History
This genre of film was first explored in the 1920s by Impressionists Germaine Dulac, Louis Delluc, Man Ray, Hans Richter, and others. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s this genre was further explored by the Beat Generation poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Herman Berlandt, and developed into a festival held annually at the Fort Mason Center in California.
Poetry film is characterized by its nonlinear narrative style of editing, and flow of images and spoken words (stream of consciousness), although linear narration and editing have been used to good effect in the creation of some poetry films (see Narrative). Generally, poetry film is created as a noncommercial production, but some attempts have been made to produce commercial films. Some poetry films have been used as instructional aids in classes to illustrate concepts such as allusion, simile, and metaphor.
In 1981, a group in Tennessee experimented with fusing spoken word, images, and sound into what was called "poetry videos". The concept was to create poetry videos, similar to music videos which were gaining popularity at the time, making poetry more acceptable as a commercial product.
One of the most famous poetry films ever produced was aired on the Smothers Brothers Show in 1968. The film was by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was titled the "Assassination Raga". The film fused images of death, slow sitar, and Ferlinghetti's spoken word poem about the assassination of the Kennedys.
More recently George Aguilar has developed a TV series of poetry films called Eyestruck. Performance artist Hedwig Gorski was one of the first to successfully produce and direct her video poem using state arts funding. [2] She received an Artist's Fellowship in 2002 for work fusing poetry and media. [3]
Beginning in the 21st century the genre of poetry films making also reached other parts of the world including India. Several traditional television professionals experimented with the . In 2007 a non-profit organization, Sadho, created an exclusive platform for screening of poetry films in India. The Sadho Poetry Film Festival is a biennial international film festival in New Delhi. The first Sadho Poetry Film Festival was organized in the year 2007.
Poetry film-makers
Utpal Datta (Assam), Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Sidharth Pratap Singh, Parijat Kaul, Anjali Monteiro & K.P Jayasankar (Centre for Media and Cultural Studies), Nandan Saxena & Kavita Bahl, are some of the poetry filmmakers from India. The list of poetry filmmakers also includes Sidharth Saxena and Shashwat Mudgal from India and Tahira Rana from the UK. Utpal Datta had made his first Poetry Film 'BOHUBRITTA' based on a poem by Swapna Dutta Deka, the cinematography is by Nagen Baishya, Editing by Aseem Sinha (he has edited several important films by Shyam Benegal), and Sound designing by Amrit Pritam. The film was premiered at Guwahati International Documentary Short and Animation Film Festival. This film has been selected to Indian Panorama of International Film Festival of India, 2019, and later screened at several International Film Festivals. Shuvayu Bhattacharjee has made a poetry film titled KOLKATA COCKTAILS based on nine poems of these three poets Ipsita Ganguli, Lopa Banerjee, and Gopa Bhattacharjee. In the film, these three poets acted as childhood friends and rediscover their souls in Kolkata. The film has been critically acclaimed all around. It has been screened at many international film festivals like Silent Film Festival, Nextgen International Film Festival, etc, and also received the BEst Woman Film Award inLiteroma Short Film Contest and Carnival. Mrigankasekhar Ganguly, at 22, made the first poetry film in Bengali 'megh bolechhe' which was screened at Kolkata press club. [4] In 2011 he directed his second poetry film 'Iti Apu' recited by Soumitra Chatterjee. [5] In 2014, he directed Stark Electric Jesus based on the poem written by Malay Roy Choudhury. It breaks the narrative structure and creates a language of poetry in film.
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, is one of the most famous poetry filmmakers, who has received acclaim for his poetry films.
The cut-up technique is an aleatory narrative technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially by writer William Burroughs. It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.
A slam poetry is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery.
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. It covers a variety of styles and genres.
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies. When Ferlinghetti turned 100 in March 2019, the city of San Francisco turned his birthday, March 24, into "Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day".
Apur Sansar, also known as The World of Apu, is a 1959 Indian Bengali-language drama film produced, written, and directed by Satyajit Ray. It is based on the second half of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's novel Aparajito. Following Pather Panchali (1955) and Aparajito (1956), The World of Apu is the final part of Ray's Apu Trilogy about the childhood and early adulthood of a young Bengali named Apu in early twentieth century India. The World of Apu stars Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore ; both actors would go on to appear in many of Ray's subsequent films.
Hedwig Irene Gorski is an American performance poet and an avant-garde artist who labels her aesthetic as "American futurism." The term "performance poetry," a precursor to slam poetry, is attributed to her. It originated in press releases for experimental spoken word and conceptual theater Gorski created during 1979. She is a first-generation Polish American academic scholar and accomplished creative writer. The innovative poetry, prose, drama, and audio works are published and produced in a variety of media using standard and experimental forms.
SoumitraChatterjee was an Indian film actor, play-director, playwright, writer, thespian and poet. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema. He is best known for his collaborations with director Satyajit Ray, with whom he worked in fourteen films.
