FOTOGENIA 6 – Nine Glorious Days of Wonder, Talent and Imagination in Mexico City
FOTOGENIA INTERNATIONAL FILM POETRY & DIVERGENT NARRATIVES FESTIVAL, based out of Mexico City must now be the largest festival of its kind in the world. I was so fortunate to be able to go last year and this year Festival Director Chris Patch has excelled himself. From November 21st to the 30th every day is full of themed screenings, live and online, and where uniquely some films are very short and others up to twenty minutes. With curations creatively titled such as Fugaz – ‘Fleeting’, transient, ephemeral; Sacudida – ‘Shock’, shake, jolt, tremor; Asfixia – Asphyxia; Destierro ‘Exile’, Banishment, Uprooting (see Lebanese filmmaker Josef Khallouf’s Exiles, online), there are now 15 sections and many other screenings and performances.
As there are so many films this year and it has been impossible to narrow these down, I am going to focus mainly on a selection of performative films. Many of these are made in relation to an overwhelming fear or predicament; a suffering experienced or engendered by mankind. There are many approaches, such as the film Unseen by Helmie Stil and Sjaan Flikweert, where the underwater camera is close up on the face of a distressed woman, submerged under both real and metaphoric waves.
Unseen, Helmie Stil and Sjaan Flikweert
In Somber Tides Canadian director and choreographer Chantal Caron has created a startling elegiac environmentally aware work of art in film. Performing in remote locations, and filmed from above, dark fabrics billow out from the dancers over (disappearing) snow-covered landscapes. Amongst blizzard conditions the evocative movements suggest a lament for the loss of habitat and effectively the birds of the region. The message is profound and clear.
Somber Tides, Chantal Caron
Are You Crying is also dance-based, and sensitively and evocatively told by American multidisciplinary artist Marissa Brown. Wearing a glittery dress, she is positioned by a late-night empty road, where occasional cars pass. Her movements suggest a form of capture and release, of uncertainty, and lack of belonging. ‘It’s a desire to make beauty out of a time of grief, processing, and growth.’
Are You Crying, Marissa Brown
Observer, by Serbian videopoet Ana Pantic chillingly encapsulates the feeling of being a helpess watcher of how the world is imploding, as it is beset by war and planetary destruction. Beginning with the line ‘Maybe these are the last days’ we see a woman’s naked back with hair cascading down, as an overlay of a tank seems to pass over her. The very stillness of the body combined with the graphic images reinforces the larger picture. ‘In the Beginning was the Word … and the Word was with God’ as if we are in the hands of fate and a God that must now come to help us against the evil in the world.
Observer, Ana Pantic
Two short films I would also like to mention are Over Her Head (Sobre su Cabeza) by talented Mexican cinematographer and director Fernando Mol where a girl climbs to the roof to escape her problems: ‘In the Total Darkness Poetry is Still There’, and What Do You Do With Everything You Feel (Qué Haces Con Todo Aquello que Sientes?) by innovative Mexican director Ale Nuño, which cleverly disseminates the tensions and desires around making a telephone call.
Over Her Head, Fernando Mol
What Do You Do With Everything You Feel, Ale Nuño
With man bonded to his computer, Life Machine by Australian artist, poet and filmmaker Mark Niehus reminds us that humans are now inseparable from our machines. We trust and share our space with these objects that also guide and form us, in an endless vortex of searching and finding. You might ask, ultimately, do we need a ‘real’ human in this performance?
Life Machine, Mark Niehus
Equally, Martin Gerigk’s Demi-Demons postulates a strange hybrid world that is ersatz reality – a sort of AI surrealist dream from animated vintage photos and in collage form. It is described as an ‘essay film about the contradictions of contemporary existence, which separate us from our natural instincts, opening abysses within us’. Like Life Machine it also opens up questions about where we situate ourselves in our real v. audiovisual, streaming existence. Perhaps we function 50% online, where our thought processes and methods of understanding are well attuned to navigating these always enticing waters. Here, storytelling images can be outrageous and startling, and therefore memorable with creative permeability. Gerigk not only directs audiovisual art and experimental films but is also a professional contemporary music composer. As such his work is strongly focused on the ‘inherent synesthetic connections of sound and visual perceptions’.
Demi-Demons, Martin Gerigk
There are also full-length screenings such as: Vita Altra (Otra Vida) Another Life by Italian director Davide Belotti and project-based films such as Explosives by Paula Alves and Coraline Claude. Another Life is a fascinating experimental feature that is uniquely experimental in its geographic locations and filming approach. Taking 16 months to make, between Italy, Belgium, Lanzarote and Sicily, over 170 actors and members of the public took part. Whilst it appears like a random sequence of scenes that have to be decoded, to quote the website: ‘A Sicilian man confronts his past as two strangers embody his conflicting desires, blending fantasy and reality’.
