Winter Solitude by Matsuo Bashō
Kathryn Darnell makes film animations from calligraphy of poetry. In this piece, Winter Solitude, the lines are from a poem by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), a major progenitor of what came to be known as haiku.
winter solitude—
in a world without color
the sound of the wind
Dave: Not sure who translated this. The original reads 冬枯れや 世は一色に 風の音 which is better captured by Robert Hass’ translation, rendering the second line “in a world of one color” (yo wa isshoku ni). Fuyugare (冬枯れ) means winter bleakness; kare/gare means dry, withered, dead, etc. But I guess loneliness is also implied.
Marie: Darnell made this film for the 2022 northern hemisphere winter solstice just passed. Even from here in the midsummer of Australia I appreciate the light touch of snow in this film, and the simple beauty of the words.
As adjudicator of the Atticus Review Poetry Film Competition in 2018, I awarded first prize to an earlier film by Kathryn Darnell, Things I Found in the Hedge. This was a collaboration with UK poet Lucy English, who commissioned the piece for her larger poetry film project, The Book of Hours. This film was also part of the Poetry & Video international touring program I curated the following year. Another of Darnell’s films I have shared here at Moving Poems is Write Out: A Scribe’s Haiku #3.
From the ‘about’ page of her website:
Less important than what I do… but here it is in a nutshell. I also answer to Kate, Kath or K.L.Darnell. A native of Michigan and a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Art, I maintained a freelance studio art practice in East Lansing, Michigan for 40 years. I spent most of those years also teaching art; both independently, facilitating workshops, and as an adjunct professor in the art program at Lansing Community College.
Happy New Year to all reading!
Spellbound by Emily Brontë
In Emily Brontë’s world, a young woman is under a spell of blind forces of compulsion acting to draw her towards an unnamed darkness from which she cannot escape.
This wonderfully atmospheric 16mm film by Patrick Müller seems perfect for the solstice. Here’s the director’s statement:
Shot on 16mm film during the pandemic lockdown in an unusual dark and freezing cold winter of 2021, I used an old Bolex camera from 1963 for my poetry film. Chemnitz-based musician Wellenvorm created an unique original music for it using only one instrument: an EMS Synthi A Portabella.
Its awards include Best Experimental Short at the 2022 Caligari – Festival Internacional de Cine de Terror, and Best Horror Short at the 14th Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in 2021. The voiceover is by Sarah Kempton. For more information, visit the film’s webpage.
La luna asoma (The moon appears) by Federico García Lorca
The winner of the 10th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition in Ireland is La luna asoma (The moon appears). The piece is by Belgian film-maker, artist and animator Jelle Meys, from the poem by the great Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).
The pace of the film is slow and graceful and the animation simple and fluid, meeting well with the brevity and mystery of the poem. The film-maker talks more about his process in a brief interview with Jane Glennie as part of her overall review of the Ó Bhéal event.
Full credits:
Director and animator: Jelle Meys
Poem: Federico García Lorca
Voice: Joaquin Muñoz Benitez
Soundtrack: Nathan Alpaerts (guitar) feat. Maf! and G.L.A.S.B.A.K.
English translation editor: Christopher Maurer
Winning films from all 10 years of the Ó Bhéal competition can be seen in another post by Jane Glennie.
Blame the Fox by Jane Lovell
Devon-based poet Jane Lovell‘s poem won the 2022 Nature and Place Poetry Competition from Rialto, where the poem also appears in dead-tree media. Filmmaker Janet Lees remarked on Instagram that collaborating on the film with Lovell was “a genuinely unforgettable experience”. I can see why: the result is wondrous and moving, reminding me of everything I love about this hybrid genre.
The posh mums are boxing in the square by Wayne Holloway-Smith
The posh mums are boxing in the square is a marvelous piece from U.K. poet Wayne Holloway-Smith and Dutch film-maker Helmie Stil, both award-winning artists. The synopsis:
The film poem is about a mother re-imagined into life and given boxing gloves to fight off cancer.
Credits:
Producer Director and Editor: Helmie Stil
Writer: Wayne Holloway-Smith
Swimmers: Adele Carlson and Katie Fried
Underwater Camera: Philip Bartropp
Underwater camera assistent: Aaron Hindes
Camera: Edmund Saunders
Soundscape: Lennert Busch
The film was made in association with the Healthy Scepticism Project, The Poetry Society and Motionpoems.
Moving Poems has previously shared several other poetry film collaborations from Helmie Stil.
Blank by Linda France
Blank is another in a series of collaborations between film-maker Kate Sweeney and poet Linda France. Sweeney’s artist statement about the film:
In the administrative section of the Bloodaxe Books Poetry Publisher’s archive, there is a post-it note stuck to an invoice. The note has slipped through the archival ‘cleaning’ process and rather than being discarded, has been preserved by accident. In 2017, I drew and digitised a font from the letters making up the short message written on the note. For every missing letter in the font, there is a dot; a hole, an ellipsis. I called the font, ‘Janet’.
‘Janet’ an ephemeral trace drawn from an archive has become a conduit for other voices and the starting point for collaboration with other artists and writers to speak, not about or for, but through ‘Janet’.
In 2019, I invited poet Linda France to write a poem using ‘Janet’. Blank is a response to both the metaphorical and the structural potential of the font, ‘Janet’. France has extracted the implicitly feminist possibility of ‘Janet’ as a tool for articulating the female experience of the effect of the male gaze (and consequently the effect of its absence).
As a printed document it is possible to see how France has utilised the concrete and structural qualities of ‘Janet’. The poem printed on the page is punctured but readable. In order to make the video, Linda and I had to translate and devise a way to ‘sound out’ the poem. And so, as a video poem, Blank becomes a playful presentation of the relationship between the visual and audible characteristics of the mark – the period, the omission – and its use within poetic texts presented on the page, the screen and in performance.
Blank is one of a series of video-poems produced in collaboration with other poets and artists. It is part of my practice-led PhD project; working with the Bloodaxe Books publisher’s archive as a site and source for my research into the ways collaborative practice can be used to look at the shape and form of the hidden archival artefact.
Both film-maker and poet have featured several times before here at Moving Poems, on projects together and and with other artists.
When it feels hot, that rage against me by Rebecca Goss
Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil‘s latest poetry film uses a text by the British poet Rebecca Goss.
This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman from the perspective of a mother who wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go.
Rebecca Goss’ poem ‘When it feels hot, that rage against me’ won the Sylvia Plath Prize in April 2022. For the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in October 2022 it has been made into a poetry film by Helmie Stil from poetrycinema and The Poetry Society.
I love poetry films that feel like responses to the particularity of the places where they were shot. I know that wasn’t the case here, that the text preceded the film and was written independently of it, but the fact that it feels as if it could’ve been written ekphrastically is testament to the rightness of Stil’s imagery.
