Masahiro Sugano’s “Competitive Filmmaking” Class Wins Top Prize at the 2021 Cadence Video Poetry Festival
The short film “Delirium” created by IAS faculty member Masahiro Sugano’s 2020 “Competitive Filmmaking” Class wins two more prizes. The film, created by eight UW Bothell students entirely during remote learning, was awarded with both an “Honorary Mention” for the Collaboration category and named the winner of the “Best of Northwest” category.
Moss Literary Journal, who juried the competition, had this to say about the film: “Playful, rich, and full of surprises, DELIRIUM takes full advantage of its form and feels alive in all the ways that matter. The filmmakers deftly handle the flow and balance of words and image, finding new meaning through repetition and divergence, creative visual metaphors, and a bold mix of different animation and video techniques. At once wide-roaming and intimately set in place, DELIRIUM captures the contradictions of the current moment (isolated, yet collective; chaotic, yet static; new, yet ancient) with warmth, depth, and humor, offering a reminder of the ongoing power of collaboration and community.”
The Cadence: Video Poetry Festival film program is available on demand from April 16-25, 2021. Delirium will screen as part of the “Forms to Foam” showcase. Cadence: Video Poetry Festival, presented by Northwest Film Forum, programmed in collaboration with Seattle author Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and artist Rana San, is a series of screenings, workshops, and discussions on the genre of video poetry, during National Poetry Month.
This is the second top prize achieved by Sugano’s class. The film “Delirium” was also awarded a top prize from the 2020 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival held in Berlin, Germany in the “Festival Poem Film Adaptation” category. The student film is an adaptation of the festival’s selected poem “Lethe” by the Botswana poet TJ Dema.
Read more about the film and the class’ journey to making the film.