In Programme 8 Fortalezas – (‘Strengths’ or strongholds, fortresses, citadels) Paula Alves and Coraline Claude have created the feminist project Explosives. Alves is a multimedia artist, performer, filmmaker and art therapist who investigates the relationship between the unconscious and its forms of somatization in the body. Claude is an actress and director who often uses poetry in her research. Under her, nine women studied the poetry anthology “Je transporte des explosifs. On les appelle des mots” with feminist poems by: Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa & Cherríe Moraga, bell hooks, Dorothy Allison, Robin Morgan, Marge Piercy, Alice Walker, Paula Gunn Allen, Rita Mae Brown and more. Each woman on the project reinterpreted a poem which became the film Explosives.
Explosives, Paula Alves and Coraline Claude
There will also be a selection of online Zoom discussions for participants. I am looking forward to taking part on Saturday November 23rd. I would also like to add that I am honoured that Programme 2 – Sacudida (Shock, jolt, tremor) includes my own latest film Vuelo / Flight. It is an autobiographical poem and film about my mother who suffered depression, and my role as cleaner and gardener from the age of five. It is the prologue to my upcoming poetry collection The Unexhibited.
Flight / Vuelo, Sarah Tremlett
Please do take the trip to Mexico. You have to experience FOTOGENIA at least once in your lifetime!!!
Please go to the side bar on the Home Page for the link to the festival.
OBHÉAL – HYBRID WINTER WARMER, CORK and live online – a rich feast
OBHÉAL hybrid WINTER WARMER festival, CORK 22-24th November and online
Ó Bhéal (Irish for ‘by word of mouth’, or ‘from the mouth’) is here again with its 12th Winter Warmer festival. Ó Bhéal is true to its name, in that poetry film cohabits so snugly with a very full schedule of poetry in many other forms such as experimental theatre, reading to music, spoken word etc. And by extension, this is also its 4th hybrid edition, being live online as well.
My poetry film Mr Sky with poem by Lucy English was selected in 2019 when Fiona Aryan deservedly won, and it was a great occasion, both in the poetry films shown but also visiting Cork itself, and Cork Indie Film Festival was also in full swing providing a lively hub.
Founder and Director Paul Casey has to be applauded for hosting poetry events continuously since April 2007. At first once a week until December 2019, then once a month, he has been tireless in promoting poetry not only in the Cork community but with joint ventures further afield such as the Twin Cities project (Cork-Coventry). The first poetry film festival was held in November 2010. Ó Bhéal really feels like it has evolved naturally, with a strong committee team and more recently leading Irish poetry filmmaker Colm Scully to provide poetry film workshops. Not only is there a sense of a percolation that is continually bubbling up between poetry and film through all the seasons, but at each Winter Warmer the winner of the international poetry film competition receives a beautiful, unique award by glass artist Michael Ray. What more could you ask for?
For 2024 over 50 poets from seven countries will be performing, with some live online, and Ó Bhéal is mindful of its own heritage, presenting ‘bilingual readings, showcasing the best of today’s gaelic-speaking poets’.
The programme gives you a feeling of the varied riches on offer: ‘The festival includes a haiku workshop with Anton Floyd, a poetry-film workshop with Colm Scully, the launch of Southword issue 47, two music/poetry fusions from Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin, an experimental theatre performance from Strive Theatre and MacBóchra, an Open-Mic Showcase featuring fifteen poets from five Cork-based regular open-mic events, plus a Closed-Mic set, for ten poets from Ó Bhéal’s regular open-mic sessions during 2024.
The shortlist and prize-giving for Ó Bhéal’s 12th International Poetry-Film Competition will be screened and simulcast, as will an additional, special selection of poetry-films made in Ireland.’
I would recommend visiting Cork for this very special festival. There will be two screenings on the morning of Sunday 24th November 11.00am-12.00pm and 12.30pm-1.30pm at Nano Nagle Place, Cork & streamed via the festival website festival stage and Facebook & YouTube channels.
Three examples of political poetry films include: Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran with the film Migrations from the poem of the same name by Robin Davidson. Their use of animation excels with this subject which reminds us, and particularly with the dark election results, that everyone in America is an immigrant other than the indigenous peoples.
And, unfortunately so very topical, with the flash floods in South Eastern Spain recently, Australian poet and filmmaker Ian Gibbins’ Types of Rain reminds us of the horrific effects of Climate Change that are happening as we speak. As he says ‘How do we understand a future when we have failed to comprehend the past?’
I was one of the jurors at Weimar Poetry Film Festival this year, and another political film that I voted as winner of that festival was Berkovich by German director Anya Ryzhkova. This is a chilling true account of being imprisoned ‘detained’ in Russia for your creative output.
