashes dream-like at the end of the street. You could say that, as in dreams, we are there and not there as sensate human beings. But we could also ask what position we are really in as viewers, in relation to the unfolding constructed scenes which parallel the concrete labyrinths that have been built by developers in the last forty years? For those of you following Ian’s work, he can be found in conversation with curator Laura Bianco of Tranas @thefringe, Sweden on YouTube. Covering ‘The life we live is not life itself’ and ‘After-Image’ it provides some very interesting background to the complexity of his thought processes, and how a filmmaker works with a poem and all its resonances, so enjoy 🙂
The Life we Live is not Life Itself
(Vimeo description)
“The life we live is a series of illusions… a fleeting smile… mistaken decisions… dangerous, unpredictable… yet, we will meet again, as lovers… parents… children… and you will know who I am…”
Tasos Sagris’s poem, with its haunting soundtrack by Whodoes, offers us an extended exploration of lives lived in parallel, at cross-purposes, in and out of love, around the world, from the innocence of children to the wisdom of elders. There are the good times when summer seems to last forever, and the bad, when persecution and misadventure could land us in prison, with nothing but rain to hear our voice. But what is the reality? What is mere illusion? Can there be more to life than simply living?
The raw footage for the video was shot mainly in and around the city of Adelaide, its suburbs, the nearby Fleurieu Peninsula and Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, supplemented with images from around Greece. But nothing in the video is quite as it seems. Most scenes have been composited and animated from multiple sources. So we look down a city laneway and see friends walking along a beach. Storm clouds, ominously aglow, gather behind skylines. And after the rain, floodwater surges across plazas, covers the floors of ruined buildings.
Who inhabits these strange places? Whom will we meet there? Look carefully in the malls and side-streets: we can see our fellow walkers, and then, again, again… And in windows of city buildings, in old frames hung on walls of broken brick and cracked concrete, we see the faces of the young and old, the boys and girls, the men and women of our imagination, our desires, our reconstructed memories. As alluring as they seem, none of them is real. Rather, they are the product of artificial intelligence, trained on thousands of our fellow humans, and generated by cold, unfeeling algorithms.
No video can truly capture the inner thoughts that inspire a poet’s words. Instead, we can construct a world in which the real and unreal seamlessly merge, creating environments beyond day-to-day experience, yet somehow familiar, somehow recognisable as elements in the shared narratives of our lives.
Is this Life? Who amongst us is truly Living? Let’s see. And perhaps we will meet again … on another rainy afternoon… “like now, like now.”
• official selection, and winner, Fotogenia Film Festival 2021, vol. 3 (Mexico City, November, 2021);
• official selection, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival (Berlin, 25-28 November, 2021);
• official selection and finalist, Vesuvius International Film Festival XVI (Italy, 2021);
• official selection, Puntomov Video Orbits International Video Festival, 2nd edition (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Toluca, Mexico, 2021);
• official selection, 18th Annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival (San Francisco, December, 2021);
• official selection, Fonland International Festival of Video Art and Performance (Coimbra, Portugal, November, 2021);
• invited screening, The Wrong Biennale No 5 – Encounters with Incomprehension (November 2021 – March, 2022);
• official selection, 6th Trujillo International Independent Film Festival (Peru, 23-26 September, 2021);
• official selection, 2021 International Screening of Experimental Films and Videopoems TRANÅS AT THE FRINGE (Tranås, Sweden, 16-24 October, 2021);
• official selection, Spanish version, Nahui Ollin Film Festival 2021 (Durango, Mexico, August – September, 2021);
• official selection, 9th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens, June, 2021);
• honorable mention, Video Art and Experimental Film Festival (New York, 2021).
After-Image
(Vimeo description)
“I see them and look them away … see stinger-ray hide in bush … climb for a better view … afraid of spider-snake-lizard … we watched them watched us … “
Locations include Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide; the Gilbert Street Hotel, Adelaide; Lynton railway station, Belair Line; Hawker Avenue, Belair, South Australia.
An after-image is the residual image you see if you look away at a blank wall or something similar having stared at a brightly lit scene. The after-image is a negative of the original in terms of light-dark and colour. It is mostly due to the photoreceptors in the retina becoming desensitised by the original scene. It fades after a few seconds as the receptors reset.
• invited screening at The Wrong Biennale No 5 – Encounters with Incomprehension (November 2021 – March 2022);
• offical selection, Shockfest Film Festival Silver Bullet Virtual Screening (USA, December, 2021);
• official selection, 2021 International Screening of Experimental Films and Videopoems TRANÅS AT THE FRINGE (Tranås, Sweden, 16-24 October, 2021);
• official selection Another Hole in the Head – Warped Dimension – Tripping the Light Fantastic (San Francisco, May, 2021);
• official selection Carmarthen Bay Film Festival (Wales, May, 2021);
• official selection, 10th Pune Short Film Festival (India, December, 2020);
Text originally published in e•ratio 29 (2020).
Film and Video Poetry Symposium
The final of the winter festivals (I think!) is from The Film and Video Poetry Society in South Pasadena, USA. Another extraordinary festival with multiple strands, it is different in spanning a longer time frame from 1st–31st December. Looking forward to what is on offer 🙂
OBHEAL 26th–28th November, beautiful Cork
So, this is the fourth of the five worldwide WINTER FESTIVAL offerings! ÓBhéal’s new hybrid Winter Warmer poetry and poetry film festival is happening on the 26th–28th November in beautiful Cork. I went a few years ago when my film of Lucy English’s poem Mr Sky was shown, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. This time there are 30 poets both live and online, poetry workshops, music, a filmed poetry play, and other discussions and sessions. I REALLY LIKE this new format and think it will be very successful over the coming years, so hats off to festival director Paul Casey. Their programme is so inviting I have included a link to it here 9thWinterWarmerProgramme
An Earth Song is a multilingual poetry collaboration produced by Good Day Cork, creators of the multilingual prose and poetry gatherings Many Tongues of Cork.
Tina Pisco, the first Writer-in-Residence @ Cork City Libraries facilitated a multilingual writing group of six people who worked together for several months to create An Earth Song. These writers include Cinthya Torrez Quispe, Claudia Maria Zedda, Dr. Lekha Menon Margassery, Nqobizitha Vella, Cecilia Gamez and Anja Bakker. The group discussed feelings, reactions, hopes, and fears related to climate change, as well as how our multilingual backgrounds influence how we express ourselves.
The prize-giving for the shortlisted films and prizewinner will be screened on the Sunday, whilst a selection of poetry films from Ireland will be screened on the Saturday. My tip for the winning film might well be Janet Lees, but don’t tell anyone.
