SELECTED POETRY FILMS (2019-NOW)

POETRY FILMOGRAPHY A-Z (2019 -NOW)

As both the writer, director and performer, I view my poetry film practice as me performing an autoethnography; using these media forms and the chosen themes within their narratives to help me self-reflect and (better) understand myself in relation to acts of looking, seeing and being seen and the difficulty in terms of not seeing/not being seen and my own subjectivity and experiences as British, working class, male, and gay. Themes of masculinity and desire underpin many aspects of my work.

Comedy historically comes from a queer identity defence, when it was harder to be gay in public, to be funny like Kenneth Williams who used gay slang known as Polari to communicate with other gay men covertly. Extending these ideas, underpinning my work are the mechanisms of comedy and humour to create a form of autoethnographic storytelling that subverts and challenges through a sophisticated usage of camp, innuendo and double-entendres to speak of personal narratives often raw, often painful but always generous and authentic.

Applied humour as a tactic to subvert and challenge a issues of homosexual identity and representation in relation to themes addressing seeing/not seeing etc. My practice presents a personal archaeology and revolves around my own autobiographical perspective, using the mechanisms of comedy and humour to engage, disarm, and highlight the gay male subcultural milieu which needs critique as it creates such stereotypes.

With a background in Painting and then Performance Art, my current artist moving image film practice brings together personal drawing, painting, photography and performance. Collage has become a major tool in this recent film practice, reinvigorating paintings and drawings that I produced nearly twenty years ago which are juxtaposed throughout my films with current photographic and performance for camera work. These films are often made with reusing / repurposing personal archival material and sound and moving image recordings. Things insist, in a spiral, nothing’s wasted. In my current practice, I use all my capacities, from theatre to drawing to painting to language to the comic to the affective to the relational, to painting and performance and film. Excavating (fine art) work I made long ago and resuscitating it, I bring it back to life through the medium of film and moving image. Integrating my fine artwork into my film work, my films create an arresting palimpsest effect by recycling pieces from previous bodies of work and placing them within my current context to see how their meanings may now differ from when they were first conceived. Whilst what is presented through my films can be read as one person’s (my) narrative, so too can it easily be read as lots of different voices layered to talk about wider levels of experience with various references to cultural context that (any)one can relate to.

RECENT SELECTED AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

2023 Honorable Mention for 'Let Rip: Teenage Scrapbook' at REELPOETRY INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 2023, Houston, Texas, USA

2022 WINNER of BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM, for ‘SEE ME’, Ealing Film Festival, London

2022 Finalist for ‘Apple of My Eye’, Deanna Tulley Multimedia Prize 2022

2022 Finalist for ‘See Shells’, Drumshanbo Written Word Weekend Poetry Film Competition, Drumshanbo, Ireland

2022 Juan Downey International Contest (Finalist), Chile

2022 Hombres Video Poetry Award (Finalist) for ‘SEE ME’, SlamContemporary, Italy

2022 Finalist for ‘Rufus’, MicroMania Film Festival 2022, Buffalo, NY, USA

2022 Finalist for ‘The Perfect Crime: A Doggy Whodunnit’, Absurd Art House Film Festival 2022

2022 Finalist for ‘Reclaiming my Voice’, Vesuvius International Film Festival

2022 Honorable Special Mention Award, Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival 2021 Best Psychedelic Fantasy film winner for 'See Me' (2020), Retro Avant Garde Film Festival NYC

2021 Semi-Finalist, Serbest International Film Festival 2021

2021 Honorable Mention, Splice Film Festival, New York

2021 Nominee for Best Original Concept and Best Atmosphere Independent Horror Movie Awards 2021

2021 Honorable Mention Award for 'See Me' (2020), Screener Short Films

2021 Best Kent Film nominee for ‘Peer’ (2020), Margate Bookie Film Festival

2021 Honorable Special Mention Award, Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival

2020 Semi-Finalist (3rd place winner), Splice Film Festival, New York

2019 Special Mention Award, London-Worldwide Comedy Short Film Festival

APPLE OF MY EYE (2022)