Amnesty International states: ‘Theatre director Evgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk are being arbitrarily detained since 5 May and face prosecution for authoring and staging “Finist Yasny Sokol,” an award-winning play about women who left for Syria and married members of armed groups. Both women face absurd charges of “justifying terrorism” which carry up to seven years in prison. Russian authorities must immediately release them and drop all charges.’
‘The film is based on a speech by the Russian theater director Evgenia Berkovich. Together with the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, Evgenia Berkovich has been under arrest and jailed since May 2023 on charges of “public calls to terrorism”. On the ninth of January 2024, before the verdict was supposed to be announced, she read her final speech in verse.’
On another note, dance also features in the finalists this year with Butterfly, from the poem Butterfly by Marco Sonzogni, which is described as a poetic dance film about art, beauty and death. It is directed by Alfio Leotta (New Zealand), the founder and director of the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival in New Zealand.
It is also good to see work by long-established Galician filmmaker and poet Celia Parra – Un rastro de luz (A trace of light) – which contemplates spirituality and mortality, through the Goddess Navia in the flow of the river. Celia was executive producer of the Videopoetry documentary Versogramas / Verses and Frames (Belen Montero and Juan Lesta, 2018).
A personal favourite of mine is this film by Canadian Kim Traitor Hwlhits’um | Signs which ‘describes a boat trip from Canoe Pass to Lamalchi Bay on Penelakut Island off the west coast of British Columbia, during which Hwlitsum knowledge holder Lindsey Wilson traced the traditional path of Hwlitsum First Nation on their yearly hunting and gathering rounds, and shared his memories of his time on the Salish Sea. This poetry film is part of the installation “walk quietly: ts’ekw’unshun kws qututhun (walk quietly with respect and care along the shore),” a guided artist-scientist walk along Hwlhits’um (Brunswick Point/Canoe Pass) in collaboration with Hwlitsum First Nation. www.walkquietly.ca
And finally, my own film Flight, which is a very personal poem and poetry film about my childhood relationship with my mother, who suffered depression, though I didn’t know it at the time. We rattled around in a large, cold house – my father’s dream, bought at auction – but there were parts she never visited in her entire life. I cleaned and looked after the house and garden to help her, from the age of five. The visual imagery also includes samples of my neo-expressionist paintings and ‘Floor’ carpet, floor and dust sculpture from the 1980s. The poem is also inspired by an ekphrastic poem I wrote about Lanyon’s work ‘The Last Green Mile’ (Transitional : Otter Gallery Anthology, Chichester University, 2015). ‘Flight’ is from the forthcoming commissioned collection – Unexhibited, available in 2025.
https://www.obheal.ie/blog/competition-poetry-film/poetry-film-shortlist-2024/
https://www.obheal.ie/WinterWarmer/PoetryFestival2024.htm
Avant-Garde Maldito Video Poetry Festival – Albacete, Spain –
Maldito (11–17 November) began in 2017 and it has really come of age this year with a comprehensive curation of creative films from around the world and its online presence via FILMIN. What makes it unique is the approach by Javier Garcia, festival director and his team. You can enjoy a party vibe with avant-garde events, electronic music and poetry ‘that is danced’, videopoetry of course, but also seminal international poetic cinema. Maldito not only looks for new ideas and approaches but also creates a hub for such events, and has become a major festival on the poetry film circuit with a strong curatorial eye.
This year Maldito is asking all the questions that I am fascinated by, and have discussed in the publication The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books, 2021), such as ‘How does video poetry differ from experimental cinema etc. etc.’ On Wednesday 13th there will be a really interesting round table discussion at the Municipal Museum in Albacete to ‘determine what this new discipline is exactly. Those taking part are Isaías Griñolo (video creator), Clara López Cantos (video poet and film director) and Samkale (video poet) with David Trashumante (poet) as moderator.
For me, another really important examination of the subject is a workshop for EAA students by David Trashumante, who ‘runs a three-year Seminar ¿Nuevas Prácticas Poéticas? which he coordinated for the University of Valencia. This introduces and defines subgenres of postmodern poetry such as videopoetry, cyberpoetry, polypoetry, postpoetry, performance poetry, stage poetry…’ Here he encourages poetic experimentation, and an introduction to contemporary avant-garde poetry. I wish that this had been available ten years ago!!!
There will be also be a videopoetry retrospective screening the best works from the annual competition, held at the Teatro Circo de Albacete which I will not miss. A really good innovation on the part of the organisers. The poetic cinema includes historical documentaries, for example, Miles in Bello. Juan Bernier in the Spanish War – a documentary with direction by Rafael Bernier and Juan Antonio Bernier; and Carlos Edmundo de Ory. The game and the word, a documentary about the Andalusian ‘iconoclastic poet’ from Cadiz directed by Jose Luis Hernandez Arango.
