The animal that therefore I am – Bea de Visser – Netherlands
The 9th International Video Poetry Festival and the Institute for Experimental Arts awards the 10 Outsanding Video Poems of this year. We would like to thank all artists for their amazing participations.
We invite you to submit your poems for the anniversary 10th International Video poetry Festival here: https://filmpoetry.org/seo-title-preview-10th-international-video-poetry-festival-call-out/
The animal that therefore I am – Bea de Visser – Netherlands
“What does the animal see when it looks at me?” Three animals and a woman in an enclosed space. As they study each other, their own methods of communication create a wordless conversation. We view them in close-up and from various perspectives, with the woman as a solitary species in this universe.
Director Statement: The world will become a better place if we are able to give up the priority position of man and look around us as a human animal that is capable of meeting other species on foot of equivalence.
der und die – Peter Boving – Germany
A love poem by Ernst Jandl is the basis for a musical “Tête-à-tête” between a Dresden woman and a Martian. In a rental car it comes fast to a rushing love scene, which ends in total chaos in the environment of a violent Monday demo.
Destiny – Lina Bingi – Gregory Corso – Austria – USA
This video poem is tribute to Gregory Corso which is one of meta-lyric video series called “I regret being part of your regrets”.
Tu me Manques, Pourquoi. Robertie Valée – France -Switzerland
Director Statement: Fascinated by the ambivalence of love feelings, I couldn’t resist compiling a collection of eighty poetic love letters between a man and a woman after twenty years spent together, with a particular search for the musicality of the words. (I don’t know if the translation transcribes it). This short film of 12 minutes allowed me to put in image five letters by offering me a space of unequalled freedom.
Zero Dimension – Sunya Madrigal – Mexico
“Dimensión Cero” is an artistic venture that intervolves the stillness of architecture with the fluidity of dance. The architectural space ceases to be a passive object of contemplation when auspiciously awakened by the flow of dance, in a back-and-forth pulsation between a singular body of space and the captivated gaze of the camera.
A CHANCE TO BE – Jesse Nyander – Evan Lowe – USA
Director Statement: We have been working on this video since June 2020, after the revolution started happening in America. I wanted to work on a project that had a relatability, and deeper meaning. Hoping to register with everyone’s human rights in USA right now. “I can not exist unless you acknowledge it”.
Out – Costas Lamproulis – Greece
Confinement and exit. Privacy and public life. Alienation and reconnection. Everything passes through the non-place, under the shadow of the capital Π… A life-size door is set up at five key points of Larissa (Greece). Passers-by interact and a group of artists attempts improvised performances. The spontaneous stories that emerge challenge the present of the new reality.
Director Statement: The door that symbolises the confinement but also the exit, the same door that ensures our privacy and at the same time connects us to the outside world, this door becomes an occasion for associations of the recent situation and inspiration towards the new perspectives that open.
Fragile Vehicle – Hélène Matte – Canada
A video poetry about fragility and obsolescence Fragile Vehicle is about fragility and obsolescence of bodies, technologies and ideologies. It’s a kind of a Vanity painting by the artist Alexandre Fatta based on an old poem saved in extremis from a back of a drawer and titled, in French, Les Supports fragiles. It’s a call for beauty, a rejection of complacency and rigidity, a sour and sweet critique of consumer society. This videopoem laughs at nostalgia and pisses off totalitarian societies.
As before, I didn’t do anything – Jin Young Park – Rebublic of Korea
Director’s note: Last year, I experienced a death, a disease and a low point in a relationship, all around the same time. When these unbearable pains happened, I simply swallow them, unprepared, or at least I thought I did. But those memories translated into feelings and broke me into little fragments. Thelife as I knew it – relationships, memories, facial expressions and expressions – all fell apart. To be honest, I haven’t done anything about it until now. I have never tried to discuss or express it. I am still trapped in that time. Now, I intend to pull myself out of the past. I want to face myself still stuck in that time. Park presents archives of unexpected past occurrences that happened around the same time, in separate yet similar tracks with some overlaps. Part 1. Shape of the room Part 2. Form of archives Part 3. Records of recovery
Silence – Sean Lìonadh – UK
Director Statement: When lockdown arrived in my home city of Glasgow, I felt an overwhelming urge to document the first day. I lived alone, and the only thing that kept me company were voice messages from friends. Then, quarantine was fresh and new, and the world wasn’t so despondent or incredibly bored of the subject yet. I wanted to capture a series of images that I might share online, and didn’t consider it to be a work for festivals. But a story emerged amongst the images, and I found myself becoming very excited to create something between reality and distortion. For the first time, I was working unscripted and confined only by the laws of government, not of short filmmaking. As the day progressed, I stopped being an observer and became a storyteller, with the voices of my friends and my ex-lover as guides. While lockdown was frightening and difficult, it became – like most frightening and difficult things – an opportunity to explore the human condition and to confront the things, and the silence, evaded so easily in a virus-free world.
