Filmmaker: Temujin Doran

Conatus by Temujin Doran

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Another work of found-text genius by Temujin Doran which, while not explicitly a videopoem or filmpoem, illustrates the crucial importance of juxtaposition in extending the meaning well beyond the text.

From their quiet home in the Père Lachaise Cemetery; Frank, Malcom, George, Mary, Peggy and Jim discuss a very enjoyable weekend. This is a short film based on an archival sound recording taken from the 1959 Linguaphone series ‘English Intonation Reader’

Vowels by Temujin Doran

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A fascinating found-poem(ish) work in which a close match of image to word, rather than ruining the film altogether as would usually be the case with videopoetry, is instead the secret to its success:

This short film is based on an archival sound recording taken from the 1945 Linguaphone series ‘English Pronunciation – A practical handbook for the foreign learner.’

Thus the description at Vimeo.

Just to clarify: the artist himself — London-based illustrator and filmmaker Temujin Doran — does not claim that this is a videopoem or film-poem; that’s purely my contention. The fact that the words in the found text are arranged for maximum assonance has of course a lot to do with this impression. And on second viewing, one sees that at least a quarter of the word-image matches aren’t obvious at all, and that it is this element of regular surprise that makes it a videopoem. Tom Konyves‘ general observation on the importance of juxtaposition remains intact, I think.