The videopoetry competition will happen at the Circus Theatre, Albacete, on Friday 15th, with yet another highly talented and creatively innovative group of finalists. My film Selfie with Marilyn with poem by leading American poet Heidi Seaborn won in 2021 so I am particularly keen to see this screening. I was also invited to be one of the jurors for the winning film so I have had a wonderful but difficult time over the last few days, narrowing down contenders. Films can be seen such as Croatian team (director) Arinovic and poet Anaïssa Ali with the film Unbreakable and cameraless cinema; or poetic reciting to a drone, from the balcony of a building with direction by Sofia Lenski and Adrian Guterman and poetry by Juan Pablo Di Lenarda. A number reflect on climate change, and the interconnection between humans and the environment, and our reaction to the uncertainty of the future, such as Eyrie with poem and film by Eni Derhemi.
The politics of living in the turmoil of the world today can be found in Confessions an examination of what ‘homeland’ means by Andisheh Bagherzadeh (Tehran, 1993) a film reflecting ‘lost memories’ of life in Iran. Also a warning on navigating the role of women in relation to men in the French film Letter to my daughter with direction by Michael Maurissens and poetry by Amee Slam; or Mont Carver’s Mutations, a filmic account of her response to her father’s near-death experience whilst away from home without health insurance.
A number of films reflecting on a fractured, transient or blurred sense of identity and place such as the Spanish film One sky. All the skies with poem and film by Samkale, or British poet and filmmaker Laurie Huggett’s All I Loved which is inspired by ‘childhood wanderings through graveyards and one particular grave. With my co-juror and festival organiser, Linda Cleary, I also included this evocative film in the Women in Word festival in Penzance last summer.
One Sky. All the Skies
And then again we can discover the extraordinary from the everyday, as in the unmissable Spanish film A fish is a fish is a fish directed by Alberto Pombo with poem by Marilar Aleixandre. I will just quote the synopsis directly: ‘A portrait of Fisterra and of the entire Galician sea world, captured on the Costa da Morte. These are the hands and eyes of Alexandre Nerium, poet and sailor, the nets his father carried and the ‘clean’ ones where the rapante hides. A rose is a rose is a rose and therefore, a fish is a fish is a fish. Seafaring erudition, wild toponymy, love songs and saltpeter. Sardines are suspicious.’
https://malditofestival.com/seleccion-oficial-viii-concurso-internacional-de-videopoesia-2024
POSTPONEMENT DUE TO FLASH FLOODS
I am very saddened to add I was invited to present a retrospective of my own work at Maldito this year along with Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow – the bilingual, ekphrastic poetry anthology with linked films. Unfortunately I felt this had to be cancelled due to the horrific flash floods in South East Spain. I would add this was my personal decision, also based upon an upcoming operation. Maldito will be an amazing event, better than ever before. My retrospective will happen in two years at their major Ten Year celebration.
AOTEAROA POETRY FILM FESTIVAL, New Zealand, 20–21 November
Establishing a stand-alone, annual festival in what is really a niche genre is a real achievement. It takes courage, creativity and also, sticking power. I know the experience – the feeling of finishing one and immediately thinking about the next. Aotearoa is now in its second year but already well established, and is one of those poetry film events that you really wish you could attend. This is partly because New Zealand seems to not only have a really creative approach to film and poetry, but also how to celebrate it, rather than focus on the competitive element. They encourage the innovative and eclectic, and this year it is organised in collaboration with Victoria University of Wellington. As they say on the website:
‘The Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival is an event entirely devoted to the celebration and showcase of poetry film. The Festival will feature a poetry film competition, workshops, seminars, poetry readings and retrospectives and it will offer the opportunity to showcase the diversity of poetry film produced both in Aotearoa New Zealand and overseas.’ https://www.aotearoapff.com/
I really like this balance between screenings and other options, particular poetry readings and retrospectives. The background to the festival inspires me. Firstly, festival founder and co-director Alfio Leotta is an award-winning filmmaker who has written a number of of books on film. His Canadian co-director Tyler Shane Tesolin (completing a research PhD in film at Victoria University) ‘has been making movies his entire life, focusing primarily on the intersection between poetry and film’ and has written two books of poetry. These backgrounds are important to me – where those involved either write poetry or make films (ideally both). I am always interested in the creative trajectories of the organisers and judges, as well.
The jurors this year are equally as talented and impressive. Nova Paul (Ngāpuhi) is a filmmaker, writer, and Indigenous rights researcher. Her creative practice explores experimental film history and Indigenous filmmaking. She lectured for over two decades at AUT and established the Cinematic Arts minor. She has exhibited in all major galleries in New Zealand and shown in many international film festivals, including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival
Missy Molloy is a senior lecturer in film at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand, where she lectures on women’s, queer, posthuman and activist cinemas. She is co-author of Screening the Posthuman (Oxford University Press 2023) and co-editor of ReFocus: The Films of Susanne Bier (Edinburgh University Press 2018). Her recent publications include the video essay, “Art Cinema’s Suicidal Posthuman Women” ([in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 2024), and “Indigenous Futurist and Women-Centred Dystopian Film” (Feminist Posthumanism and Postfeminist Humanism, Bloomsbury 2023)
Dafydd Sills-Jones is an Associate Professor at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. He is from Aberystwyth in West Wales. His films are concerned with places, identity, and language.
