Filmmaker: Jeff Saunders

The Cloudy Vase by Jane Hirshfield

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The Motionpoem for July is short and sweet, the work of Scott Olson and Jeff Saunders. Visit the post at Motionpoems.com for some interesting viewer reactions (and to leave your own). And as usual, the monthly email sent out to subscribers included statements from both the poet and one of the filmmakers. Hirshfield said, in part:

“The Cloudy Vase” is very short–the whole video takes perhaps 20 seconds. Yet somehow, falling into the glass of the vase in the film is also infinite and outside of time. That mirrors perfectly what I myself find so paradoxical and thrilling about very short poems–the collision of brief and large. And the brutality of having to throw out a beloved’s gift of flowers is in there too.

And Olson:

I visualized the poem existing in its own space and time, stripped of any unnecessary visual connotations, distractions, or references, where any and every viewer/listener could step directly into the experience and be totally present for a few brief moments, hear the words, and be taken in.

Render, Render by Thomas Lux

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Good advice for anyone making a revolution. According to the note on YouTube,

This motionpoem was created by Jeff Saunders with Scott Olson, Ben Myrick, Adam Tow, Carly Zuckweiler, and Andre Durand. It was shot in Jeff’s studio. The audio is from The Academy Audio Archive POETS.org and was recorded at Poet’s House, March 29, 2004.

Inexplicably, Lux doesn’t appear to have a website or blog, though of course he’s published widely in treeflesh media.

How Smokes the Smolder by Todd Boss

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A Todd Boss poem directed and edited by Greg Mattern with sculptures by Angie Hagen. Uploaded to Vimeo by the cameraman, Jeff Saunders, who notes that the footage was originally filmed for something else and repurposed by Mattern.