The Dance of Light

An Evening of Experimental Poetry Films by Martin Sercombe

Join us for an exciting evening of short films exploring worlds at the intersections between poetry, music and performance. Martin Sercombe’s work has been featured extensively at festivals around the world, including the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival in Wellington in 2023. The show will include highlights spanning 45 years of his work, including landscape inspired animation, performance based and AI generated works. The programme includes collaborations with poet Gus Simonovic, novelist Dr Thom Conroy and composer/musicians Sianed Jones, Cris Cheek and Jeremy Mayall.

The evening will close with the world premiere of Songs of Vanishing and The Dance of Light. These two films involve state-of-the-art AI generated video techniques to explore surreal, imaginary landscapes. Together they explore themes of ritual, dance and spiritual connections to nature.
The films will be presented in UHD on a 100ft TV screen. Martin will be happy to discuss his approaches to cinematic and AI based film making after the show.

There will be a non-alcoholic bar serving free teas, coffees and snacks.

Programme

Singing the Horizon (with Sianed Jones)
A melodic journey along the horizon of the Norfolk Broads.

Tongues Undone (with Sianed Jones and Cris Cheek)
Tongues Undone is a cross media work, seeking out a hybrid language at the intersections between gestural sound, music, projected image and improvised performed poetics

Maud
The film was inspired by 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.

The Listening Place (with Ed Kelly)
The Listening Place is an impressionistic and visionary diary of a single working day at Cambridge market place, in Norfolk.

The Whispering Bridge
An evocation of an early summer’s day in Walberswick, Suffolk, told through quiet images and ambient sound.

One Sunday in Winter
This animated film poem was inspired by a day trip to Karekare in West Auckland.

Night is Paper (with Thom Conroy)
Night is Paper transports its audience into a realm where reality is fluid and understanding remains tantalizingly just out of reach.

Te Marae O Hine (with Jeremy Mayall and Dr Mesmer’s Private Army)
Te Marae o Hine is a portrait of The Square, the central park in Palmerston North. Using a four-section mirroring technique, it choreographs the movements of passers-by, as they traverse its matrix of paths, trees and architectural landmarks from dawn to dusk.

Find Me a Word (with Gus Simonovic)
This cine-poem was shot around the South Titirangi peninsula in the winter of 2017. It explores ways in which kinetic text can be ‘absorbed’ into the details of the landscape, rendering the two elements as a symbiotic whole.

Songs of Vanishing
This AI generated film begins as a study of the movements of fog through a range of landscapes at dawn and dusk. As it progresses, the fog becomes witness to a quiet celebration of nature, involving shadowy figures in a surreal forest world.

The Dance of Light
The Dance of Light is an exploration of transcendent dance and performance, set in a series of mysterious, liminal spaces. It celebrates nature, moving light and ways in which dance can transport the human spirit in ways both ecstatic and ineffable.