I should also add that my poem and film Flight has been included this year, so I feel very honoured to be able to share that news. As it was a much more personal poem and film about my childhood I am really touched that it is being shown. The poem is from a commissioned forthcoming collection Unexibited, in 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfbA3rlFOtg&t=1s
29 Wigan Street
Kelburn
Wellington, Wellington 6011
New Zealand
Bristol Literary Film Festival – Frame to Frames, Cancer Alley and an exciting diverse programme
BRISTOL LITERARY FILM FESTIVAL
I am really pleased to be part of the newly launched Bristol Literary Film Festival this year. It will also be nice to catch up with Lucy English again, who is presenting the important and timely ecopoetry film Cancer Alley from Outlier Moving Pictures (Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran). I will be promoting the Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow bilingual, ekphrastic poetry anthology (and prize) alongside examples from its QR-linked screening.
This is the fifth stop on the book tour for Frame to Frames (FOTOGENIA, Mexico City, MX; REELpoetry, Houston, USA; Weimar Poetry Film Festival, Weimar, GER; Leeds Trinity College, Leeds, UK, and next month will be Maldito videopoetry festival in Albacete, Spain.) I will include some of the films that were inspired by the painting Huapango Torero by Mexican artist Ana Segovia (including winning film Love Spell Cast in Petals by Meriel Lland and Huapango Torero by Pam and Jack).
A Love Spell Cast in Petals by Meriel Lland
Bristol Literary Film Festival is the brainchild of Festival Director Anthea Page, sister of well-known, award-winning poetry filmmaker Diana Taylor. She was also previously Director of the widely comprehensive yet inviting Newlyn International Film Festival (where Lucy and I were jurors). She says that ‘running the Newlyn IFF definitely helped in my decision to run a new festival in Bristol’ and in terms of its unique title she comments ‘I believe that we are the first ever to combine a literary and film festival in Bristol!’.
Not only can she boast this accolade, but the festival also supports St Peter’s Hospice ‘I have been involved with raising funds for St Peter’s Hospice for the last couple of years.’ Their website encapsulates the wonderful work they do:
‘St Peter’s Hospice is a local charity that provides care and support to adults who are living with a progressive life-limiting illness in the Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset area. We have been established for over 40 years with the majority of our support provided in people’s homes. People receiving our care have a wide range of conditions, including cancer, heart failure, lung disease and neurological illness. Support is focused around the physical, psychological, social and spiritual issues that can arise as a result of serious illness, in order to improve the quality of a person’s life. Everyone is unique, and we provide support with that in mind.’
Rather like Newlyn there are lots of interesting aspects to this festival: not only International Poetry Films but also documentaries including Colin Thomas’ ‘Dead Man Talking’ about Thomas Hardy and his methods of research, and Zennor Spirit of Place from the fascinating book by Bob Osborne with film by Diana Taylor (a perfect creative partnership).
Photograph from Zennor Spirit of Place, Bob Osborne and Diana Taylor
In light of Anthea’s support of the Hospice, I am also looking forward to hearing presentations on subjects shedding light on how we respond to life-threatening illness, such as Tumorous Testicles Just Say Cancer by Afsheen Panjalizadeh, and also Martin Smith’s presentation Matters of Life and Death. Also, the extraordinary film presentation by Juliet Butler of the book The Less You Know the Sounder you Sleep, the true story of conjoined Russian twins, Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova. There also will be an interesting book presentation by Susie Parr on Henleaze Lake (a swimmer’s paradise) and fascinating highlights from Bristol Film and Video Society (1934 to 2024). Attendants also have the opportunity to socialise and take part in a writers’ forum and learn about Creative Writing for Wellbeing, or catch up with Bristol Poets at the Festival Café. I guarantee this will be a lovely gathering with much to discover!
Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow / Cuadro a Cuadros : Tus Ojos Siguen is published by Poem Film Editions via liberated words.com/store
or see top right of Home Screen.
Poetics and Film 1980–2024 A Retrospective by Martin Sercombe
I am honoured to share this really fascinating insight into the development of leading British experimental filmmaker, film poet and poetry filmmaker Martin Sercombe, now living in New Zealand. As an artist your work changes over the years (alongside artistic influences), and even changes mediums, and this creative process, across time, is really significant both personally and historically, for the field. I have worked across textiles, painting, experimental film and writing in a number of genres since the 1980s and before, so Martin’s retrospective really gels with me. It is all the more poignant as his journey has now arrived at experimentation with poetry film and AI, not necessarily an easy or accessible transition, but one made seamlessly in his case. He is also one of the contributors (with poet Thom Conroy) to Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow publication, with his AI poetry film Night is Paper (see later).
