Nationality: Scotland
Cherry Tree by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson’s dreamy lyrics juxtaposed with footage of a woman restocking a vending machine. Emily Tumbleson notes:
Footage taken on a Canon 7D. Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses.
I am currently exploring the relationship between desire or aspiration, childhood nostalgia, and social or cultural context.
All Tangled Up: children’s filmpoetry from Scotland
http://vimeo.com/84665976
The result of the first Filmpoem Children’s Workshop led by Alastair Cook for North Light Arts. The film includes five poems read by their authors: Kitty, Alasdair, Andrew, Ben, and Nancy. Ben Dorin James was the cinematographer, and Filmpoem is credited as the director.
Jump Into Air by Guinevere Glasfurd
http://vimeo.com/54355797
Alastair Cook’s Filmpoem 25 features the text and reading of Guinevere Glasfurd. The description on Vimeo reads:
Jump Into Air is a poem by Guinevere Glasfurd on the subject of the deathly decline of the British fishing industry, commissioned by North Light Arts. Guinevere, as well as being an exceptional author and poet, has written for the Fishing News, the industry paper, and drew both on this and her stay with the fishermen of Dunbar during this Summer. Jump Into Air has sound commissioned from Luca Nasciuti and was filmed by Alastair Cook using Kodak Ektachrome.
Yesterday’s Noise by John Glenday
Another in the Absent Voices series of seven filmpoems from Alastair Cook “focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds,” as he put it in the description of a previous film. Scottish poet John Glenday reads his poem (which, I have to say, I absolutely adore).
All seven films will be premiered at the Scottish Poetry Library on December 6:
This performance event features music from Luca Nasciuti and Rita Bradd, along with readings from Vicki Feaver, Brian Johnstone, Sheree Mack and Jennifer Williams, each reading over their film to live accompaniment.
Revenant by Jane McKie
http://vimeo.com/52341039
Jane McKie reads and Rebecca Joy Scharp plays the clarsach in this filmpoem by Alastair Cook. It was commissioned by Absent Voices, “a group focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds,” according to Alastair’s note on the previous film in the series, “How Well It Burns” by Brian Johnstone.
Gable by Brian Johnstone
A video by John Birdsong of Panman Productions. His decision to combine audio of a reading with the poet’s still face was kind of an interesting departure from the norm, I thought.
Johnstone was a co-founder of the StAnza international poetry festival held each March in St. Andrews, Scotland.
How Well It Burns by Brian Johnstone
http://vimeo.com/51247891
Alastair Cook writes,
How Well It Burns is the third in a series of seven Filmpoems commissioned by Alastair Cook in collaboration with Absent Voices, a group focused on the celebration of the vast and semi-derelict Greenock Sugar Sheds.
How Well It Burns is by poet Brian Johnstone, erstwhile Director of StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival and a widely published poet; the other poets in the series are John Glenday, Vicki Feaver, Sheree Mack, Jane McKie, Gérard Rudolf and Jennifer Lynn Williams.
The series of seven will be performed live at the Scottish Poetry Library at an event on 6th December 2012; more information and tickets here.
For more on Brian Johnstone, see his page at the Scottish Poetry Library.
The Herrin’ Trail by Rita Bradd
Alastair Cook writes about his 24th filmpoem:
The Herring Trail was commissioned by North Light, based on the poem The Herrin’ Trail by Rita Bradd as part of my summer residency at McArthur’s Store in Dunbar. I spent 3 months there over the summer, working with the fishermen using wet plate collodion (a photographic process from 1851), 120 film and shooting with 8mm and 16mm. This film has scant relation to that, as I’ve used film given to me by the British Council, which is deliberately digitally extrapolated.
To be able to find such a wonderful poet in Rita was inspiring and I asked her to compose for the filmpoem on the Clarsach (or Lever Harp, if you’re not in Scotland) and I read the poem so that she might play. We premiered this at Sally Evan’s Callander poetry weekend in early September 2012 to a full house, with Rita playing live while i read over the film. Lovely to read in my native Scots, though not quite in my natural Galloway Irish/ Ulster Scots brogue!
Judging by North Light Dunbar’s news blog, Alastair has been very busy there indeed. They also have a page about his residency. I like the bio:
Alastair works predominantly with lens-based media as an analogue photographer concentrating on antique technologies and as a filmmaker using 8mm and 16mm film, combining these with digital technology to great effect. His award winning film and photography is driven by his knowledge, skill and experience as an architect: this mercurial work is rooted in place and the intrinsic connections between people, land and the sea. Alastair trained at the Glasgow School of Art then fled the country, returning after a dutiful spell in London and a more relaxed time in Amsterdam; he now lives and works in Edinburgh.
(Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a good webpage for Rita Bradd.)
The Grass is Greener by Ivor Cutler
An Orla Mc Hardy film based on a short piece by Scottish poet and radio performer Ivor Cutler — an evocative, dream-like interpretation that takes the poem to a whole new level, I think.
Twenty Second Filmpoem: 20 poets, 20 seconds each
http://vimeo.com/45299284
Alastair Cook‘s 22nd filmpoem is both playful and profound, a lovely demonstration of the magic that can happen when poets write ekphrastically in response to film clips.
Twenty Second Filmpoem (the 22nd Filmpoem) is twenty 20 second Filmpoems; it was conceived when I was asked to do a pecha-kucha.org night. An interesting concept, you present 20 slides for 20 seconds; I thought I’d do something a little different, actually create some work for the event. I commissioned 20 writers, all listed below, to write flash fiction against some 1960s found footage I’d edited. It’s ambitious and inevitably some bits work much better than others, but for me it is imperative to push this a little, to leave my comfort zone. And invariable, all the writing is superb, and for that I am thankful.
I also took the opportunity of using Vladimir Kryutchev’s binaural field recordings, for which I thank him. His amazing binaural map of Sergiyev Posad in Russia is here: oontz.ru/en
See the rest of the description on Vimeo to read all 20 short poems. The poets are: Andrew McCallum Crawford, Mary McDonough Clark, Al Innes, Guinevere Glasfurd-Brown, Elspeth Murray, Janette Ayachi, Jane McCance, Donna Campbell, Ewan Morrison, Angela Readman, Gérard Rudolf, Zoe Venditozzi, Jo Bell, Sally Evans, Pippa Little, Tony Williams, Robert Peake, Stevie Ronnie, Sheree Mack and Emily Dodd. Dodd blogged about her part in the production. A couple of excerpts:
I received a link with a password for my film, it was number twenty (password twenty). The film was 1960s found footage and it was beautiful. Alastair had edited it to tell a 1 minute story.
I watched a woman in a white dress on her wedding day. She kept looking at the Best Man. I wrote my initial thoughts down and came back to watch it again, two days later.
My brief was to respond with a piece of flash fiction that could be read aloud within 10 seconds. Alastair wanted it to be short, two or three lines maximum, he said just a haiku in length.
[…]
When I was first commissioned I’d thought along the same lines as the bride… is this really me?
- What if I watch the film and have no emotional response?
- What if I can’t do flash fiction?
- What if my piece ruins the whole presentation?
And all of this ran through my head while waiting for a response from Alastair.
Thankfully, I had this reply within a couple of minutes:
No it’s bloody perfect x Baci x
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