A fun text animation by long-time videopoem collaborators Stuart Pound and Rosemary Norman, who appear also to have a new videopoetry collection out, though I haven’t seen it yet.
From the brief and powerful poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), this animated version of his Ozymandias is directed by Alvaro Lamarche-Toloza in France.
The soundtrack features the richly dramatic voice of Bryan Cranston reciting the poem in a 2013 trailer for Breaking Bad. The compelling voice is accompanied only by a thrilling heavy heartbeat, also from the original soundtrack.
Wash drawings in the animation are by Estelle Chauvard. More about the project can be read in the notes beneath the player at Vimeo.
This is another strong piece to be found in a Top Ten of films from classic poems selected for Moving Poems by Paul Casey and Colm Scully.
Four poems from a 2012 collection called Eastern Time (Източно време/Iztochno vreme) by Bulgarian poet Десислава Неделчева/Dessislava Nedelcheva, about whom I can glean nothing in the Anglophone web. But I love this film by Vladimir Mihaylov, AKA poe3. According to Google Translate, ‘The video was realized with the support of the National Fund “Culture” 2020.’ Glad to hear that the government of Bulgaria has money for poetry film! Mihaylov’s entire playlist of subtitled videopoetry is worth a watch.
The Torrid Zone is a strong and beautiful video, the first one up in my Vimeo feed today.
The poem is by Tania Haberland. It can be read on the page below the video at Vimeo. Her voicing of it is marvelous: slow in rhythm, minimal, richly-toned, and affecting. From a bio for her:
…a tri-national poet (German-South African-Mauritian)… born in Africa, raised in Arabia and matured in Europe. She publishes, performs and exhibits her poetry and multi-media collaborations across the globe.
The abstract moving images and the soundtrack are credited to Poetics of Reverie. This is French artist Carine Iriarte and her collaborators in various media. She describes this project in her bio:
…a collaborative artistic project mixing poetry, electro music, painting, short films, movement and nature…
A video animated and edited by Jamie Macdonald AKA Airship23 for the Financial Times:
FT Weekend Festival 2021 commissioned Inua Ellams to write a response to Keats’s classic work ‘To Autumn’ marking his 200th anniversary. The animated poem ‘To John’ exposes the impact of humans on nature over those 200 years.
Financial Times website
For more on Ellams, who’s something of a Renaissance man, do visit his website. He teamed up with Macdonald back in 2020 for the trailer for his book The Actual/Fuck.
Hat-tip to poet Josephine Corcoran for blogging the link.
There is balm to be found in this poetry film from Wendell Berry‘s deep and enduring poem, The Peace of Wild Things. Berry has a close connection to rural Kentucky USA, where he was born in 1934 and has maintained a farm for over 40 years. It is his own voice in the soundtrack.
The animation is touchingly childlike, directed by UK artists Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang. The project was produced by The On Being Project, a non-profit initiative. Music and sound is credited to David Camp. In-depth process notes on the making of the film can be found here.
I found The Peace of Wild Things among a fine Top Ten of films from classic poems published recently on the magazine side of our site. These films were selected by Paul Casey and Colm Scully, organisers and judges of the Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer poetry festival and poetry film competition in Ireland.