Martin
My relationship with poetry film began in the 1980s, a period when a large and vibrant community of experimental film makers were sharing ideas, with the support of the London (and regional) Film makers Co-ops and later LUX in the UK. As part of this movement, my work reflected a fascination with abstract and non-narrative synesthetic cinema. For me a synesthetic film involves a pure language of light, movement and sound. Traditional forms of storytelling are abandoned in favour of forms more akin to music. Visual kinetics, dynamic montage and the integral rhythms of a work are brought together to create an intimate synthesis of sound and image.
My formative influences were many. I studied on the UK’s first time-based media degree course at Maidstone College of Art, run by video artist David Hall. His notable works included TV Interruptions in which images such as a burning TV set were broadcast unannounced within the normal schedule of a Scottish television station. I immediately embraced his philosophy of defining art forms which could subvert media conventions.
Another key influence was Harry Smith’s Early Abstractions 1946–57 which combined jazz improvisations with imagery handpainted directly onto 35mm clear film. This, alongside another early pioneer’s work: Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 suggested innovative ways of defining a language of pure image, sound and rhythm.
Early Abstractions: 1946–57, Harry Smith.
Rhythmus 21, Hans Richter.
This manifesto was further developed by experimental filmmakers such as Pat O’Neill, who abstracted kinetic subjects such as machinery and dancers via multi-layered optical printing. His work prompted my fascination with compositing and transforming many different image and sound sources in the cause of lyrical abstraction. A documentary about his work can be seen here.
This quote by Stan Brakhage has stayed with me throughout my career as a filmmaker: “Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.” Brakhage thought of his film work as visual poems and as ways of seeing the world through eyes free of pre-ordained definitions. Likewise, much of my work begins without a script, allowing the immediacy of the moment in a given space to cue each artistic decision and the gradual evolution towards a structured piece of work.
Poetry felt like a natural addition to this approach, its lyricism and ability to subvert narrative conventions lending itself to the synesthetic genre. I saw its role as a means of replacing a conventional story arc with something looser, less prescriptive and closely married to the worlds of music and song.
Over the years I have explored many relationships between a poetic text and the moving image. In early works, such as In Motion (see below), text is seen as a metaphor for the landscape, to be absorbed by the reader in a random, fleeting fashion. Working with Sianed Jones and Cris Cheek, text became a highly fluid and malleable cue, which can be magically transformed into music, vocalization, performed gesture or animation. In later works, such as One Sunday in Winter I have thought of the poem as a parallel thread that develops alongside the moving imagery, one supporting but not explaining the other. Most recently, (Find me a Word, Songs of Vanishing etc) I have looked once again at ways a poem can become a landscape, both in concrete visual terms, and as descriptor.
In Motion (16mm 1981)
In Motion is one of a series of three short 16mm films supported by Arts Council England as part of their Film Makers on Tour Scheme. Together with Track (1980) and East Coast (1982) the three films explore visionary journeys through a range of land and seascapes.
In Motion expands upon a text from the first timetable printed by the Grand Junction Railway in the 1830s celebrating the pure joy of watching the world pass by from a train window. Words are displayed in a tracking matrix, inviting the eye to scan them left to right, or up and down, as one might a passing vista. I created the animation using a Bolex camera on a rostrum, then passed the film through the camera a second time to create the kinetic background of sunlight through passing trees. The film continues along a mountain stream in Cumbria, ending in a rapid-fire montage of zooms through plantations in North Norfolk.
In the following years, my artist film work sat on the back burner, whilst I developed my role as director of Media Projects East. The company focused on media work within the community, exploring social issues, local history and media education.
I returned to artist-led work in the late 1990s. The digital revolution had made non-linear video production accessible to low budget independent film makers. I bought my first PC driven editing system, running an early version of Adobe Premiere.
Singing the Horizon (SD Video 1997)
There followed a summer of journeys to Halvergate Marshes in the Norfolk Broads in collaboration with composer Sianed Jones. Sianed brought her voice and violin, I came with a digital camcorder. Together we responded to the transient visual qualities of marshland, light, sky and bird life through improvised music and image capture.
The film contains no text, but I like to think of it as a poetry film thanks to its lyrical approach to the dialogue which evolved. Sianed brought her knowledge of Mongolian Long Song and sang the horizons and whispering reed beds. I spent around three months exploring new found ways to layer and transform the imagery using the tools inherent in Premiere. This ability to matte together many different image sources echoed the optical print techniques of pioneers such as Pat O’Neill.
I passed a silent edit to Sianed, who then meticulously edited her field recordings to match the flow of the imagery.
