Posts in Category: Author-made videopoems

Three Poems by Steven McCabe

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The poems are “Speed-dial a Rainbow,” “Bough,” and “Salome’s Veil.” McCabe directs with cinematography by Eric Gerard and editing by Konrad Skreta.

Anansi Hides the Moon by Brenda Clews

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“Poem, painting and video by Brenda Clews,” as it says in the closing credits. Brenda’s process notes at her blog are almost as interesting as the result:

A painting, ‘Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones,’ hanging on a wall. Sunlight moving through wind-waving branches falls through a window onto it. You can also see the shadows of the window itself. That morning I was absorbed watching the light and shadows dancing quietly over the painting and videotaped it. Then, on an evening walk I came across a light on a patio with a thick white gauzy curtain around it, and shot some footage with my iPhone video camera. Later, playing with the footage, I added the billowing curtain and its light next to the painting of doubles and shadows. Then I cut sections of a photograph of the painting out, animated them and added them to the film. Finally, pondering on what I had produced, I wrote a whimsical poem of the African trickster spider god, Anansi, and wove it in with handwritten notes.

Read the rest.

Breathe by Emma Passmore

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A few months back I posted the French version of this, because Emma indicated that restrictions imposed by some of the festivals she’d entered it in might prevent her from sharing the English version for a while. But in a discussion of filmmaking approaches at the forum, she mentioned that she had in fact been able to post it, as you can see. Again, this won the Public Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2010 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. Visit Emma’s website for more

Seasonally Affected by Hannah Stephenson

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This film, called “Seasons,” was made in response to a poem Hannah just wrote and posted to her blog last Thursday. The anonymous filmmaker grow365 says, “This is part of my 365 project to do something creative every day. You can see other experiments at http://grow365.posterous.com […] It’s the first time I’ve ever done this sort of thing.” The soundtrack incorporates Erwin Schulhoff’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Second Movement, performed by Daniel Hope, which means of course that she’s in risk of YouTube stripping it out.

The poet herself also posted a video of the poem, also her first such effort. It’s extremely lo-fi, made with the camera on her laptop, but more imaginative than at least 90% of poem videos made in that fashion.

(The poet moved to Columbus, Ohio in December, and I keep wanting to shout, Put on a damn coat and hat, Hannah! You’re not in L.A. anymore!)

Earth Eaters by Marc Atkinson

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Leslie Deere posted the video with this intriguing description of the process:

Collaboration with filmaker marc atkinson. i did the sound design

originally a science fiction poem by marc atkinson.

turned into a film and a book with illustrations by roisin dunne.

we buried the 16mm film and unearthed it two weeks later.

screened at the whitechapel gallery in london for dee sekar’s decasia late night event.

The credits also note the use of archive and home movie footage from the Prelinger Archives. The video appears to be a short for a 15-minute film, judging from Leslie’s website.

Here’s Mark Atkinson’s website.

Vinyl Poesie by Christoph Bruns

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An interesting found-videopoem experiment. I’m guessing the maker is German, but I’m not really sure.

This is a stop motion video i created around summer last year. It is a selfwritten poem created out of my vinyl collection. i looked out for interesting words and formed this little passages.

Del vacío de la voz (Of the Emptiness of the Voice) by vanvelvet

Vanvelvet is an Argentinian filmmaker currently living in Barcelona. For this videopoem, she had assistance from Federico Rasenberg and Florencia Peitrapertosa. The English translation is O.K.; the only egregious error is “whom” for “womb” (vientre), the final word of the poem.

The Space Between Burned Out Suns by Emily Kendal Frey and Zachary Schomburg

Zachary Schomburg’s film for a poem from Something Should Happen at Night Outside, a collaboration with Emily Kendal Frey.

Ghost Haiku by Susan Cormier

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Susan Cormier A.K.A. queen of crows is both author and director. In the notes at YouTube, she says:

The guys in the foreground seemed kinda creeped-out by me and my camera — obviously, they couldn’t see what I was actually watching. If anyone knows who they are, please send them a link. I generally don’t use people’s images without their permission, but this shot was too precious to discard.

All This Day Is Good For by Tom Konyves

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A spam lit videopoem! Tom writes,

In this ode to the simultaneous, true and false perceptions collide in a 360-degree panoramic sweep of a moment in time, rendering life and art in equal measure.

The text in this videopoem was assembled from hundreds of spam/scam e-mails I have been collecting over the years, representing the lies we are confronted with every day; yet the random phrases extracted from these passion-laden letters cannot help but also contain unintentional glimpses of truth. In between mundane and altered reality lies that precious essence of life I see as poetry.

Alex Konyves assisted with — well, almost everything, it seems. And Robin Pittman helped with the motion graphics.