Filmmaker: Jonathan Knowles

A Sonnet to the Smartphone by Henrique Costa

Poet: | Nationality: , | Filmmaker:

Back in May, Dave wrote some words about a video from the poem The Long Burial by Brazilian-American writer Henrique Costa. That piece was a collaboration between Costa and UK film-maker and animator Jonathan (aka Jonny) Knowles.

They made A Sonnet to the Smartphone a few months earlier. It is an elegiac and then rousing cry for our times. For both videos they teamed up with actor Suzanna Celensu, also in the UK, who appeared and voiced the soundtracks.

All parts of this collaboration are equally wonderful. Let’s hope there are more videos from them in the future as well.

The Long Burial by Henrique Costa

Poet: | Nationality: , | Filmmaker:

British filmmaker and animator Jonathan Knowles collaborates with Brazilian-American poet Henrique Costa, who lives in Brazil but writes poetry in English. Costa told us

I started making video poems in November 2019, when I teamed up with Jonny Knowles, an English director from Huddersfield, in the UK.

Since then, we have made five video poems. [The Long Burial] was written in 2017, but was reinterpreted by Jonny to address the strange times in which we are living now, in the spring of 2020.

I found the contrast between the formal sonnet and the glitchy, hyper-modern video especially effective. The soundtrack, including voiceover by Suzanne Celensu and music by Alias Here (AKA James Cunliffe) was also excellent.