Tongues Undone (SD Video 1998)
Singing the Horizon was well received at the Worldwide Video Festival in Amsterdam. This laid the groundwork for our next collaboration, funded jointly by Tom Van Vleit’s festival fund and Eastern Arts in the UK. The work is a three-way collaboration between myself, Sianed and performance poet Cris Cheek. It was conceived as a single screen work integrated into a live performance staged at the Melkveg, in Amsterdam.
The performance began with Cris and Sianed chatting at the bar, indistinguishable from the audience. Operating an animated light beam from the projection booth, I signaled the start of the performance by spot lighting the performers. I then led them away from the bar inside the beam of light, which contained a poetic ‘score’ comprised of abstract symbols and marks. Cris and Sianed’s role was to translate this score into vocalisation and gesture as they slowly followed it around the room to the central stage.
Cris and Sianed then exchanged vocal statements over dense layerings of live triggered sound samples. They also translated these statements into physical gestures and expressions. My camera in turn recorded these gestures, then stretched and spun them across a multi-screen installation behind the performers, using a live time lapse technique.
For the single screen work, Cris and Sianed recorded a sequence of poetry and song works in a white infinity cove, whilst responding to their live video feed. This allowed them to play creatively with the space they were inhabiting, leaping in and out of the frame, dancing with multiple images of themselves or watching the camera explore their throats as they sang! Post production allowed me to introduce my own voice into the dialogue by adding animation and graphic effects to the white ‘canvas’, in direct response to their poetry.
The project felt like a landmark, suggesting innovative ways performed poetry can be carried into new realms, combining aspects of live music, theatre and the moving image in a single work. It set the stage for much of my later experimentation.
Maud (SD Video 2000)
The starting point for this project was the classic poem Maud, by Alfred Tennyson, which tells, in first person monologue, the story of a man’s obsessive and unrequited love for a rich lord’s daughter.
“Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.”
The film was shot in landscapes in North Norfolk and Taupo, New Zealand. The use of slow shutter cinematography allowed me to abstract each location by painting the ambient light qualities. This technique was designed to also ‘paint’ the protagonist’s emotions, as the narrative leads him from an innocent state of pure love into abject misery, upon his rejection by Maud.
The soundtrack is largely composed of electro-acoustically treated fragments of the poem, deconstructing the words and syllables to generate a dense aural soundscape. Each spoken phrase, having first delivered its narrative intent, is recycled in many different ways to reveal its musical, rhythmic and concrete qualities.
When the film was presented at the World Wide Video Festival in 2000, Sianed Jones walked onto the stage in front of the cinema screen in the persona of Maud. Hidden inside her Victorian costume was a series of electronic triggers linked to sound samples. In this way she accompanied herself on violin as she sang her response to her rejected lover.
Delirium HD Video 2006
Delirium is a collaboration with sound artist Matt Warren, who shared an artist’s residency with me in Brisbane in 2006. It is a portrait of the city, evoking a mood of agoraphobia and disorientation, reflecting my own sense of discomfort in the midsummer tropical humidity. I wrote its poem whilst collecting infrared imagery in the city parks and along the river.
I jitterbugged into jungle city
a shimmering delirium
of clustering geometries
splicing clouds in a black light sky
I was lost on my way to Indooroopilly
to catch a pied Butcherbird
or catch a pied Currawong’s
silvery cry…
I passed the mute fine cut and poem to Matt, who then sang the words in the style of a Gregorian chant. The film was premiered at Raw Space Galleries in Brisbane, then screened in Melbourne and Hobart during a short summer tour.
I moved to Auckland, New Zealand in 2014 to be closer to family and explore new work opportunities. Soon after, I began lecturing at Auckland University of the Arts, teaching undergraduates 16mm film and digital video production. The current fascination with analogue film making techniques allowed me to share my love of the Bolex with a new generation of creatives.
In 2016 film maker Robin Kewell and I launched Lyrical Visions, an annual showcase of short poetry inspired films and animations. Initially, we used it as a platform for my own work, alongside that of the university students and lecturers. Gradually, other local film makers got involved, including performance poet Gus Simonovic.
Find Me a Word (HD Video 2017)
Find me a Word was my first collaboration with Gus, commissioned for screening at the annual Going West Writers Festival. It was shot around the creeks and bays of Titirangi, on the edge of the Waitakere Regional Park. I took fragments of his text and integrated it into the landscape through animation and travelling mattes. The intent was to expand on the ways both poem and visual counterpart might be read and interpreted. The soundtrack was composed by Canadian sound artist Sylvi MacCormac. The film is featured in Moving Poems.
One Sunday in Winter (UHD Video 2020)
One Sunday in Winter was a lockdown project, made in home confinement during the COVID pandemic of 2020. Unable to take my camera on location, I decided to make a drawn animation, using a Wacom drawing tablet, in conjunction with the drawing tools in Painter and Photoshop.