Utpal Dutt was an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright. He was primarily an actor in Bengali theatre, where he became a pioneering figure in Modern Indian theatre, when he founded the "Little Theatre Group" in 1949. This group enacted many English, Shakespearean and Brecht plays, in a period now known as the "Epic theatre" period, before it immersed itself completely in highly political and radical theatre. His plays became an apt vehicle for the expression of his Marxist ideologies, visible in socio-political plays such as Kallol (1965), Manusher Adhikar, Louha Manob (1964), Tiner Toloar and Maha-Bidroha. He also acted in over 100 Bengali and Hindi films in a career spanning 40 years, and remains most known for his roles in films such as Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (1969), Satyajit Ray’s Agantuk (1991), Gautam Ghose’s Padma Nadir Majhi (1992) and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's breezy Hindi comedies such as Gol Maal (1979) and Rang Birangi (1983). He also did the role of a sculptor, Sir Digindra Narayan, in the episode Seemant Heera of Byomkesh Bakshi on Doordarshan in 1993, shortly before his death.
The Hungry Generation was a literary movement in the Bengali language launched by what is known today as the Hungryalist quartet, i.e. Shakti Chattopadhyay, Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roychoudhury and Debi Roy, during the 1960s in Kolkata, India. Due to their involvement in this avant garde cultural movement, the leaders lost their jobs and were jailed by the incumbent government. They challenged contemporary ideas about literature and contributed significantly to the evolution of the language and idiom used by contemporaneous artists to express their feelings in literature and painting.
Devi (transl. Goddess) is a 1960 Bengali-language drama by director Satyajit Ray, starring Sharmila Tagore and Soumitra Chatterjee. It is based on a short story by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. The film is based on believing in a dream, that a Zamindar has witnessed, where he is delusional about his daughter-in-law revealing herself into a Goddess incarnate, worthy of being idolized and worshiped.
Malay Roy Choudhury was an Indian Bengali poet, playwright, short story writer, essayist and novelist who founded the Hungryalist movement in the 1960s.
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution, mostly open to improvisation. From that time performance poetry in Australia has found new venues, audiences and expressions.
Mohit Chattopadhyaya was a Bengali Indian playwright, screenwriter, dramatist and poet. He was a leading figure in modern Indian drama. Mohit Chottopadhya died on 12 April 2012. He had been suffering from cancer.
Video poetry is poetry in video form. It is also known as videopoetry, video-visual poetry, poetronica, poetry video, media poetry, or Cin(E)-Poetry depending on the length and content of the video work and the techniques employed in its creation.
Atanu Ghosh Ghosh is a National-Award-winning Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, author and teacher. His Bengali film Mayurakshi (2017) was awarded the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali. His film Shesh Pata, Angshumaner Chhobi, Mayurakshi, Binisutoy, Abby Sen and Rupkatha Noy, bagged multiple awards.Atanu started his career as a scriptwriter and director for documentary films in 1996. For his work in Aar Ek Bampi, he received the Doordarshan National Award for Best Children's Telefilm.
Cinema of West Bengal, also known as Tollywood or Bengali cinema, is the segment of Indian cinema, dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Bengali language widely spoken in the state of West Bengal. It is based in the Tollygunge region of Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The origins of the nickname Tollywood, a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge and Hollywood, dates back to 1932. It was a historically important film industry, at one time the centre of Indian film production. The Bengali film industry is known for producing many of Indian cinema's most critically acclaimed global Parallel Cinema and art films, with several of its filmmakers gaining prominence at the Indian National Film Awards as well as international acclaim.
Suman Mukherjee is an Indian film director.His popular films are Herbert (film), Kangal Malsat, Shesher Kobita (2014).
American Sign Language literature is one of the most important shared cultural experiences in the American deaf community. Literary genres initially developed in residential Deaf institutes, such as American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where American Sign Language developed as a language in the early 19th century. There are many genres of ASL literature, such as narratives of personal experience, poetry, cinematographic stories, folktales, translated works, original fiction and stories with handshape constraints. Authors of ASL literature use their body as the text of their work, which is visually read and comprehended by their audience viewers. In the early development of ASL literary genres, the works were generally not analyzed as written texts are, but the increased dissemination of ASL literature on video has led to greater analysis of these genres.
The film-poem is a label first applied to American avant-garde films released after World War II. During this time, the relationship between film and poetry was debated. James Peterson in Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order said, "In practice, the film poem label was primarily an emblem of the avant-garde's difference from the commercial narrative film." Peterson reported that in the 1950s, overviews of avant-garde films "generally identified two genres: the film poem and the graphic cinema". By the 1990s, the avant-garde cinema encompassed the term "film-poem" in addition to different strains of filmmaking. Film-poems are considered "personal films" and are seen "as autonomous, standing apart from traditions and genres". They are "an open, unpredictable experience" due to eschewing extrinsic expectations based on commercial films. Peterson said, "The viewer's cycles of anticipation and satisfaction derive primarily from the film's intrinsic structure." The film-poems are personal as well as private: "Many film poems document intimate moments of the filmmaker's life."
Stark Electric Jesus is a 2014 short film inspired by the poem Prochondo Boidyutik Chhutar or Stark Electric Jesus written by Malay Roy Choudhury. The film has won the official selection as the only Indian film at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festivalin New Media section and has been selected for screening at Leeds Independent Film Festival. The film also won 27 official selection in 20 different countries and also won 'Best Video Art' from Poland, 'Most Promising Artist' Award from Madatac, 06, Spain and 'Best Fantasy Film' award from Hrizantema International Horror and Fantasy Film Festival, Serbia.
