Filmmaker: Dave Bonta

Riqueza (Riches) by Gabriela Mistral

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After all my web hosting woes of late, I think it’s safe to say that this site, at least, is back on an even keel. To celebrate, I made a video for one of my favorite poems, and Nic S. was gracious enough to upload a reading I could use to Pizzicati of Hosanna. I found the music on SoundCloud: “The Foggy Dew” on tin whistle by Chris Kent. I blogged a bit more about this at Via Negativa just now.

Fábula de la Sirena y los Borrachos (Fable of the Siren and the Drunks) by Pablo Neruda

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Moving Poems’ latest production takes advantage of a new free-audio site that other filmmakers might be interested in, too: pizzicati of hosanna: dead poets’ poems read by Nic S. in English & other languages. The footage is from Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia. I blogged all about it at Via Negativa.

Sonnet 65 by William Shakespeare

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A timeless meditation on time gets the film noir treatment. Moving Poems’ latest production uses footage from two films in the public domain at the Prelinger Archives and a Creative Commons-licenced William Byrd piece by Vicente Parrilla and company.

“Wild nights…” by Emily Dickinson

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Thanks to CreatureCast for licensing this wonderful undersea footage under a Creative Commons license, permitting this repurposing. I blogged about the making of it at Via Negativa. Due to the format of the original film, I was forced to learn how to make a widescreen (16:9) video, which turned out not be difficult at all (thought the standardized dimensions of videos here at Moving Poems give it an extra-wide top and bottom border).

For a very different audio interpretation of the poem, listen to videopoet Brenda Clews‘ reading on the Woodrat Podcast, Episode 31: Emily Dickinson at 180. Brenda’s reading starts just past the four-minute mark.

Reprieve by Luisa A. Igloria

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Luisa Igloria has been writing daily poems for my blog, Via Negativa since last November, but I didn’t get around to envideoing any of her poems until her 50th birthday last week — shameful, I know! Luisa is the author of Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005) and eight other books, and grew up in Baguio City, the Philippines. I blogged about the making of the video here, and Luisa’s poem first appeared on the blog in text form here.

The Last Brave Ship by Dale Favier

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Portland, Oregon-based poet Dale Favier has been blogging at mole since 2003. His first collection of poems, Opening the World, is due out this month just out from Pindrop Press, and I recently had the pleasure of reading it in manuscript. A subsequent sighting of a mole in the yard resulted in this video. (See Via Negativa for a more detailed description of the process.)

“Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson

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Moving Poems’ latest in-house production attempts to put Emily Dickinson’s famous poem in its historical context. I used clips from a public-domain educational film, “Civil War,” by Encyclopaedia Brittanica Films, 1954, from the Prelinger Archives, and found an excellent recording of a wood thrush at the equally invaluable freesound.org. But the most essential ingredient here, I think, was the reading by Nic S.. As Julie Martin put it in a comment on my blog post introducing the video,

Nic’s reading is masterful. Dickinson is so condensed and elliptical that her work seems impossible to read aloud, much like the unplayable late string quartets of Beethoven. But Nic invests each word with a different weight; she doesn’t play with expectations, but transcends them.

we were ten by Nic S.

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A new Moving Poems production, once again using not just the voice but also the poetry of Nic S.. This is the opening poem of her nanopress collection Forever Will End On Thursday. Nic was kind enough to record a new audio version of the poem especially for this video, since I took an opposite tack from my usual approach and tried to reproduce something of the feel of the text on the page, going line by line and using a different shot for each stanza, with a repeating shot for the spaces in between. I blogged about the process at Via Negativa, as usual.

Cuba and Coltrane by Nicelle Davis

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A new Moving Poems production in support of the Whale Sound audio chapbook Studies in Monogamy: Poems by Nicelle Davis. For more about Nicelle, see her bio on the site. The reading is by Nic S., and the music is a cover of John Coltrane’s “Naima” by The VIG Quartet, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license and uploaded to SoundCloud. I blogged about the making of the video at Via Negativa.

homesteader by Nic S.

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Another Moving Poems production for a poem by Nic S., read by the author, from her book Forever Will End On Thursday (text here). I blogged about the making of the video at Via Negativa the other day.