It was inspired by a day trip to Karekare, a wild and beautiful expanse of untouched coastline in West Auckland. It tells its story via hand written haikus and digital painting. The film is composed of several layers of moving imagery, each with its own rhythmic pulse. Each layer relates to another kinetic visual element observed within the landscape, such as the waves, clouds or gulls in flight. The film evokes the sudden changes in weather typical of a winter’s day, as the film moves from sunlit calm, across a windswept ocean into rain drenched twilight.
Sometimes the text was written in direct response to an image sequence, at other times, the animation was prompted by the writing. In this way the two grew together in a very organic way. The music was composed by Richard Ingamells and Richard Reynolds.
Night is Paper (UHD Video 2022)
This work marked my first venture into the world of AI generated imagery. It was made during an artist’s residency in Palmerston North, supported by Massey University, Palmerston City Council and Square Edge Community Arts Centre.
The film invites viewers to eavesdrop onto the lives of shadowy characters engaged in obscure rituals, unfolding within a painterly labyrinth. I developed a visual style inspired by Japanese sumi-e pen and wash illustration on handmade paper and Javanese shadow puppetry. Using the Midjourney AI tool, each new image was created by subtly changing variables in the text prompts sent to the generator. Additionally, one image was often used to prompt the next, leading to a sequence akin to the frames of a painted graphic novel.
The film is a collaboration with novelist Dr Thom Conroy, who wrote the text. He watched the film just before falling asleep for three consecutive nights, then waited for inspiration to come via his dreams. On the third morning his text came to him almost fully formed and he passed it back to me to integrate into the image and soundscape.
The piece was selected for Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II Ekphrastic Poetry Film Prize, FOTOGENIA film festival, Mexico City, 2023 curated by Sarah Tremlett. It can also be seen in the accompanying bilingual book available from Poem Film Editions at liberatedwords.com/store
Songs of Vanishing (UHD Video 2024)
Songs incorporates AI generated video and animation. My chosen tools were a DSLR camera, Photoshop, Premiere, Midjourney and Runway. The latter is currently one of the leading AI video generation tools, and is capable of creating short video clips prompted by still images and/or text descriptions.
The idea began simply as a study of the movements of fog through a range of landscapes at dawn and dusk. As the film progresses, the fog inspires a quiet but sombre celebration of nature, involving shadow figures moving through a surreal forest world.
I feel it is a natural companion to Night is Paper, exploring a similar tone and mood. However, this time I wanted to draw on a broader range of visual techniques. I integrated images of forest details created through in-camera multiple superimposition, fictional landscapes generated in Midjourney and animation generated in Runway. I sought to blend the three sources seamlessly, so that any distinction between ‘real’ and ‘artificial’ becomes completely blurred.
The text can be read, in one sense, as the voice of the land and forest rising out of the mist. Again, it evolved in parallel with the imagery, with one suggesting the other as the film took on its final shape. Inspired by e.e. cummings’ playful and innovative use of word layout, each line of the poem explores different ways of co-existing with the landscape and the film frame, appearing and vanishing like the fog it describes. The soundtrack by Manuel Gordiani was selected from the Free Music Archive.
The Dance of Light (UHD Video 2024)
To further explore the potentials of AI driven choreography, I embarked on a dance inspired piece, working with virtual performers in virtual landscapes. It is still impossible to prescribe the exact parameters of an AI generated shot, such as character movement and continuity, camera cues, lighting etc. The algorithms make many unexpected decisions, sometimes impressive, often not! In making this film, my role as artist felt more akin to that of art director, attempting to reign in the wild imaginings of a team of virtual creatives! So, rather than taking an overly prescriptive approach, I let their imaginings lead the work, as it developed into a meditation on ritual and dance as a celebration of nature.
It is AI’s ability to emulate almost any artistic style that most interests me. I see it as a new means of generating synesthetic abstraction that can echo my earlier work. I also wonder how it will transform the landscape for other creative professionals. Soon AI photography and video will become indistinguishable from their ‘real-life’ counterparts. Many cost and labour intensive processes will be replaced by descriptive computer driven commands. Whilst this could remove the need for large budgets and teams of specialists, it risks making many valuable, traditional skills redundant. However, my feeling is that computers will never replace the innovative, evolving nature of human creativity.
Reflecting on my journey over the last 40 years, I feel each project has been another step towards understanding the profound synergies that can co-exist between poetry, sound and the moving image. For me the medium is a perfect platform for exploring collaboration between these complementary disciplines and finding fresh ways to synthesise them into new artistic forms.
Further Links and Reading
A documentary about the work of Pat O’Neill
Stan Brakhage – Stellar (1993)
A History of Experimental Film and Video – by A. L. Rees
Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–2000 – by P. Adams Sitney
